Leadership Coaching Effectiveness 2024

Introduction

In 2024 leadership development remained a top priority for CLO’s and CHRO’s. Leaders continue to navigate complex challenges in dynamic, hybrid organizations facing significant talent management issues. This has led to a surge in leadership coaching engagements among our clients. Our fifth annual Leadership Coaching Effectiveness Study saw record participation, with 69% of coaching participants contributing data.

The Post-Pandemic Workplace

Leaders are still figuring out how to adapt to post-pandemic worker attitudes. Work has become far more transactional. Engagement is elusive. Productivity is a challenge. We found that 88% of C-suite executives rank “improving culture” as a top priority.

Leadership coaching proves to be an effective solution for developing leaders to address today’s workplace challenges.

About Dion Leadership and This Study

Dion Leadership focuses on helping organizations create strong leaders and healthy cultures. We conduct this annual Leadership Coaching Effectiveness Study to learn more about the impact our leadership programs have on individual, team, and organizational performance. This year we invited over 150 leaders to consider the impact coaching had on their performance, confidence, well-being, and intention to stay with their organization. We also measured coaching outcomes related to career progression, including promotions and job changes. We’re confident these insights will be valuable as you advance your own coaching programs.

Study Details

• We contacted 153 leaders who completed coaching engagements after January 2023. We received responses from 105 leaders—a 69% response rate.
• Leaders surveyed typically hold the title of manager, director, vice president, or C-level executive.
• Participants represent multiple industries (several from large manufacturing and healthcare organizations) and hold a variety of jobs.
• Participants received between 4 and 25 individual coaching sessions that spanned in length from 3 to 12 months, either as a stand-alone program or as part of a comprehensive leadership development cohort program.

What Is Leadership Coaching?

Leadership coaching is a targeted leadership development process designed to meet the unique needs of the individual leader. A leadership coach is a “thinking partner” whose specific purpose is to support the development of an individual’s personal and professional potential.

To create sustainable change, we follow a cognitive behavioral learning approach to coaching. This proven method helps a coachee explore situations with a new perspective, understand themselves in new ways, create new mindsets
for approaching situations, and build new, more productive habits. Our leadership coaches are typically previous executive-level leaders themselves. They have honed their leadership skills by leading others for decades before receiving a coaching education and certification. We select coaches who have strong emotional intelligence skills as a complement to their business and leadership aptitude and experience.

A key element that makes our coaching engagements successful is our coach match process. We encourage all coachees to conduct “chemistry calls” before selecting the coach who best meets their needs. Additionally, our coaches use a proven coaching process

The Results

Coaching Consistently Improves Performance

Nearly all respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements.

While the outcomes may fluctuate by a point or two annually, coachees consistently indicate that coaching offered them valuable insights and new behaviors to improve their work performance.

Overall Satisfaction

Net Promotor Score (NPS) Customer satisfaction is important to all businesses. A leading standard to measure customer satisfaction is the net promoter score. We want raving fans of coaching, not only for our business but for the organizations that hire us to coach their most precious key resources. Our calculated NPS score to the question “How likely are you to recommend leadership coaching to others?” is +62. How does this stack up? NPS scores range from –100 to +100. According to SurveyMonkey’s 2024 global benchmark data of over 150,000 organizations, the average NPS is +32. For the professional services industry, the average is +43. We are delighted to be not only above the average but near the top quartile for all professional services organizations.

Leader Confidence

Are your leaders prepared to have courageous conversations? Are they ready to share a controversial point of view? Are they equipped to be agile in the face of adversity?

We found that 87% of coachees said that coaching improved my confidence. The confidence score improved by 3 points this year, up from 84% agreement in 2023.

“Coaching increased my own self confidence in my own leadership styles and helped me know how to better handle conflict within my direct reports and manage talent within my team.”
—Coachee

Over the last few years, much has been written about employees’ search for well-being and strategies to prevent burnout and stress. Employees leaving organizations or changing careers in search of more balance and personal satisfaction upended talent pipelines.

Nearly two out of three coachees report improvements in their own well-being as a result of leadership coaching.

Retaining Top Talent

This is the biggest mover in the 2024 data, up by 7 points from 64% in 2023. Retention is a key reason organizations chose to invest in leadership coaching. About 3 out of 4 coachees, even those that only had 4 coaching sessions, report that coaching impacted their desire to stay with the organization.

Whether it is the coaching itself or the fact that the organization chose to invest in them and their development, this is a strong finding.

