Leadership Coaching Effectiveness 2022

Study Details

• We surveyed 116 leaders who completed coaching engagements after January 2021.
• The response rate was 55 percent.
• Those surveyed typically hold the title of manager, director, vice president, or C-level executive.
• Participants represent multiple industries, including large manufacturing and healthcare organizations, and hold a variety of jobs.
• Participants received between 3 and 25 individual coaching sessions over 3 to 12 months, either as a stand-alone program or as part of a comprehensive leadership development cohort program.

In this report, we explore the feedback from completed coaching programs and how the results have changed or remained the same over three years. Additionally, we include a selection of the respondents’ open-ended comments, categorized and shown verbatim, to offer meaningful insights into when to use leadership coaching and the results of these engagements.

The Results

Coaching Consistently Improves Performance

Our approach—vetting leaders who want coaching, allowing them to select a coach they find credible and fitting for their situation, and having skilled, certified leadership coaches who follow a process—contributes to reliably strong results. For the third consecutive year, almost all respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements.

In 2020, participants reported that they utilized coaching to prioritize and focus on the most important work. With the pandemic upending nearly all aspects of their jobs, this leadership skill was certainly critical during that tumultuous year. This illustrates how coaching can be used to address any current business situation or problem.

The New Employment Currency: Well-Being

When we first began this study three years ago, participants reported using coaching to reduce their stress and increase their confidence. In the following year, we decided to measure the degree to which their overall well-being and confidence improved due to leadership coaching. We will continue to measure these specific results in subsequent years of this study.

The powerful comments from coachees and their stated results prompted our large team of leadership coaches to more explicitly coach to these critical levers that impact overall effectiveness.

Over the last two years, much has been written about employees’ search for well-being—so much so that the Great Resignation has been fueled by those willing to change jobs or leave the workforce in search of better work-life balance, a healthier culture, or more meaningful work.

We were pleased to see that the score for this increasingly important retention metric increased by nearly 10 percentage points.

“Coaching bolstered my confidence to move from thinking about what COULD be done, to voicing and acting upon what SHOULD be done.”

We attribute this high rating to a few factors.

• The investment in time and money that coaching requires signals to the leader that the organization values them.
• Dion Leadership’s coaching process focuses on improving the communication channels between the coachee and their direct manager, leading to increased clarity of job expectations.
• Coaching helps the coachee realize the role played by their own thinking and behavior in their struggles, challenges, and setbacks at work. The ability to look at situations from the viewpoint of others, unhook from a typical victim mindset, and be proactive when something is not going their way helps the coachee regain their engagement and commitment to the organization.

New Study Focus Area: Hybrid Working and Leading

For many organizations, the pandemic forced an abrupt and unprecedented shift to working from home. Leaders and managers required upskilling to develop new approaches and mindsets to lead remote and hybrid employees. And while leading others through this transition, they also needed to learn how to be effective remote workers themselves.

We were curious to understand whether coachees used their coaching program to focus on working and leading in a newly remote/hybrid work environment—and if so, what the result was from focusing their development in this area.

Nearly half of all coachees reported that they used leadership coaching to be more effective working and leading in a newly remote/hybrid work environment.

Of those that did, the vast majority of coachees reported that they are more effective remote/hybrid workers and/or leaders because of their leadership coaching.

+68

How likely are you to recommend leadership coaching to others?

What Are You Working On?

A discussion that often happens when advising organizations on coaching programs centers on which leadership behaviors are developable and which are innate and unlikely to change. To better understand the behaviors that are most likely to improve using leadership coaching, we asked respondents to share the content on their coaching action plan. 

These are the coaching action plan items selected by one-third or more of the participants, listed in order of frequency.

Other notable coaching items included effectively managing time, managing change, and supporting DEI efforts.

“It was TRANSFORMATIVE for me to understand that until trust is earned, I can be perceived as standoffish. I MODIFIED MY TONE—to soften it and to add context and color to the conversation.”

Improving Performance

When respondents were asked to rate the level of improved effectiveness after focusing on specific development areas, all agreed or strongly agreed that coaching positively impacted their overall effectiveness in these areas:

• Managing up/executive presence
• Managing change
• Effectively managing my time/consistently execute work

Two areas scored slightly lower in the reported improved overall effectiveness:

• Effectively leading and managing others
• Increasing my emotional intelligence

We hypothesize that it takes longer to build skill and confidence in these broader development items and see the results that come from coaching.

Coaching by Industry

We analyzed this year’s data set to see if coaching focus areas, the coaching process, results, and specific comments about coaching varied by industry. We gathered an adequate amount of data to determine if there were any difference between manufacturing and healthcare.

We found that leaders in multiple industries have similar needs, struggles, and work situations. Clinical leaders in a hospital setting and global manufacturing executives, for example, share common development needs, with only slight differences.

Both groups reported similar results previously shared in this study. Healthcare leaders tended to more strongly agree with the statement that coaching impacted their desire to stay with the organization and that they are better equipped to utilize new behaviors required at work.

They also shared similar results in using coaching to be a more effective hybrid worker and leader, claiming improved confidence and overall well-being (stress, health, focus, and burnout).

Coaching Focus Areas That Varied Slightly by Industry

We found that healthcare executives focused more on improving communication, building relationship/interpersonal effectiveness, and managing up/executive presence during coaching. Manufacturing executives focused on increasing their emotional intelligence, effectively leading and managing others, and managing conflict.

In Their Own Words . . .

Perhaps the most useful insights from this study lie in the written responses to this simple prompt: Describe how your organization benefited from providing you with leadership coaching. The comments below were sourced directly from the survey responses and are sorted by category.

Making the Case for a Coach

These powerful, unfiltered words describe how coaching impacts leaders.

• I’ve made far more progress as a leader working with M. than I ever have in my career. She helped me recognize behaviors that were hurting me as a leader and implement new behaviors that have helped me excel. I feel vastly more confident in my abilities and my team is finally achieving and surpassing our goals each year. We are accomplishing more and being far more effective than I thought we could. I only wish I could continue the coaching further.
• Leadership coaching gave me a lens to focus on myself as I’m interacting with others. This enables me to share my passion when looking to drive the organization and minimize adding emotion to difficult situations, while trying to understand their perspective and motivations.
• V. is a phenomenal coach, extremely thoughtful and observant with a plethora of specific ideas and educational tools which made me a better leader.

Summing It Up

Leaders and managers have challenging jobs. They are increasingly credited or criticized for the level of productivity and engagement among an organization’s workforce. Upskilling leaders to lead others for their own improved well-being is a tall order.

The data collected in this study makes the case that leadership coaching works to improve the coachee’s overall perspective of the important role they play as a leader of others, provides them new skills that are displayed as healthier behaviors at work, and increases their confidence, engagement, and commitment to stay with the organization.

While the data demonstrates that coaching has a positive impact on participants’ overall well-being, we are particularly struck by the specific work-related activities that are shown to improve through the coaching process.

Coaching creates new perspectives, improved confidence, and a focus on creating and sustaining healthy relationships to improve organizational performance.

To what extent is coaching worth the investment? In today’s tight labor market, retaining leaders and helping leaders retain their staff is a priceless investment.

Leaders and managers are the key to most organizations’ success. If you would you like support your leaders with a coaching program that delivers the benefits shown in this study, please contact us. Our experienced team of executive leadership coaches can help.