The key insight:
Coaching works when you know what you are trying to change. If you start without that, you pay for a year of good conversations and very little difference.
Executive coaching is a paid, time-limited, one-to-one working relationship in which a trained coach helps a senior leader change specific behaviours that affect how they perform in the role. It is not advice, therapy or training. The coach does not tell you what to do. They help you see your own patterns clearly, agree what you want to change, and then hold you to it over several months.
That is the short answer. The longer answer matters more, because coaching is easy to buy and easy to waste. Below is what a coach actually does, when it is worth the money and the time, what a programme looks like from the first session to the last, and how to choose someone good. I have also set out why a measured starting point makes the difference between coaching that changes something and coaching that simply feels useful.
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What an executive coach does, and what they do not do
The CIPD, the UK professional body for HR and people development, describes coaching as essentially a non-directive form of development focused on improving performance and developing the individual. Non-directive is the important word. A coach asks, listens, reflects back and challenges. They do not solve your problems for you.
In practice a good executive coach does four things:
- Helps you see yourself as others see you. Most senior leaders get less honest feedback the higher they go. A coach works with feedback data and with what you tell them, and points out the patterns you cannot see from the inside.
- Turns vague intentions into specific goals. "Be more strategic" is not a goal. "Stop attending the weekly operations meeting and give the decision rights to my deputy by March" is.
- Gives you a safe place to practise. You can rehearse a difficult board conversation or a restructuring announcement before you have it for real.
- Holds you to account. Between sessions you try new habits at work. In the next session the coach asks what happened. That regular check is a large part of why coaching works.
It helps to be clear about what coaching is not. People often confuse it with other kinds of support, and choosing the wrong one wastes months.
| Type of support | What they bring | Best used for |
|---|---|---|
| Executive coach | Questions, challenge and structure; no need to have done your job | Changing your own behaviour and habits as a leader |
| Mentor | Experience in your field, advice and contacts | Learning how a sector or organisation works, and career guidance |
| Consultant | Expertise and answers on a business problem | Fixing a process, strategy or structure |
| Trainer | A defined skill taught to a standard | Learning something you do not yet know how to do |
| Therapist or counsellor | Clinical training for personal and emotional difficulty | Problems that sit outside work or go beyond it |
A good coach will tell you when you are in the wrong row of that table. If what you need is a finance course or a sector mentor, they should say so.
When executive coaching is worth it
Coaching costs money and, more importantly, it costs your attention for six months or more. In our experience at JOH Partners it pays off most at three moments.
A new or bigger role. The first months in a role decide how the organisation sees you for years. A coach helps you plan who to meet, what to change first and what to leave alone, and then helps you check whether it is working. Our guide to the first 90 days in a leadership role sets out the plan itself; coaching is how you stay honest about it while the pressure is on.
The step before a promotion. Often the gap between your current level and the next is not technical. It is how you delegate, how you handle conflict with peers, or whether you can hold a room of people who do not report to you. These are behaviours, and behaviours are what coaching changes. If you are working towards a director role, our new guide on how to become a director sets out the evidence a panel looks for, and a coach can help you build it.
An early sign of derailment. Some signs are quiet: your team has stopped bringing you problems, a peer avoids you, or your chief executive has started copying someone else into your emails. JOH Partners has written about the early warning signs a chair watches for in a new appointment, and most of them are behavioural. Coaching at this stage is far cheaper than a failed appointment.
Coaching is usually not worth it in four situations:
- The real problem is the role, the boss or the organisation, not you.
- You lack a skill that a short course would teach faster.
- Someone else has decided you need coaching and you do not agree.
- You want reassurance rather than change.
The last one is more common than people admit. Coaching should feel uncomfortable at times. If every session leaves you feeling good and nothing at work is different, something is wrong.
What a coaching programme looks like, session by session
Programmes vary, but a well-run one for a senior leader usually follows a pattern like this over six to twelve months.
Before the first session: the chemistry conversation. You meet two or three coaches briefly to see who you can work with. This is not a formality. You will be honest with this person about your weaknesses, so trust has to be possible.
Session one: contracting. You agree the goals, how often you will meet, how confidential the sessions are, and what, if anything, goes back to your employer. When the organisation is paying, there is often a three-way meeting with your line manager or HR to agree the goals, after which the content of sessions stays private.
Sessions two and three: the baseline. You and the coach look at evidence about how you lead now. This might be a leadership profile, 360 feedback from colleagues, or both. From that evidence you agree two or three specific things to change. More than three is usually too many.
The middle sessions: practice and review. Every two to four weeks you report what you tried, what happened and what got in the way. The coach challenges your account, and you plan the next experiment. Most of the real work happens between these sessions, in your actual meetings.
The mid-point review. Around halfway through, you check progress against the goals. Sometimes the goals change because the first ones were the wrong ones. That is fine, as long as it is a decision and not drift.
The closing sessions. You review against the baseline, ideally with fresh feedback from the people around you, and agree how you will keep the habits going without the coach.
If a coach cannot describe their programme in roughly these terms, ask why.
Why a baseline makes coaching work
Coaching without a starting point tends to drift. The sessions follow whatever went wrong that week, and after six months nobody can say what changed. A baseline fixes that. It tells you and the coach where you are starting from, which goals matter most and, at the end, whether you moved.
The research supports the idea, with honest limits. In a study of more than 1,300 senior managers who received 360 feedback, Smither and colleagues (2003) found that the managers who worked with a coach were more likely to set specific goals and to ask their own managers for ideas, and improved slightly more in later ratings from their teams and managers. A later meta-analysis of workplace coaching studies by Jones, Woods and Guillaume (2016) found positive effects on learning and performance outcomes overall. The effects in both are real but moderate. Coaching is not magic, and the leaders who get most from it arrive knowing what they want to change.
