The Blog
Executive coaching is one of the most powerful ways to develop senior leaders. Coaching gives leaders a rare space to pause, reflect, and sharpen their impact. For senior leaders especially, where honest feedback is scarce, coaching provides challenge, accountability and outside perspective. Helping to close that all too familiar ‘awareness gap’ which grows through seniority.
Executive Coaching has been proven in studies by the International Coaching Federation (yes, they might be biased) to have net positive outcomes for businesses. Such as:
++ Personal & Professional Development: 75% of clients report better work performance, relationships, and communication skills.
++ Leadership Development: 85% note increased self-confidence and stronger management skills.
++ Financial Impact: Strong coaching cultures deliver higher revenue growth and improved profit margins.
++ Career Advancement: 62% of coached individuals improve career opportunities; mentoring increases employee retention and engagement.
The case for coaching is clear. But managing the process of bringing in Executive coaches can be anything but clear. Let's explore why.
When companies first start bringing in Executive Coaches, it’s usually through senior leaders sourcing their own coaches. They reach out through their networks to find someone they can trust. They’ll ask the People team to pay for it via their budgets and give limited oversight as to what’s going on or even who they are working with. Sound familiar?
If you’re in the People team, you’ll know the struggle. You’re left juggling challenges like:
A lot of People leaders tell us they feel stuck. They know coaching works, but they don’t have the time or tools to manage it effectively.
That’s where Coachable comes in.
Having worked alongside many People leaders to support their internal 1-1 coaching programmes, we get it all the pain points and have felt them ourselves. Managing multiple coaches across multiple engagements creates the same headaches for us too!
That’s why we’ve designed our Executive Coaching services with both the coachee and the People team in mind.
The People team get:
The Coachee gets:
Painpoints solved. Let’s look at the finer details.
There are 370,000 coaching professionals registered on LinkedIn in the UK alone. It’s a minefield to navigate. Searching LinkedIn for coaches will make you want to throw your laptop out of your window. What qualifications should you be looking for? What makes a good coach versus someone who’s just good at marketing themselves? How much do they cost? How do they work?
You could have an awful lot of exploratory conversations to try and find yourself a select group of executive coaches that you want to work with.
Or you could use one of those ‘scaleable coaching platforms’ whose names we won’t mention. Whilst they look attractive on the surface, the reality of these platforms is that they pay the coaches an embarrassingly small amount. That means you get inexperienced coaches of varying quality and skills who are most likely only doing this type of coaching to make up their hours for an accreditation. We’ve heard from People Leaders who’ve taken this approach that the quality of coaching is questionable and it’s definitely not suitable for senior leaders.
Here’s a better option: you can speak to Coachable. Because we’ve selected a collective of Executive and Leadership coaches that we trust and know will deliver results. When we put a coach in front of your leaders, you can be confident they are:
We’re deliberately picky. Too much choice is part of the problem. That’s why we’re keeping our coaching pool small and mighty to no more than 15 coaches. Because if you wanted to scroll through 100s of names, well, you’d just go on LinkedIn (launching your laptop out of the window is optional).
Every Coachable Coach has been rigorously vetted, live-tested, and is someone we’d happily be coached by ourselves. We expect them to undertake continuous coaching development to uphold their credentials and have regular coaching supervision.
We review our coaching pool every year to ensure we have a strong collective who are receiving an equal amount of airtime from coachees.
Our Coachable Hub is the beating heart of how we manage the complexity of the coaching journey. It’s one simple online platform for everything:
Plus, built in light-touch nudges to help leaders prepare, reflect, and stay on track between sessions. It’s scalable, structured, and still very personal.
We’ve designed our coaching journey to offer a structured but flexible approach. The structure gives the People team and leader clarity over expectations. The flexibility is delivered by our coaches who create bespoke programmes for leaders based on their unique challenges and goals.
That means we don’t enforce a set programme or ask the coaches to coach our way. They use their expertise, intuition and skills to coach in service of the leader and deliver the results they need.
A typical coaching journey looks like this:
Sometimes we work with senior leaders who are incredibly self aware and are super clear on the areas they’d like to work on with their coach.
