Think about this. You just approved a $50K coaching engagement for a VP. Six months in, your HR partner pulls you aside with concerns: no visible behavior change, which you can’t even dispute.
The team still has the same complaints and the experience they’re creating for those team members continue to erode the culture.
Nothing’s different.
Sound familiar?
I hope not, but if so, you are not alone. According to research from the International Coaching Federation, approximately 50% of executive coaching engagements fail to deliver measurable results.
But, here’s what I find most interesting and I see to often within organizations. It’s not because the coach is bad.
It’s because the executive wasn’t ready for the coaching from the start. And, had you asked some key questions and looked for key responses from them, you may have prevented lost budget.
THE $50 BILLION PROBLEM NO ONE TALKS ABOUT
Companies spend an estimated $50 billion annually on executive coaching, and it’s expected to grow in the wake of the AI transformation of business.
The theory makes sense: targeted, personalized coaching is expected to move the needle on leadership effectiveness. That should translate to better team performance, retention, and ultimately, revenue.
But here’s what the data and my 18 years of coaching has told me: It’s not the quality of the coaching that creates a failed engagement. It is the readiness or lack there of, for coaching by the executive.
We’re not talking their intelligence, role, or title here. It is simply their readiness to change.
I’ve coached over 400 executives across Fortune 500 and high-growth companies, with average engagements spanning three years. Over that time, I’ve watched a clear pattern emerge: the executives who transform aren’t the smartest in the room. They’re the ones who can sit with feedback that stings without immediately defending it.
That’s it. It’s that simple, and it the difference between a $50K investment that pays dividends, transforms teams, and elevates organizational leadership, and a $50K write-off.
READINESS IS:
Readiness isn’t about belief. It’s about ones behavior.
As noted earlier, readiness is when an executive can receive difficult feedback and decide to sit with it without defending, deflecting, or dismissing it. It shows up when they ask themselves, “Why do people see me this way?” instead of “Why are they misinterpreting me?”
Or worse, “It’s their issue, not mine.” Believe me, I have heard it all.
The executives who aren’t ready but are provided a coach? They perform all of the way through the partnership. They show up to sessions, they take notes, they sound engaged, they may even ask a question or two. But the moment the coaching moves beyond theory into their actual behavior, or they are challenged with an exercise that makes they confront some troubling behavior or a gap, they explain it away.
But, here’s where the rubber meets the road: they perform convincingly to a coach or to their own management members, but then show up completely different with their own team.
Several years ago I experienced a major failure in a coaching partnership. The client performed spectacularly for me, her bosses, and even HR members. Her team, however, got the real person on a daily basis away from the eyes of those she was performing for.
Until on one occasion, sitting in a meeting with her and her team, she became irate and disparaging to a team member. I was shell shocked, speechless actually.
As their meeting ended and she redirected everyone to our session, I asked for a pause and for she and I to step away for a minute.
A few months later, both the coaching partnership and her employment was deemed a failure and came to an end.
The cost isn’t just the coaching fee. That was the last thing on my mind. I was more concerned about the team’s trust for her.
That experience still keeps me up at night, but it also allowed me to further refine not only my own, but my customer’s leadership team approach to determining readiness of their executives for coaching.
THE THREE PILLARS: WHAT SEPARATES TRANSFORMERS FROM EVERYONE ELSE
After that experience and my 18 years of coaching, I have found that there are three non-negotiables when it comes to evaluating the readiness of someone for coaching, or professional development investment of any kind.
- Ownership – they acknowledge it is their problem to solve or challenge to overcome
- Curiosity – they are interested to really understand how they operate and show up for others, and what the perception is of them
- Commitment – they are willing to try different things even when uncomfortable, and when they fail, they keep trying
If you have ownership and no curiosity, then you’re just white-knuckling through change, and eventually you’re going to burn out.
If you have curiosity but not commitment, you’ll talk about changing, but you won’t do anything about it.
If you have commitment but no ownership, you’re waiting for someone else to make it different, someone else to make a change as opposed to yourself.
You need all three.
HERE’S WHAT MOST COMPANIES GET WRONG
Before you hire a coach, before you spend five figures on an engagement, before you expect your high-potential VP to transform, you need to assess readiness, and it isn’t about asking “Do you want to grow?” Everyone says yes to that.
You want to ask them hard questions, such as these:
“Can you sit with feedback you disagree with for 24 hours before responding?” If they immediately explain why the feedback is off-base or situational, you’re looking at limited ownership.
“Tell me about the last time you got feedback that stung. What did you do with it?” If the story is about what others misunderstood or how circumstances were different, curiosity is low. If they spent time understanding the root cause, curiosity is there.
“Tell me about something you tried, failed at, and kept working on.” If they haven’t had that experience, commitment under pressure is untested.
THE ROI QUESTION
Here’s what I tell HR leaders and executives who want to invest in coaching: If an executive is strong in all three pillars, coaching has an ROI of roughly 3-5x the investment within 18-24 months, measured in team retention, engagement scores, and team performance data.
If an executive is weak in even one pillar, the ROI drops to near zero. You’re spending money hoping the coach can move the needle on readiness, but that’s not actually what coaching does. Coaching amplifies readiness, it doesn’t create it.
So the question isn’t “Should we hire a coach?” The question is “Is this person ready for coaching?” Because if they’re not, no coach can help them, and that’s not a reflection on the coach.
CAN SOMEONE LACKING A PILLAR GET THERE?
You can bet that there are some people in your organization who are ready, who are far from ready, and those who just need to fill some gaps to be ready.
The question is how much time and energy are you willing to invest in building readiness versus investing in an executive who’s already there.
That’s a key business decision that often stumps decision makers, because they’re accustomed to matching a coach to one who is struggling. They don’t consider high potentials who need to fill some gaps or learn critical skills.
Some organizations have the bandwidth to develop readiness, while some should allocate coaching dollars to people who are already positioned to use it for transformation or growth.
There’s no wrong answer. There’s just clarity about what you’re actually solving for.
If you decide someone needs to build readiness before coaching, that’s a different conversation all together. It may involve:
- A specific feedback loop from their team (360 or pulse survey) they sit with quarterly
- Accountability partnerships with peers who challenge them
- Clear, measurable behavioral goals with real consequences
- A defined timeline with decision points
But it’s important to know that it’s not coaching, it’s readiness-building, and it’s harder work because it requires someone to voluntarily get uncomfortable without a coach there to guide them through it, even at times, hold their hand.
THE QUESTION FOR YOU
Before you approve your next coaching engagement, ask yourself: Is this person ready, or are we hoping coaching will create readiness?
Because each of those questions has a very different answer, and that answer determines whether you’re making a strategic investment or renting expensive theater.
CALL TO ACTION:
Want to know if your executives are actually ready for coaching? I’ve created a free Coachability Self-Assessment that measures all three pillars. You can use it to assess individual readiness or share it with your entire team to understand where you stand.
Download it free: balloffirecoaching.kit.com/coachability
Or if you want to dig into this for your organization, looking at readiness patterns across your leadership team and what it means for your coaching strategy, let’s talk.
Schedule a discovery call: coachmebernadette.com/discoverycall
You don’t even have to lay out your coaching and development investment plan alone. During our call, I can share how I can support you in laying out your overall plan and approach for your team members, including the steps to be taken to achieve the ROI you want from your programs.