There are two kinds of baseline, and they answer different questions.
A self-assessment shows how you tend to lead: your natural strengths and where you are likely to struggle under pressure. The Leadership Psychometric is a 50-question leadership profile, built by executive recruiters, that scores you across five dimensions: Vision Thinking, Execution Drive, Influencing Power, People Intelligence and Composure. It takes 10 to 15 minutes. You can take the free Leadership Psychometric before your first coaching session and bring the results with you, or see what it covers first on the Leadership Psychometric overview.
360 feedback shows how your behaviour affects other people. That is often a different picture. Our guide to the 360 leadership assessment explains how to run one and how to read the gap between your view and theirs.
Free assessment
Discover your leadership profile
The Leadership Psychometric takes 10 to 15 minutes and reveals your five core leadership traits and where you rank against senior professionals in your market.
Take the assessment →Used together, the two give a coach something to work with on day one. For example, a profile might show strong Execution Drive and lower People Intelligence, and the 360 might show that your team feels driven but not heard. That is a clear, specific goal. If Composure is the dimension that comes out lowest, our new guide on how to stay calm under pressure is a useful companion to the coaching.
How to choose an executive coach
Anyone can call themselves an executive coach. There is no legal licence, so the choice is yours to make carefully. These are the questions I would ask in a first conversation.
- Who do you usually coach? You want someone who has worked with leaders at your level and in organisations of a similar size. A coach who mainly works with first-time managers may struggle with board politics.
- How do you work? Listen for goal setting, a baseline and regular review. Be cautious if the answer is only "we see where the conversation takes us".
- How will we know it is working? A good coach will talk about agreed goals, feedback from others and a review at the end.
- What is your training, and do you have supervision? Many professional coaches hold a recognised coaching qualification and discuss their work with a supervisor. It is a sign they take the craft seriously.
- Who sees what? If your employer is paying, ask exactly what is reported back. Usually it is attendance and agreed goals, not what you said.
- What do you do when a programme is not working? An honest coach has an answer, including ending it.
Then trust your judgement about chemistry. You should feel that this person will tell you something you do not want to hear, and that you will listen.
A few warning signs are worth knowing. Be wary of a coach who promises a promotion, a coach who talks more than you do in the first conversation, or a coach who wants to keep going with no end date and no review.
How to get the most from coaching
The leaders who get real value from coaching tend to do the same few things.
They pick a small number of goals and stay with them. They treat the time between sessions as the main event and the session as the review. They tell one or two trusted colleagues what they are working on, so someone notices when they slip. And they write the goals into a leadership development plan so the work carries on after the coach has gone.
They are also honest in the room. A coach can only work with what you bring. If you spend sessions explaining why the problem is someone else, you are paying for an audience, not a coach.
For more on how senior leaders develop, see the full Leadership collection. If your next step is from running a function to running a whole business, our new guide on how to become a general manager covers what changes, and much of it is the kind of behaviour coaching helps with.
Key takeaways
- Executive coaching is a paid, time-limited, one-to-one relationship that helps a senior leader change specific behaviours. It is not advice, therapy, consulting or training.
- It pays off most in a new or bigger role, in the step before a promotion, and at the first signs of derailment.
- It is rarely worth it when the problem is the role rather than you, when a course would fix the gap faster, or when you do not want to change.
- A good programme runs six to twelve months: chemistry, contracting, a baseline, regular practice and review, a mid-point check and a closing review.
- Research shows real but moderate gains. A baseline from a 50-question leadership profile and 360 feedback gives coaching specific goals and a way to measure progress.
- Choose a coach on relevant experience, a clear method, honest answers about confidentiality and measurement, and chemistry.
Frequently asked questions
- What is executive coaching?
- Executive coaching is a paid, time-limited, one-to-one working relationship between a senior leader and a trained coach, aimed at changing specific behaviours that affect how the leader performs in the role. The coach does not give the answers or do the work. They help the leader see their own patterns, set clear goals and practise new habits between sessions, usually over six to twelve months.
- What is the difference between an executive coach and a mentor?
- A mentor is usually a more experienced person in your field who shares what they know and opens doors. A coach does not need to have done your job. Their skill is in questioning, listening and holding you to the goals you set. Mentoring relationships also tend to last longer and are often unpaid, while coaching runs for a defined period against agreed outcomes.
- When is executive coaching worth it?
- In our experience it pays off most at three moments: the first months of a new or bigger role, the run-up to a promotion where the gap is behavioural rather than technical, and when there is an early sign of derailment such as a team that has stopped telling you things. It is rarely worth it when the real problem is the wrong role, a missing skill that training would fix faster, or a leader who does not want to change.
- How long does executive coaching take?
- Most programmes run for six to twelve months, with a session every two to four weeks. That pace matters. Behaviour changes in the weeks between sessions, when you try the new habit in real meetings, so a programme crammed into a few weeks rarely sticks. A good programme also has a mid-point review and a closing review against the goals set at the start.
- Does executive coaching actually work?
- Research supports it, with honest limits. A meta-analysis by Jones, Woods and Guillaume in 2016 found positive effects of workplace coaching on learning and performance outcomes. A study by Smither and colleagues of senior managers who received 360 feedback found that those who worked with a coach set more specific goals and improved slightly more in later ratings. The gains are real but moderate, which is why clear goals and a baseline matter.
- How do I choose an executive coach?
- Look for three things: relevant experience with leaders at your level, a clear way of working that includes goal setting and review, and the right chemistry, which you can only test in a first conversation. Ask how they measure progress, who will see what, and what they do when a programme is not working. Speak to two or three coaches before you choose, and be wary of anyone who promises a result.
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