Leadership coaching can bring great benefits – but should generally not last forever
By Lena Triantogiannis and Greig Schneider
More and more senior executives are benefitting from coaching. The industry has seen explosive growth: According to a recent International Coaching Federation (ICF) study conducted by PwC, the profession generated more than $5 billion in 2025, almost double the revenue total from 2023.
We see this as a positive trend: As the world has moved from merely complicated to unyieldingly complex, it has become increasingly difficult to be a senior leader. Coaching can be an invaluable asset, helping leaders to discover within themselves new capabilities, greater awareness, and needed resilience in the face of unprecedented challenges. Coaches hold up a mirror to coachees’ blind spots, challenge faulty patterns, build confidence, and provide a safe space for coachees to be vulnerable.
That said, coaching is also a business relationship, and it’s important that the engagement is delivering the expected value. According to research compiled by Gitnux, coaching generally over-delivers: over 90% of coachees rate their coach as “excellent,” and 80% would recommend coaching to others (Net Promotor Score for coaching averages 74%).
However, while satisfaction is high, if one in five leaders aren’t getting the value they expected it raises a question: When does a renewal make sense, and when might it be time to “break up?” Before going there, we should look at why coaching relationships start in the first place.
Different Types of Executive Support
Before we explore the value of coaching, it is important to be clear about what we mean by the term. There are many ways senior leaders obtain support, but they are distinct and the roles are often conflated. At a high level, three options stand out:
• Mentors: They have experience that the executives do not. They tend to be more senior leaders who have “been there and done that” and can provide advice on how to handle a situation or challenge. In general, they provide answers.
• Trusted Advisors/Sounding Boards: The ultimate objective of the professional services class, a trusted advisor is someone an executive turns to for thought partnership—an ally whose judgement and thinking they trust to help them work through problems. Trusted advisors provide both questions and answers, but often on a more “as needed” basis.
• Coaches: They have the training needed to help executives find answers within themselves. They primarily ask questions, helping the coachee to build their own self-awareness, clarify their thinking, and tackle identified leadership challenges.
There are, of course, hybrid versions of the three types of support above, for example mentors or trusted advisors who are also trained coaches. However, mentors and trusted advisor relationships are not contractual and often do last a long time. (Good ones are “on call” when advice is needed.) Coaching, in general, should be a bit different.
Setting a Coaching Engagement Up for Success
When beginning a coaching relationship, three things are particularly important. First, there must be a good fit. Coaching is an intimate process that requires both trust and some degree of connection. If a coachee is not fully comfortable with the coach (including being able to hear hard truths), the engagement will be suboptimal.
Second, the objectives of the engagement must be clear. There should be a defined answer to the question, “If this engagement is a success, what will be different about my leadership?”
Third, some guardrails should be put in place. This includes not only the obvious (e.g., confidentiality, meeting frequency), but also expectations on both sides: What preparations are required for a session from the coachee? How will progress be measured? If an engagement is renewed, what are the new objectives? Taking the time to hold the relationship accountable is important.
Coaching typically starts with a six-month engagement, and extending this to 12 months is common. However, there are reasons why an engagement may go on considerably longer, including:
• Change of responsibilities/context: Oftentimes a leader is confronted with new challenges during a coaching relationship, such as a promotion or other change in role, new business situations (e.g., merger, spin out, etc.), and/or dramatic changes in the business context (e.g., Covid, tariffs).
• Awareness of new development areas: It’s not uncommon for new development challenges—new areas of self discovery which need attention— to emerge during a coaching engagement. As long as the growth objectives are clear, continuing the engagement makes sense.
• Change in relationship: Sometimes a coaching relationship evolves into a new and broader relationship—a hybrid model as mentioned above. This can be particularly important at the very top, where things can be notoriously lonely. Having a confidant who can provide some combination of mentorship/trusted advice/coaching can be invaluable, as getting real feedback and having someone with whom one can be fully vulnerable gets more and more difficult as one ascends. Still, it’s important to be clear when the relationship has changed.
When “It’s Time”—To End the Engagement
While it’s clear that coaching can be quite valuable, it can also outlive its usefulness. Here are some tell-tale signs that it’s time to take a coaching break:
• Loss of engagement: The coachee is no longer “doing the work.” They postpone sessions, are not prepared, do not follow through on agreed plans/experiments, or do not seem to be motivated to address the targeted challenge. The coaching conversation should not become “just another meeting.”
• Progress stalls: Sometimes, despite hard work, the engagement loses momentum. Discussions repeat, and new insights are not emerging. In this case, the right answer might be a break, or a change to a different coach or approach.
• “Just talking”: Coaches and coachees often build a good rapport and truly enjoy each other’s company and conversation. While this can be a pre-condition for progress (as noted above), over time it can be difficult for a coach to maintain a detached perspective. Sometimes conversations drift from focused coaching to “shooting the breeze,” or worse, “cheerleading,” vs. continuing the difficult work of personal growth. If this is the case, the relationship need not end but the coaching engagement probably should.
• Progress complete: Ideally, the coaching has successfully achieved its stated objective: The coachee is ready to continue on their own. As executive coach, author, and podcaster Karin Stewarky put it, “The role of the coach, ultimately, is to make themselves obsolete.” If no development areas substantial enough to merit the coaching fees emerge, it may be time to take a break.
Former Egon Zehnder chair and CEO coach Jill Ader points out: “It is very difficult for one person to address the range of support a CEO may need.” The assumption that “a coach” is the answer can be limiting. Her engagements with CEOs have varied from months to years, but always with an eye towards whether she is the best person to help address the identified objectives. Sometimes a wholesale change is necessary, while sometimes a specific challenge requires adding someone to the engagement who brings a corresponding skillset.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
C-suite executives may have the biggest need for coaching. For many, there is truly no one they can talk to, and so having a safe space to be vulnerable—in whatever form that support takes—is worth the price.
It’s not our objective to suggest that leaders should look for reasons to break off coaching that is providing value. Rather, we recommend that from time-to-time executives take a moment to assess the impact of the engagement, and if warranted, make the adjustments needed to sustain progress.
It can be difficult to stop a conversation that you are enjoying (particularly if the company is paying). Continuing an engagement may well make sense—just make sure that whoever is paying is getting their money’s worth.
Lena Triantogiannis is a partner and Egon Zehnder’s global service leader for the firm’s “Unlock Transformations” offerings, working to enable transformational growth for leaders, teams, and organizations across the globe.
Greig Schneider, based in Boston, is a partner and former leader of Egon Zehnder’s Global Leadership Advisory Practice.