What is the Sherpa Survey?
The Sherpa Executive Coaching Survey is a research project now in its sixth year. This survey is conducted by Sherpa Coaching, a team of authors and educators headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and sponsored by several university executive education departments. Technical support and hosting is provided by IQS Research in Louisville, Kentucky, who validated the collection of data.
As educators in the field of executive coaching, we want to know what business leaders, HR and training professionals think about coaching. We want to know how executive coaches are being used, and how they go about building a budding industry. On a broader scale, we want to help build the credibility of executive coaching and ensure the industry’s future.
In 2005, no one was doing large-scale research on a regular basis. That creates two problems: First, small studies with as few as twenty participants were being used to draw large conclusions. Secondly, one- time research becomes obsolete pretty quickly.
There have been other surveys conducted since we started in 2005, most notably by the Harvard Business Review and International Coach Federation. Some of these studies don’t separate life coaching from executive coaching. Some are small scale. Others poll a small, invited audience. Each survey has been a one-time event. In some cases, results have been kept from the general public or offered at a price.
So, we made a commitment to run an annual survey open to anyone who wishes to participate, and release the results to the public at no charge. That’s what we have done every year, and will continue to do.
A European equivalent to the Sherpa survey, Bresser Consulting (Germany) periodically conducts worldwide research on executive coaching. Their research reports are released, in their entirety, to the general public at no charge. Frank Bresser tells us that he plans continuing studies which will allow him to identify trends. Bresser’s work adds to the knowledge base on the global coaching scene, and it is done in a spirit of service to the industry.
