1. From public speaking to leadership communication. This week the Wall Street Journal did an article about public speaking coaches. While this is a strong niche, a stronger one is leadership communication. This niche goes beyond delivering a good speech to the messages we send every minute based on how we carry ourselves, how we speak, whom we reward, how we react to failure and success, how we perform under pressure, and where we spend our time and resources. Very powerful stuff, and I know at least one coach who has built a $1.4 million practice in this area alone.

2. Collaboration. One of my most lucrative and enjoyable areas of coaching has been in the area of increasing collaboration. I’ve done this especially with universities trying to land large grants from the National Science Foundation, which now requires collaborative projects. However, scientists don’t know how to collaborate effectively. The same has been true with non-profit board members, leadership teams at tech companies, and leadership teams at hospitals. I imagine that almost any company can benefit from a coach who helps to foster and advance collaboration among silos.

3. Innovation. I grew up with Stephen Shapiro and he is now a leader in consulting to organizations about putting structures in place to increase innovation. This is a serious pain point for many companies, and rapid innovation has become a big subject. You can coach people to come up with creative ideas, and how to create an environment where new ideas flourish and failure is not penalized to the point where no one wants to take risks.

4. Turning around a national culture. I am in discussions with the head of coaching of a wonderful company that specializes in helping war-ravaged and other countries turn around their cultures and build new leadership capabilities. This particular company is working with leadership in a country where corruption is rampant. They have an elegant model to change five crucial mindsets of the leaders there, and they are getting some fascinating contracts from both the public and private sectors. This is important work that is making a difference. Increasingly, many countries could use this kind of coaching, from Greece to Afghanistan to – dare I say it — the USA (within Congress especially).

I hope you find these thought provoking. The Center for Executive Coaching stands out because we are not an academic or theoretical coach training company. We show you hard-hitting, practical ways to build a coaching and advisory practice, and get great results for clients.