and their message has appeared in different forums. In each of our five cate-
gories, we began with six thought leaders. We then let the thought leaders
nominate four practitioners—professionals who do great work, but may not
be quite as well known.
Just as the categories of coaching sometimes overlap, the thought leaders and
practitioners overlap as well. Some of the practitioners were reasonably well
published and could arguably be called thought leaders. Many of the coaches
we describe as thought leaders were more doers than academics and could be
called practitioners. In any case, we think we have selected a terrific group of
50 coaches. We hope that you will be able to learn from the comments of the
coaches you may know, as well as the coaches that you may have never
encountered before.
Why “50 Top Executive Coaches” and Not “The Top 50
Executive Coaches”?
Executive coaching is an emerging field. We reserve the right to be wrong in
selecting our list of top coaches. Although we feel the coaches we have
included (after consulting with the editors) are excellent choices, we are
sure
that there are other great coaches that we did not learn about and
inadvertently left out. Five of the thought leaders we asked to join chose not to
participate (Warren Bennis, Richard Bolles, Michael Useem, Jon Katzenbach,
and Ram Charan). The most
common reason for not participating was that
they felt they were now more largely focused on writing and speaking as
opposed to coaching and advising.
Selecting 10 Top Coaches in Each Category
Coaching Leaders/Behavioral Coaching
Marshall Goldsmith
was the first coach selected in this category. His unique
“pay only for results” process has been widely publicized and is being used
by hundreds of coaches around the world. Marshall has coedited or coau-
thored 17 books. His article, Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback,
has been
reproduced in seven different publications and is changing leaders ’ entire
orientation toward behavioral coaching. It was easy to choose Marshall for
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