But more often than not, there’s a few gaps in awareness that need to be closed. Or there’s confidence issues which are rooted in limiting beliefs, rather than reality. And this is where external feedback can be incredibly helpful as it gives the coachee and the coach data and different perspectives to reflect on.
The Feedback can come from a recent report from the company or if that doesn’t exist, we have our very own LQ report that can be used to source feedback from up to 10 people you or the leader would like to nominate.
Next, the leader gets to review our coaching profiles via our portal and book chemistry calls with two coaches they like the sound of. All self-serve. The People Team don’t have to arrange calls or share emails. Delightful.
They’ll let us know which coach they’d like to work with and we do the rest to set up that engagement.
The next step is optional.
A triad in coaching is made up of:
The purpose of a triad is to offer transparency for all three people on the call on the goals that leader is focusing on and the purpose of coaching. It gives the company an input into what is otherwise a closed process.
Triads aren’t the right option for everyone and unless the sponsor joining the call is aware of what’s expected in coaching, they can come off as slightly awkward. Like big brother is watching.
Here’s how we make Triads work well at Coachable:
Not all of our coaching engagements include triads. But it’s helpful to know it’s an option if you’re considering partnering with us for Executive or Leadership Coaching. We’ll agree with you up front the level of transparency and input that feels right for your company and build that into the programme so everyone’s set up for success.
We’ve selected coaches, contracted, gathered feedback and met with sponsors. We’re now ready to start coaching. Each programme includes 6 x 90 min coaching sessions to use over 12 months.
Coaching without goals is like throwing darts in the dark. Some might hit the target, but you’re really not sure where to aim.
That’s why the first session of any Coachable 1-1 Programme is spent reviewing 360 feedback and establishing coaching goals alongside the coachee.
We look for 3 - 5 goals which are measurable, specific and most importantly, something they are motivated to achieve.
These are then documented on their profile so they can be easily referred back and checked in on as the coaching journey progresses. We also encourage the coachee to share their goals with their sponsor so they are able to support them in achieving them outside of the coaching sessions.
The rest of the 5 x 90 min coaching sessions take place over a 6-9 month period, usually a cadence of 4-6 weeks, but shorter timeframes are also very effective in times of crisis or change.
The coachee will be asked to reflect on what they’d like to speak about before each session, with regular nudges built into the journey to ensure coaching is kept front of mind.
The coach adapts the programme based on what’s happening in the real-world for the coachee and in support of their coaching goals. Where relevant, they’ll share exercises and tasks for the coachee to complete outside of sessions.
After three months we check in on progress and to make sure everything is running tickety-boo.
At the end of the coaching programme, we invite the coachee to give feedback on their coaching experience - both qualitative and quantitative so we’re able to track the impact of the coaching on their leadership. We’ll share this feedback with the company sponsor.
There’s an option for another triad session at the end of the programme to review progress and for the manager to give feedback on what changes they’ve noticed. This is often a powerful reinforcement for the coachee. It’s also an opportunity for the coachee to share what they are still working on and the support they need moving forwards.
We’d encourage this to happen regardless of whether the coach is part of the conversation or not. The benefit of including it into the package is that there’s accountability for making it happen. We’ll make sure the triad session is set up so we can facilitate the conversation.
Every People and L&D leader eventually gets asked: What’s the ROI of coaching?
It’s not a simple answer. Coaching outcomes are personal, nuanced, and sometimes invisible until they show up in the real world:
You can’t always track that in a spreadsheet. But it doesn’t mean it’s unmeasurable.
At Coachable, we build ROI measurement into the programme:
And we ask better questions:
The ROI of coaching isn’t just in outcomes, it’s in the ripple effect. Stronger leaders. Better decisions. A culture where people step up instead of sitting back.
You’ll feel the impact before you see it in a spreadsheet.
Still with us? Good. Let's wrap up the Coachable difference. With us you get:
You stay in control. Your leaders get better. Everyone wins.
If you want to give your leaders access to brilliant coaching without the admin headaches, we’d love to show you how.
👉 Get in touch with us today to see how Coachable can make executive coaching simple, scalable, and high-impact for your business.
Executive Coach, Forbes Coaches Council member, Board advisor and facilitator.
Copyright Coachable Partners Limited. 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX
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