What executive coaching is, and when it isn’t the right tool.

The short version

Executive coaching is a working relationship with a defined purpose. A senior leader and a coach agree on two or three things that need to change, meet regularly for a set period, and check honestly at the end whether they changed.

That sounds simple. In practice most of the value sits in the parts people skip: naming the real problem rather than the polite one, agreeing what different would look like, and having someone in the room who is not part of your reporting line, your board or your family.

What a coach does that others don’t

Leaders already have plenty of advice. A mentor tells you what worked for them. A consultant tells you what the business should do. A board tells you what it expects. A good coach does something different. They help you see the pattern in how you operate, the one that keeps producing the same result, and then they help you change it while you are still doing the job.

That means a coach mostly asks rather than tells. Not because answers are off limits, but because the answer you arrive at yourself is the one you will still be using in a year. When I do have a view, I say it plainly. Senior people have usually had enough of being handled.

What leaders actually bring

When Harvard Business Review surveyed 140 leading coaches, the most common reason companies hired them was to develop high potential leaders or help with a transition, at 48 percent. Acting as a sounding board came next at 26 percent. Fixing derailing behavior, the reason most people assume coaching exists, was only 12 percent.

That matches what I see. The work tends to cluster around a few things. A promotion is close and something unnamed is in the way. A new role has more scope than the last one and the old habits no longer scale. Burnout is building quietly behind good numbers. Two senior people are not working well together and it is costing the team. Or a leader has simply run out of people who will tell them the truth.

How an engagement works

With me it runs in three steps. First, a free twenty minute conversation. You describe what is actually going on, and I tell you honestly whether it is coaching, therapy or neither. If it isn’t me, I will say who it should be.

Second, the read. A structured intake and, where useful, short confidential interviews with people who work with you. You leave the first full session with a written account of the pattern and what we are going to change.

Third, the work. Sessions twice a month, direct access between them for the meeting that cannot wait two weeks, and a defined review at ninety days. If it isn’t working, we say so and stop. A coaching engagement should have an end, and you should be able to tell whether it worked.

When coaching is the wrong tool

This is the part most coaching websites leave out, and it is the part that protects your time and money.

Coaching is the wrong tool when the problem is clinical. If low mood, anxiety, panic, drinking or sleep problems follow you everywhere, not just to work, that needs a clinician. Coaching can sit alongside treatment, but it cannot replace it. Research cited in that same Harvard Business Review report suggests that between a quarter and a half of people who seek coaching have clinically significant levels of anxiety, stress or depression. Most coaches are not trained to recognize that. It is not a flaw in them. It is outside their training.

Coaching is the wrong tool when the problem is the organization. If the role is badly designed, the incentives reward the behavior you want to stop, or the boss is the issue, coaching the individual will only teach them to absorb more of the cost. Sometimes the honest answer is that the job needs to change, not the person.

Coaching is the wrong tool when the company has already decided. If a leader is being coached as a formality before an exit, everyone knows it, and the sessions become theater. That is unfair to the leader and a waste of the budget.

Coaching is the wrong tool when you want agreement rather than change. Some people hire a coach to have someone on their side. A good coach is on your side, which is exactly why they will sometimes tell you something you would rather not hear.

Why clinical training changes the work

Most coaches work with what you hand them: the goals you name, the story you tell about why things are stuck. That is a reasonable place to start. The trouble is that the story high performers tell is usually the polished one. The real driver tends to sit underneath it, in the part of you that cannot stop spending, that treats every pause as exposure and every unanswered message as a risk to your position.

I trained as a clinician, after a first career in investment banking and then senior roles at Fortune 500 companies, partly to understand that layer. It means we usually get to the real thing sooner. It also means I know where the line is. If something clinical comes up, I will say so and refer you to someone else. I do not provide coaching and therapy to the same person.

How to tell if it’s working

You should be able to answer three questions by the ninety day review. What specifically is different in how you work? Who else has noticed? And is the change holding on the bad weeks, not just the good ones?

If the answers are vague, the engagement is drifting. That is worth saying out loud, to your coach and to yourself. The best coaching relationships I know of are the ones where either side could raise that question at any point without it being awkward.

Where to start

If you are weighing whether coaching fits, the most useful thing is usually a short, honest conversation with someone who will tell you if it doesn’t. That is what the first call is for. No charge and no pitch. By the end of it you will know whether this is the right work, and if it isn’t, where to go instead.

Sources: Diane Coutu and Carol Kauffman, “What Can Coaches Do for You?”, Harvard Business Review Research Report, January 2009, including commentary by Anthony M. Grant.

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