“I decided to stay with the organization rather than seeking other employment.” –Coachee

Coaching for a Stronger Talent Pipeline

For the second year in a row, we studied coaching’s impact on the organization’s talent pipeline. However, keep in mind that this data is impacted by the amount of job movement in the workforce. Over this past year, there have been fewer people leaving companies, and therefore fewer opportunities for promotion. While we found fewer coachees reporting promotions, this was augmented by a larger number of coachees reporting increased responsibilities.

Our study found that 80% of coachees experienced a positive change to their role since being coached.

Only 21% of leaders coached reported no change to their role since the coaching engagement. Astonishing! Coaching led to a better deployment of the skills of available leadership talent. The value this brings to organizations cannot be understated.

The Dion Leadership coaching process embeds a set of impactful meetings between the coachee and their leader to clearly define coaching objectives, provide feedback, track results, and make plans for sustainability. In these meetings, facilitated by the coach, deeper and important topics can also be broached, including the desire to make changes in the employee’s role. One way to explain these results is that the coachee gains more courage, greater role clarity, and a clearer path to their desired role during the coaching program.

What’s Working with Hybrid Work

We began exploring if and how coaching is used to support working and leading in a hybrid work environment in 2021. At that time, this was a new and challenging work situation. Since then, working anywhere has become more of a mainstay at organizations.

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

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The Power of Extraordinary Coaches

We asked respondents to provide any additional feedback on their specific coaches. The comments in this section illustrate the deep connection, admiration, and impact the coaches had on coachees.

Kelly was an incredible coach. She was very specific while taking a broad look at the work that I do. I felt like every single coaching session left me with key takeaways.

Amy is incredible, and she provides valuable, high-level advice.

MaryAnn is fantastic. She was able to quickly understand my internal wiring and pushed me to recognize what I was doing in order to make positive change. I am a better leader because of the time I spent with MaryAnn.

Debra was an excellent coach for me. I felt comfortable speaking to her about everything going on in my life personally and at work.

Mary Beth’s coaching was truly helpful. Her insightful feedback allowed me to see myself in a new light, and I am incredibly grateful for her guidance and support. She has a remarkable ability to inspire growth and self-reflection!

Stan was great. He was not only a coach, but really more of a partner to help me navigate a complex project.

Dieter was a big help to me in getting control over my energy and understanding my soft skills.

MaryAnn was amazing! I looked forward to our sessions because they were so valuable to my personal and professional growth. Each session built upon the previous session so I always felt like I was progressing.

Nannapat was very helpful. She did a wonderful job working with me through a difficult situation and was able to provide clear guidance which really helped me.

Andrea was very insightful. We established a great connection which led to authentic dialogue and meaningful feedback and growth for me personally and professionally.

Jim was a wonderful coach. Not only was he able to identify solutions to situational challenges, but he provided insight on the larger picture that was useful for my awareness and actions. Many thanks to Jim for the support!

La Wanda was excellent. I really enjoyed our discussions and appreciated all her guidance and advice.

I’ve enjoyed working with Jennifer. I’ve tried to emulate some of her coaching techniques in my daily interactions with my team and they have definitely made a positive impact.

Kelly was a lifeline during turbulent times and consistently made space to work through real-time issues while still advancing my more structured action plan. She centered me and enabled me to tap into my confidence, resilience, and strength during challenging times. She has an exceptional gift for her word choices and techniques that I continue to refer back to in my notes, draw inspiration from, and put into practice.

A Customized Approach

Dion Leadership offers a variety of coaching packages designed to fit each learner’s unique needs and their organization’s budget. The leaders included in this study participated in one of three distinct coaching approaches:

1. Comprehensive Leadership Coaching Program—A coach works with their coachee over a year through a series of approximately 25 coaching sessions.
2. Targeted Leadership Coaching Program—Shorter engagements are offered for more targeted coaching needs. These programs last between four and six months.
3. Leadership Development Program Enhancement—The four-to-eight sessions coaching programs are paired with a set of leadership workshops. It appears that the combination of training classes with coaching provided a similar impact as providing a longer coaching program. The chart shows the notable difference.

When measuring coaching effectiveness, we found that those who received full leadership coaching reported much stronger coaching results. The chart shows the notable difference in introspective items, such as well-being. We believe that additional group training courses and self-assessments are equally effective in helping coachees improve in the other areas shown below.

