What is Executive Coaching? Executive Coaching is a facilitative one-to-one, mutually designed relationship between a professional coach and a key contributor who has a powerful position in the organization. This relationship occurs in areas of business, government, not-for-profit, and educational organizations where there are multiple stakeholders and organizational sponsorship for the coach or coaching group. The coaching is contracted for the benefit of a client who is accountable for highly complex decisions with wide scope of impact on the organization and industry as a whole. The focus of the coaching is usually focused on organizational performance or development, but may also have a personal component as well. The results produced from this relationship are observable and measurable, commensurate with the requirements the organization has for the performance of the person being coached.
 
-International Coach Federation
Summary Findings from the International Executive Coaching Summit
 
In a survey of 100 executives, the percentage who felt that coaching:

• Increased productivity — 53%
• Increased quality — 48%
• Improved working relationships
  with direct reports — 77%
  with immediate supervisors — 71%
  with peers — 63%
• Increased job satisfaction — 61%

 — HRMagazine, March1, 2001
 — Center for Executive Options
“Executive Coaching: Achieving Performance, Retention, and Succession Goals”