The evidence on coaching effectiveness is settled. The evidence on business results is missing
For years, coaching has had to defend itself against a simple question: does it actually work? It is a fair question for anything that commands significant budget. Fortunately, the research now gives a reasonably clear answer.
It also reveals a gap that matters far more to the people paying for coaching.
Three Meta-Analyses, One Answer
A meta-analysis combines the results of many studies to estimate an overall effect. Three have now examined workplace coaching across roughly a decade:
Theeboom and colleagues (2014) found coaching had a significant positive effect across outcomes including performance, wellbeing, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation.
Jones and colleagues (2016) focused more tightly on workplace settings and outcomes, and also found a moderate positive effect.
Cannon-Bowers and colleagues (2023) updated the evidence with studies published since 2014 and again found a moderate positive effect.
Three independent reviews, different inclusion rules, the same conclusion. The question "does coaching work?" is as settled as questions in this field get. Coaching produces a meaningful, positive effect on individual outcomes.
“The question "does coaching work?" has been answered. The question "what does it do for the business?" mostly has not.”
Organisational systems need to do more to enable Coaching to have an improved business impact. Photo thisisengineering Unsplash
What the Latest Review Adds
The 2023 review included several findings worth knowing:
Virtual coaching works. Coaching delivered virtually was as effective as face-to-face coaching. For organisations with dispersed leaders, that is genuinely useful.
Approach matters less than expected. Coaching focused on facilitation and coaching focused on goal-setting were similarly effective.
More sessions did not predict better results. Neither the number of sessions nor the total hours of coaching predicted outcomes.
The last finding has now appeared in all three meta-analyses. It does not mean coaching duration is irrelevant. It suggests something other than quantity is doing the work: the quality of the relationship, the readiness of the person being coached, the relevance of the goals, and whether the organisation around them supports the change.
It is worth noting the latest review was based on a relatively small number of studies, so some of its finer findings may shift as more research is published. The overall direction is consistent with the earlier reviews.
The Question Nobody Is Answering
The most important line in the 2023 review is easy to miss. None of the studies included measured organisational results: sales, retention, productivity, cost, quality or any other business outcome.
The researchers are direct about why this matters. Without results-level evidence, it is impossible to carry out the cost-benefit analysis that would justify continued investment. Coaching is proven to help individuals. Whether that help reaches the bottom line remains, in the research literature, largely unmeasured.
Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith has made a related challenge to the profession for years: that many coaches have no measure of results beyond time spent with the client and whether the client likes them. Measuring results is uncomfortable, because measurement can document failure as well as success. It is also the only way to know.
What Results-Level Evidence Looks Like
This is why I designed the leadership programme at Cooplands Bakery with business results built in from the start. Every one of the 30 Area and Regional Managers completed a Business Improvement Plan: a real, costed project within Cooplands' own operation, applying what they were learning to a live business challenge.
At the end of the programme, each leader presented their plan to colleagues and senior stakeholders. Collectively, the cohort delivered £500,000 of provable business improvement: a 1,100% return on the programme investment. Alongside that sat the earlier levels of evaluation: confidence to apply learning averaged 4.3 out of 5 across every module, and measurable shifts in confidence within individual sessions. The full case study is at theresiliencecoach.co.uk/case-study/cooplands.
The point is not that every programme will produce the same figure. It is that results-level evidence is achievable when it is designed in at the start rather than searched for at the end.
Raising the Bar
For anyone commissioning coaching or leadership development, the research points to a few practical standards:
The Danger of Measuring Only What Is Easy
Satisfaction scores are easy to collect and almost always positive. That makes them comfortable and, on their own, close to useless as evidence of return. A programme can score highly on every feedback form and change nothing in the business. The organisations that make the strongest case for development are the ones willing to measure what is harder: whether behaviour changed back at work, and whether that change showed up anywhere the finance director would recognise.
A Practical Evaluation Framework
Many organisations already use Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation for training. Applied properly to leadership development and coaching, they look like this:
Reaction - did participants find it relevant and useful? Necessary, but the weakest evidence on its own.
Learning - can they demonstrate new knowledge, skills or confidence? Before-and-after measures within sessions are a good start.
Behaviour - are they doing anything differently back at work? This is where line managers and team feedback matter most.
Results - has anything changed in the organisation? Costed projects, operational metrics and retention data belong here.
Most evaluation stops at the first or second level. The research gap sits at the fourth.
Why Coaching Works When It Does
If session count does not predict results, what does? The research is still developing, but practitioner experience and the wider evidence point to a few consistent factors:
Readiness. Marshall Goldsmith's criteria for taking on a client are simple: the issue must be behavioural, the person has to be willing to try, and they have to be given a fair chance by their organisation. Without those, more sessions will not help.
Relevance. Coaching tied to a real, current challenge the leader cares about produces more change than general development goals.
Relationship. Trust between coach and client allows the honest conversations where the real work happens.
Organisational support. Leaders who return to a line manager and team that reinforce the change sustain it. Those who return to an unchanged system often drift back.
Five Questions to Ask a Coaching Provider
What business outcomes have your previous engagements produced, and how were they measured?
How do you agree goals with both the individual and the organisation at the start?
How do you involve line managers so the change is reinforced back at work?
What does your evaluation look like beyond participant satisfaction?
Can we speak to a client who can describe the results in their own words?
Agree the business outcome at contracting. What should be different in the organisation, not just in the individual, if this works?
Build application into the design. Live projects, like a Business Improvement Plan, connect learning to results in a way that can be measured.
Measure at more than one level. Reaction, learning, behaviour change and results each tell part of the story.
Ask providers for their results evidence. Including me.
Coaching has earned its place. The next step is for coaches, and the organisations that buy coaching, to hold it to the standard of evidence the business deserves.
For L&D Professionals
Three meta-analyses now agree that coaching is effective for individuals. The gap is organisational results. L&D can close it by agreeing business outcomes at contracting, building live application projects into programme design, and asking every provider for results-level evidence. That turns the coaching budget conversation from one about satisfaction into one about return.
Ready to have a conversation?
See how results-level evaluation was built into a leadership programme from day one.
Read the Cooplands case study:
theresiliencecoach.co.uk/case-study/cooplands
Resilient Leadership Diagnostic:
theresiliencecoach.co.uk/resilient-leadership-diagnostic
Book an introductory call: