Coaching: business savior or just a fad?

Purpose – To provide a concise briefing on the potential advantages of executive coaching. Design/methodology/approach – This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds his own impartial comments and places the argument in context. Findings – Axmith's article focuses on the circumstances that prompt organizations to use executive coaching as a form of intervention to support the chief executive, and highlights the effectiveness of that intervention with a series of situations and how they are resolved. Brown and Wilkes promote the idea that coaching is the most cost‐effective way to learn – little and often. Johnson reviews the rise in awareness among US companies of achievements that can result from executive coaching and balances the benefits and drawbacks for a company of outsourcing or recruiting coaches internally, or even using a mixture of the two. Parsloe and Rolph use the findings of the 2004 training and development survey, from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, to explore the growing popularity of coaching, how its value is perceived and how it fits in with other methods of corporate performance and development activity. Practical implications – Illustrates the situations in which coaching has proved its worth. Contains plenty of practical advice for any organization considering the implementation of a coaching program. Originality/value – Provides some useful information about executive coaching.