FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions vs. Frequently Avoided Questions

    The former asked ones are treated here. The latter avoided ones are crucial for crisis and turnaround management. They are treated on the subpage "III. Refitting the Q-Strategy, Strategy Repair from A to Z" at Services. FAQs has two sections, general and specific questions. 

I. General Questions

Coaching FAQs 

    These consist of nine questions about executive coaching. They begin with a question on the origins of coaching and continue with ones about how it is different from management consulting, about coaching methods and the relevance of certificates. They end with the question on what coaches typically charge, their fees. These nine general questions are followed by five specific ones. 

II. Specific Questions

1) How to select an executive coach? Don´t be this person!

    This section opens with three admonitions, a key question as a point of departure, and a series of tough questions for both the coach and the client. It concludes with a reference to a team at the University of Augsburg, Germany, whose research includes selection criteria for executive coaches.

    A subpage discusses how to select other professional advisors. 

2) What is the best coaching certificate? The SWIFT Certificate for exceptional executive coaches

    This new certificate out of the UK, which purports to be the most demanding in the industry, is ironically presented. (Bridges is skeptical; however, read it and draw your own conclusions.)

3) Which coaching firms are the largest? The Four Lords of Coaching

    An overview of the large psychology-based management consulting firms is given. These deal with behavioral management, assessment and learning. They either already offer executive coaching, or have the resources in place for a major market entry. 

4) What academic research is there about coaching? 

    A reference is given to an extensive annotated bibliography about the academic literature on coaching (with a "soft" emphasis). It is followed by abstracts of a dozen sample articles.

5) What are the main strategy fora and is there a preeminent forum?

    We briefly mourn the passing of the HBR Answer Exchange, and encourage posing questions about marketing strategy at MarketingProfs.

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* The Alcantara Bridge , 194 m. long and 71 m. high, crosses the Tagus river in Spain. (Tagus is the longest river in Spain and Portugal, the Volga in Russia the longest in Europe.) Vasco de Gama, another famous bridge over this river, is shown at "Who We Are" and also at "Contact." The Roman stone arch bridge shown above was built by Caius Julius Lacer between 104 and 106 AD at the order of the Roman emperor Trajan. It bears the inscription Pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula - "I have built a bridge that will last forever." (Wikipedia, 2011) Over 1,900 years later it is still serving well! That makes it almost as old as coaching, cf. Coaching FAQs, article one, "What are the origins of coaching and how large is the market?"

                            © Alcantara Bridge, photo by Dantla, 23 Feb. 2005                                                                                                               German Wikipedia, GNU License 1.2; Gyan Web Design 2010