“The coaching helped me to formalize what I had learned in my sessions into a plan. My coach challenged my way of thinking which benefited my
professional development. —Four-Session Coachee”

Coaching Action Plans Provide Focus

Coaching results stem from the coachee’s intentionality to make a specific change. Understanding what might be standing in the way of better performance and creating a plan to make changes is critical to the coaching process. Informed by self-assessment and multi-rater data, the action plan creates focus for future coaching sessions.

When asked to select the top three coaching action plan focus areas, the respondents most frequently chose the items in the chart below.

Improving communication topped the list, with nearly half of the respondents selecting it as a coaching focus area. Interestingly, the second most selected development area— thinking strategically/long-term planning—is a very different skill and requires a distinctive development approach. Leaders need to master both—creating impactful strategic plans and developing the communication and managerial skills to deploy those plans across the organization.

Year-over-year results are similar, showing that leadership needs and gaps have not changed greatly. Three notable differences to the coachees’ goals is that significantly more chose to focus on effectively leading and managing others, on improving their own emotional intelligence, and on building relationships.

Ways Leaders Are More Effective

In this new section of the study, we asked participants to choose from a list of areas where they believe they are more effective as a result of their coaching program.

Other comments included

• Being able to effectively accept a promotion
• Leading with my brand
• Having more meaningful conversations with peers

Does Coaching Vary by Industry?

With the number of organizations represented in this study, we have enough coachee data to report on three industries; manufacturing, healthcare, and professional services. We analyzed this year’s data set to see if coaching focus areas, the coaching process, the results, and specific comments about coaching varied by industry.

All coachees, regardless of industry, reported strong results for improved insights and utilizing new behaviors, with over 90% of respondents agreeing with these items. We found that leaders in multiple industries are similar, with common needs, struggles, and work situations. Whether a clinical leader in a hospital setting or a plant manufacturing manager, leaders share common development needs.

One specific development focus area for healthcare leaders was managing up and executive presence.

The manufacturing industry coachees did not report as great a change in well-being, with about a 20-point difference compared to the other coachees. Additionally, manufacturing and professional services leaders did not report a desire to stay with the organization as a result of their coaching. A whopping 81% of healthcare coachees reported coaching impacted their desire to stay with the organization, where the other two industries were more than 10 points less. We suspect that the organizational culture in those industries impacted these results.

Compared to last year, the largest difference was in the impact on confidence, with 91% of the respondents in manufacturing reporting that coaching helped them improve their confidence, compared to 75% in healthcare. This year’s data was very different. We found that 85% of manufacturing respondents showing improved confidence, compared to 90% in healthcare and 92% in professional services.

Industry Observations.

Manufacturing – The majority of responses come from leaders in the manufacturing industry. These participants frequently cited improvements in leadership, communication, and feedback skills, as well as emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, and managing up. Many reported promotions and increased responsibilities as outcomes of coaching.

Healthcare – Participants from the healthcare industry often focused on managing conflict, building relationships, managing up, and leading teams. They highlighted improved engagement with peers, increased responsibilities, and enhanced leadership effectiveness.

Professional Services – Participants in professional services commonly mentioned improvements in communication, managing up, leading and managing others, and strategic thinking. They reported increased responsibilities, enhanced leadership authority, and improved decision-making as benefits of coaching.

In Their Own Words

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

Last Words

Summing It Up

The Dion Leadership coaching study set a new benchmark in engagement this year, with an outstanding response rate. With five consecutive years of data, we have found that coachees consistently report transformative changes in both behavior
and mindset, attributing these shifts to their coaching experiences. They told us that coaching not only boosted their confidence but also empowered them to excel in their roles.

Each year may bring slight variations, but the message is consistent: coaching creates undeniable value for both individuals and the organization.

At the top of a long list of value created by coaching programs is that 65% of coachees reported improved well-being and 71% said that coaching positively impacted their desire to stay with the organization. The success of a coaching program hinges on selecting the right participants and matching them with the right coach. These critical decisions drive impactful outcomes.

Is coaching worth the investment? In today’s complex business environment, retaining and engaging top talent is invaluable. This study proves that coaching for retention yields an impressive ROI. It fuels career growth, improves job alignment, fosters fresh perspectives, builds confidence, and renews focus on cultivating positive workplace relationships—all of which enhance organizational performance.

Leaders and managers face complex, demanding roles and play a pivotal part in shaping a productive, engaged workforce. High-performing organizations know that supporting and developing these key contributors isn’t optional—it’s essential.