Does coaching work? What 37 trials say

It’s a fair question. Coaching costs real money, anyone can call themselves a coach, and most of what you’ll read about it is written by people selling it. Including this.

So instead of what my clients say (that’s on the Reviews page), here’s what the research says. And where it’s weaker than the industry likes to admit.

The short answer: yes, moderately

The strongest evidence comes from randomised controlled trials, the same design used to test medicines. One group gets coaching, a similar group doesn’t, and someone compares them afterwards.

In 2023, two researchers pooled every randomised trial of workplace and executive coaching they could find: 37 trials, with 2,528 people coached. Coaching had a clear positive effect on leadership and personal outcomes. In everyday terms, the average person who was coached ended up ahead of about 7 in 10 similar people who weren’t.

Researchers call that a moderate effect. Real, noticeable, not magic. A 2016 review of workplace coaching studies reached the same conclusion: coaching improved skills, attitudes and results at work.

If this is you right now, a free 30-minute call is where I’d start. Book a free call →

What it helps most: following through

An earlier review, from 2014, looked at what coaching changes. It found improvements in everything it measured: performance and skills, well-being, coping, attitudes to work, and the ability to set goals and stick to them.

The biggest effect was on that last one. On what researchers call goal-directed self-regulation, the academic name for doing what you said you’d do, the average coached person did better than about 3 in 4 people who weren’t coached.

That matches what I see. Most people don’t come to coaching short of ideas. They come because they know what to do, and it isn’t happening.

Why accountability works

Part of the reason is simple, and it isn’t unique to coaching. In 2016, a team led by Benjamin Harkin pooled 138 experiments with nearly 20,000 people. They asked whether keeping track of your progress helps you reach a goal.

It does. And it helps more when you report your progress to someone else, or write it down, than when it stays in your head.

A coach is, among other things, the person you report to. Every week, someone asks what happened with the thing you said you’d do. It’s hard to keep renegotiating with yourself when someone else remembers.

A workshop helps. A workshop plus coaching helps more

In a 2009 trial, Anthony Grant and colleagues gave executives in a public health agency a leadership workshop. One group also had four one-on-one coaching sessions afterwards; the other didn’t. The coached group reached more of their goals, and reported more resilience and better well-being at work, than the group who only had the workshop.

It’s why my own workshop ends with a one-minute mention of coaching. The hour gives you the plan. The weeks after are where it holds, or doesn’t.

The caveats

I’d be doing the thing I warn people about in coaches if I left these out.

• The effects are larger when people rate their own progress than when someone else measures it. How you feel about a change matters, but it isn’t the same as a promotion.
• There are signs that trials with disappointing results were less likely to be published. The true average is probably a little lower than the headline.
• These are averages. They say coaching tends to help. They can’t tell you whether a particular coach will help you.

What it means if you’re deciding

The research says coaching tends to help capable people do more of what they already know they should. It doesn’t say every coach is good. That part is on you.

I’ve written about what to look for, from the inside. How to choose an executive coach →

Sources

• de Haan, E., & Nilsson, V. O. (2023). What can we know about the effectiveness of coaching? A meta-analysis based only on randomized controlled trials. Academy of Management Learning & Education.
• Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014). Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 9(1), 1–18.
• Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 89(2), 249–277.
• Harkin, B., et al. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198–229.
• Grant, A. M., Curtayne, L., & Burton, G. (2009). Executive coaching enhances goal attainment, resilience and workplace well-being: A randomised controlled study. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(5), 396–407.

Blind Spots is one idea like this, once a month. Get the next one →