Unlike a training programme, coaching does not produce a certificate or a neatly packaged set of learning outcomes. What it produces is harder to point to but significantly more impactful on the organisation: A leader who thinks differently. A team that communicates better. An individual who stays, rather than leaves.

So how do organisations justify the investment? And should they?

What the research says

The ICF has tracked coaching impact for decades. Around 80% of people who experience professional coaching report increased self-confidence. 70% report improved work performance. 86% of companies report recouping their investment, with some reporting returns of up to seven times the initial cost. Source: ICF

The numbers are consistent. What's interesting is the mechanism behind them.

Research by Grant, Green and Rynsaardt (2010) found that improvements in wellbeing and resilience appeared before improvements in goal attainment. People felt better before they performed better. That sequence suggests coaching changes the conditions under which people operate, before it changes what they produce.

In short: coaching gives people access to their own thinking in a way that daily working life rarely affords.

The measurement problem

The qualitative impact of coaching, the shift in how someone leads, listens, or responds under pressure, is genuinely difficult to measure. Clutterbuck and Megginson (2005) argue that the most effective measurement comes from embedding coaching into organisational strategy from the outset, rather than adding it on and trying to assess it retrospectively. When coaching is connected to goals from the beginning, the impact becomes visible within those goals.

So the right question is not just "does coaching work?" It is "are we setting it up in a way that allows us to see whether it works?"

What tends to change

People who are coached tend to communicate more clearly. They become more aware of their own patterns, habits of thinking that were previously invisible. They become more deliberate and less reactive.

Perhaps more significantly, they tend to stay. The link between access to coaching and retention appears reliably in the data. An individual who feels invested in is less likely to look elsewhere.

Organisations that invest in coaching are communicating something about what they believe people are worth. That signal carries further than the coaching hours themselves.

The harder question

If coaching works, and the weight of evidence suggests it does, why don't more organisations make it standard practice rather than an occasional intervention?

Time is cited most often. Then uncertainty about where to start. Then cost.

In our experience, the real barrier is that coaching still sits outside the normal vocabulary of performance management. It is often perceived as something extra that is unfamiliar, unclear and expensive (though cost rarely survives scrutiny when set against the price of losing a good leader.)

Perception is changing, but not fast enough.

If you are considering coaching for yourself or your organisation and are not sure where to begin, we are happy to talk it through.

- Kath Lewis