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into five coaching categories. 
Part III: Internal Coaching.
A look at trends in building internal coaching
systems as well as an essay on the very topical issue of developing the
“leader as coach” capability. 
Part IV: The Coaching Almanac.
Includes an analysis of trends, an
overview of the coaching marketplace, and a discussion of the latest thinking
on the issue of return on investment. 
Linkage’s 50 Top Executive Coaches 
How They Were Selected and 
Who They Are 
In trying to find 50 of the top coaches in North America, we began the 
search by examining our own large customer base of over 100,000 represen-
tatives in business, government services, and nonprofits. We regularly seek 
such advice on who should be featured in our national conferences, insti-
tutes, workshops, summits, and other internal and external programs. As a re-
sult, we are frequently a referral source for external and internal coaches. 
With this in mind, we asked who our customers consider to be the top exec-
utive coaches. We developed our primary list from this survey. We then went 
to the experts and asked the world ’s top thought leaders who they considered 
to be the top coaches. After much interviewing, using a rigorous process of 
de-selection, we made our choices and determined our coaching classifica-
tions (for more detail, see below). 
Our customers ’ first choice as a speaker on executive coaching was 
Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall ’s keynotes on behavioral coaching at Link-
age events have always received the highest ratings. In the past two years, 
his work in coaching has been featured in a New Yorker
profile, a Harvard
Business Review
interview, and a Business Strategy Review
(London Busi-
ness School) cover story. Marshall has also been listed in the Wall Street
Journal
as a “top 10” executive educator, in Forbes
as one of five leading ex-
ecutive coaches, in the Business Times
(of Asia) as one of 16 top thought 
leaders of his field, and in Fast Company
as America’s preeminent execu-
tive coach. He was, without question, an easy decision and a logical place to 
begin our search. 
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