One of the first published case studies (Glaser, 1958) on the effect of coaching was on individual sales performance enhancement. The case study involved the coach working with the Sales Training Director and included the sales staff receiving regular group coaching sessions focusing on team building. The program objectives of higher sales, greater team motivation and reduced staff turnover were all met.
"Formal training in leadership and interpersonal skills and follow-up behavioral coaching, has been shown to increase productivity by 30% in the first year, as related to that area of training. Continued improvement in performance is seen with feedback and behavioral coaching.  Without such follow-up, the performance level is just slightly higher than before the
training. 

Behavioral coaching has consistently been shown to result in the perception of enhanced leadership effectiveness by 99% of those observing the person. Also 99% of individuals who follow the prescribed program improve by at least one full point on a six-point scale as determined by their co-workers."

- Personal Leadership Development Study, 2002. Michael Woods MD, Welyne Thomas PhD

"For years, CEOs of some of the most successful and largest companies have relied on executive coaches. Henry McKinnell, CEO of Pfizer, Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, and David Pottruck, CEO of Charles Schwab & Co., are just a few who rely on a "trusted adviser."

-The Business Journal. Nov. 2003

"Coaching management is used at a growing number of FORTUNE 500 companies, from IBM and Dow Chemical to Marriott International and Glaxo Wellcome. Corporate coaches are in such demand that they can charge from $600 to $2,000 a month for three or four 30- to 60-minute conversations. Some charge as much as $400 an hour. So a lot of them are earning far more than psychologists or psychiatrists.

Executive Coaches are everywhere these days. Companies hire them to shore up executives or, in some cases, to ship them out. Division heads hire them as change agents. Workers at all levels of the corporate ladder, fed up with a lack of advice from inside the company, are taking matters into their own hands and enlisting coaches for guidance on how to improve their performance, boost their profits, and make better decisions about everything from personnel to strategy. "

- TIME Business News

"Demand for executive coaching has been booming as more company executives and small business owners seek the service. Many consulting and training firms state that within the past year, the number of requests they have received for executive coaching has increased by 60 to 80 percent. A recent study showed that coaching now accounts for around 20 percent of their business, when two years ago it was 5 percent...More executives are beginning to request the service for themselves.. as the negative connotation of coaching as a form of punishment for poor performance is replaced by the growing perception that coaching can help an individual or group to build sustainable professional and personal skills, better learn, overcome challenges, reach stretch goals and integrate leadership training.”

-US Careers Journal. May 2003

"The number of UK organizations using coaching between 1998 and 2003 has risen from 85% to 96%, according to a report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)."

-University of Bristol Newsletter 31 March 2004

"Call it professional coaching, executive coaching or corporate coaching. Whatever the name, this phenomenon is the hottest service in corporate America today."- says David A. Thomas, Fitzhugh professor of business administration at Harvard Business School.

-THE BUSINESS JOURNAL.

"Business Coaching is needed today more than ever as a critical tool for organizational change... Change is essential for an organization to grow and adapt to today's rapidly shifting marketplace...In changing from old hierarchical models to relational models for leading and influencing, businesses are creating coaching cultures that encourage organizational learning. Coaching has emerged as the best way to help individuals learn to think and work together more effectively."

- Georgetown University, Center for Professional Development. 2003

"If ever stressed-out corporate America could use a little couch-time, it's now. Trust in big companies is at an all-time low. Baby-boomers have been burned; Gen Xers aren't expecting the Corporation to take care of them. Under the circumstances, employees are much likelier to go outside and get independent advice to help them be better managers" - says Karen Cates, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Northwestern's

-Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

"What's really driving the boom in coaching, is this, as we move from 30 miles an hour to 70 to 120 to 180...as we go from driving straight down the road to making right turns and left turns to abandoning cars and getting on motorcycles...the whole game changes, and a lot of people are trying to keep up, learn how, not fall off."

-John Kotter, Professor of Leadership at the Harvard Business School.

Who qualifies as an executive coach? At the moment, just about anybody. "I wonder about the vulgarization of coaching,"  "I'm concerned about unlicensed people doing this."

-Warren Bennis of USC's Business School.

The demand for Executive Coaches has skyrocketed over the past 5 years.... today’s executive coach (EC) is intended to help leaders and potential leaders across the rocky, wild, and challenging road of organizational growth in today’s dynamic and unstable work environment....As with most emerging professions, the rules and guidelines for how to make executive coaching work have been scanty at best. This gap has been felt by executives seeking help, their organizations, and the scores of people putting up shingles as EC’s. At the same time, a cadre of other types of coaches is trying to catch the coattails of the popularity of executive coaching."

-The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology - American Psychological Association

Booz, Allen & Hamilton's Ed Cohen, Director for Professional Excellence says; "We hire outside certified coaches to help our executives fill in minor gaps that may not have shown up earlier in the person's career because those skills may not have been the ones that were needed to help them rise to their present level."

-The Edge, 2003

"The Australian Institute of Management says 70% of its member companies hire coaches. They can cost around $5,000 for middle to senior level executives and for CEO's the bill quickly gets to $12,000 and higher if the relationship remains open ended. But the cost of not doing it can be far greater."

-Inside Business. Channel 2. July 2003