Executive coaching is usually commissioned because an organisation wants a senior leader to handle a certain business responsibility more effectively. That might mean leading a transformation, building agreement across functions or addressing persistent delays in major decisions. The outcomes may be quantifiable in fiscal or operational terms, or they may be more qualitative and indirect. Meaningful evaluation therefore depends on clearly defining what the coaching is expected to change, aligning this with organisation objectives and putting in place the appropriate measurement and review structure.
Unfortunately, the term ‘Coaching ROI’ is often used loosely to cover any positive result. Financial Return On Investment is narrower: subtract the full cost of coaching, including the programme fees and the executive’s time, from the monetary benefit attributed to it, divide by the cost and express the answer as a percentage. This is different from the broader benefits of coaching – e.g. behavioural improvements or better business performance may justify the investment without producing a specific financial figure. For anyone scratching their head over how to measure ROI of executive coaching programmes, therefore, the first task is to separate those different claims.
Suppose an organisation commissions coaching because cross-functional investment decisions are taking too long. Before the coaching starts, it should identify which decisions are affected, how long comparable approvals currently take and where the delay occurs. It must then establish what the executive can realistically influence in their position. The problem may be that disagreements between departments or stakeholders are not identified until the final approval meeting. It may also be unclear who has the authority to decide when those functions cannot agree.
In these cases, coaching could help the executive change how those decisions are prepared and chaired. They might speak beforehand to the people responsible for each area, identify disagreements before the meeting, circulate the criteria for the decision and confirm who has final authority. You can then examine whether the executive changed how the decisions were prepared and led, creating a traceable link between the coaching, the executive’s behaviour and the business outcome, rather than crediting the programme for any improvement that happened afterwards.
The next step is to test each part of that chain using evidence from more than one perspective. The executive can discuss whether they feel the coaching changed their judgement, confidence or approach to difficult decisions, but their account cannot show how other people experienced that change. Colleagues can report whether their manager’s decision criteria became clearer from their perspective, or if disagreements were addressed earlier and meetings ended with named owners and agreed actions. Written decision records provide a further check by showing you whether those actions were completed and whether approval times actually fell.
A 2023 meta-analysis of 37 randomised controlled studies of coaching programmes found a positive long-term overall effect for workplace coaching (using data collected between 1994 and 2021), but larger effects when participants reported their own outcomes than when outcomes were observed independently. This does not make self-assessment invalid, but serves as a word of caution that positive feedback or increased confidence cannot, by itself, demonstrate that other people experienced different leadership. A coaching ROI evaluation should compare self-reporting with colleague evidence and workplace data collected before, during and after the engagement.
That is easier when the coaching itself creates a record. In Realise Coaching engagements, for example, each session ends with defined actions and commitments that can later be checked against what colleagues observe and what the workplace data shows.
Once the organisation has evidence that the executive changed their behaviour and that comparable approval times improved, it can ask whether the improvement produced a measurable financial benefit. This can be measured in several ways; for example, a shorter delay might reduce your external financing costs, avoid paid project time being lost while work is paused, or bring forward income from the completed investment. The calculation should use the benefit the organisation can evidence, not attach an assumed price to every behavioural change.
Other changes may also have shortened the process, however, such as revised approval rules, a different project team or fewer investment proposals. If there is no uncoached comparison group, contribution analysis offers another way to assess how much credit coaching should receive. HM Treasury’s guidance on contribution analysis recommends setting out how the intervention was expected to produce the result, checking whether those steps occurred and examining other explanations.
The evidence may justify a financial ROI figure, a range showing how the result changes if coaching receives only part of the credit, or a conclusion that coaching contributed but cannot be isolated financially. Each tells decision-makers what the evidence supports.
Realise Coaching, GRA's coaching division, begins every engagement with a discovery call that establishes the executive's goals alongside the organisational objectives the coaching needs to serve. Progress is tracked across the engagement, and for organisationally commissioned coaching we keep HR, L&D or line management informed throughout. Explore our leadership coaching or make an enquiry to discuss how evaluation can be built into your executive coaching from the start.