ABSTRACT
Coaching, or more accurately executive coaching, is one of the few rapid growth industries of the last few years. First accepted as a practice in executive development, it has spawned tens of thousands of practitioners. As a measure of its popularity, a Google web search on December 12, 2002, revealed more than 99,400 Web sites using the phrase “executive coaching.” Human resources development and organization development internal and external consultants, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and other professionals (e.g., lawyers, accountants, and nurses) have had business cards printed and promote themselves as executive or life coaches. Even in countries where management training and executive development are awkward because they threaten the public image of a person's competence and authority, such as in Italy (P. Altomare, personal communication), Spain (R. Serlavos, personal communication), and Japan (Voigt, 2002), coaching is the fastest growing sector of the human resource development business.
