5. Assess how you’re using your time. For the first time, coach practitioners who responded to the 2016 Global Coaching Study were asked how they spend their hours working as coaches; this infographic shows the global findings. (The infographic also shows what services your peers offer in addition to coaching.) How does your allocation of time compare? Are there areas of your business you’d like to spend more time on? Less time?
For a deep dive into this topic, you can download How Coaches Spend Their Time, an ICF-authored white paper based on an extensive job analysis research project.
These five recommendations are only the beginning, of course. Share how you’re using ICF industry research to inform your decision-making or grow your business in the comments, below.
This article was originally published on the ICF Blog. http://coachfederation.org/blog/index.php/7236/
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Rey Carr
November 4, 2016 at 6:40 pm
One of the most successful marketing activities of the International Coach Federation (ICF) has been to call their faulty surveys “research.” This strategy gives the appearance that the results of the surveys are credible, valid, and reliable, when in fact, they violate most gold standard principles associated with research. In addition, the ICF wants people to believe that their surveys reflect or represent the current state of coaching or the coaching industry, when in fact, a significant portion of those involved in the coaching industry neither pay attention to nor are involved with ICF. And most importantly, the ICF markets its survey results as if they are accurate and true, when in fact, they have significant limitations that are never mentioned by the ICF.
Let’s look at one claim in point one of this article to illustrate some of the critiques above. The author cites an infographic touted by the ICF that appears to show that credentialed coaches command higher fees, have more clients, and earn greater income that their peer without a credential. But this finding is only true for those coaches actually completing the survey. What about the thousands of coaches who either did not want to complete the survey, didn’t know about, or didn’t care about it? I personally know of a group of coaches (that appear to number in the hundreds), who are neither credentialed by the ICF or associated in any way with the ICF who continually report on their “six-figure” incomes from coaching. There are many coaches who make more than $1 million dollars from coaching who have never been members or associated with the ICF (ironically, some of them are recruited by the ICF to be presenters at their conferences.)
All four of the other points in this article suffer from the same problems: inappropriate generalization from limited survey data to an entire population or industry; unwillingness to acknowledge or discuss the limitations of the data based on the low standard of data survey collection; and over promotion of data as a tool to market services and gain clients.
These points are not meant to diminish the use of the data as possible guidelines or hints about that status of the coaching industry. However, the ICF and the author of this article who is associated with the management of the ICF, ought to warn or caution readers about the limitations of the data while educating coaches unfamiliar with research and survey techniques as to why these results have problems with validity and reliability.
Cobra Kai Jacket
April 26, 2022 at 2:17 am
I like your post and the point you made is great. The biggest reason to use a coach practitioner or manager / leader using coaching skills is to improve leadership development strategies. It also helps our business.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.