Brazil: a country of coaches

For months, the first thing travelers saw upon arriving at Congonhas Airport and entering São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, was a huge billboard commissioned by a coaching institute. But these advertisements weren’t just at the airport, they were everywhere. From people chatting about it on the streets, to the huge buzz on social media and even in TV advertising, coaching has been taking over Brazil—and the unregulated explosion of this market has become a legal issue for lawmakers to solve.

The Brazilian Coaching Institute (IBC), the biggest school for coaches in the country, defines coaching as “a human development method built over diverse sciences and practices such as as administration, human resources management, neuroscience, neuro-linguistic programming, anthropology, sociology and concepts of psychology.” The idea is to help people unleash their potential to reach personal or professional goals. 

It was initially popular among executives, but has now become widespread.

In practice, advertisements popping up all over social media present coaching sessions as a way to fully transform one’s life—or “boost their performance,” in the community’s slang—in a short space of time, with a simple “mindset change.” “Life Coach,” “Empowerment Coach,” “Financial Coach,” “Shopping Coach,” “Legal Coach,” “Nutritional Coach,” and even “Quantum Coach” have become the job titles of many Brazilians, as niches have become increasingly specific.

According to the 2016 Global Coaching Study, by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and consultancy PwC, the global coaching market revenue was USD 2.35 billion in 2015—and USD 92 million of it came from Latin America and Caribbean. At that time, the region had an estimated 4,000 coaches (compared to 53,300 worldwide), and 35 percent of them were unqualified. In Brazil, the IBC, founded in 2007, says it has already trained more than 50,000 coaches, experiencing a 1,000-percent increase in demand in less than five years. Coaching’s peak of popularity in Brazil becomes clear with a look at Google Trends data: the popularity of the search term...