
Dan Heiman:
What trends are you currently seeing in the field of executive coaching?
Jeremy Foster:
Coaching as a whole is exploding. The market has doubled in the last eight years, with growing adoption across nearly every sector.
One reason for this growth is an increasing number of studies showing that coaching impacts the performance of leaders and the businesses they lead. We know that coaching creates a significant positive return on investment.
Here are a few stats you may find interesting that really tell the story:
- A Metrix Global study found that executive coaching can have an 8x return on investment (ROI). This is based on factors including increased productivity and employee retention.
- Another study from the International Coaching Foundation found that executive coaching not only impacts the leader, but it also impacts the teams and organizations they lead. Researchers found that coaching led to a 70% increase in individual performance! Let’s pause right there and consider that number: yes, coaching is an investment, but no employer is paying 70% of the employee’s salary for executive coaching. Yet the employee’s value is almost doubling.

In addition to the performance of the leader, the study also found a 50% increase in team performance and a 48% increase in organizational performance. In my practice, I see this reflected regularly. Employees of the leader I’m coaching will often come to me and thank me for the work I’m doing with their leader!
Another trend is that business is getting more complex every day, which increases the need for coaching. This complexity is caused by several factors. For one, the pandemic pushed us into more hybrid work environments, and many leaders are struggling to know how to manage employees in that new environment. Then there’s AI, which is bringing all kinds of new dynamics to industry.
On top of that, we have a new, rising generation in the workforce. That generation, and I’m hearing this from many leaders, has a different mindset around work. You might say they have a different work ethic or method of approaching their work, along with different attitudes and expectations. So there’s a good deal of intergenerational tension within companies right now.
With the new generation coming up, there’s also a greater need for leaders to not only be excellent in their technical field—finance, marketing, or whatever their area of expertise—but they also need stronger soft skills. They need to be able to collaborate, lead with empathy, and include different types of people and personalities into their team. Many of the leaders I coach are excellent operationally, but they are trying to build up some new interpersonal skills to help them thrive and get to the next level with their team.
The good news is that organizations can help with these issues by investing in great coaching. Another study from professors at Baruch College found that organizations in which employees complete training alone experience a 22% increase in productivity—and that number is pretty good. But when that training is combined with one-on-one coaching, the figure rises to 88%! Coaching increases the effectiveness of training by 4x, much more than the training itself.
I love this statistic because it matches my experience. When I first had a coach, I told people I grew more in that one year of coaching than I had in all the training sessions I’d sat through in the prior ten years combined. That’s because although the training sessions offered great content, I always returned to my desk overwhelmed by all the work that was piling up while I was away. I struggled to implement my new knowledge before I lost it. For instance, after attending a three-day workshop, you jump back into your daily work and have a pile of email to catch up on, all these meeting notes you missed, etc. Within a few days, you’ve lost the momentum, inspiration, and content that you spent three days learning.
Coaching is offered in smaller, more tailored doses over time, so it helps the leader personalize content and implement it in their specific leadership situation. Coaching also helps them overcome obstacles by creating accountability to apply the new concepts directly to their life and work.
In summary, coaching has an 8x return on investment, helps leaders, teams, and organizations be more productive, and drastically improves productivity gains from training. The evidence for coaching as a valuable process for leaders and their organizations is very compelling, and this is the reason coaching as a field is exploding! Amazingly, many organizations are yet to take advantage of this important resource, but I love sharing about it with those who curious to learn more.