9. The Perception of Epidemic Situation Amongst Coaching and Mentoring Professionals: An Emotional Analysis Approach

In this paper, the perception of COVID-19 situation amongst coaching, mentoring, and supervision practitioners is analyzed based on the survey conducted by European Mentoring Coaching Council (EMCC Global) with the participation of (476) people from various countries. Based on the data obtained, ‘word cluster analysis-emotional text mining’ and ‘correlation analysis’ are performed. The major empirical findings are summarized as follows: firstly, correlations are calculated among the most repetitive words in the statements of participants by using the Euclidian distance approach. In this respect, participants describe COVID-19 related feelings with the most frequent words they use as coaching, work, anxiety, clients, working, fear, time, business, home, and stress respectively. This indicates that COVID-19 epidemic related issues leads participants to think about their clients. They have the most common feelings of anxiety, stress, and fear at work, business and home. They are sensitive about the time as well. Secondly, cluster dendrogram is applied and this indicates that there are five major categories defined with strong correlation between them such that: coaching, work, anxiety, change, issues, crisis, will, managing, new, people, management, client, working, fear, uncertainty, future, time, stress, business, home. In conclusion, policy recommendations are made regarding the pandemic period all over the world in order to contribute relevant literature based on the empirical findings of EMCC Global’s survey.