How to measure the impact of leadership coaching

Sep 29

7 min read

Colorful plastic number tiles with digits and plus sign scattered on a white background, like a playful math set

The global number of coach practitioners rose 15% since 2023, reaching a record 122,974. International Coaching Federation (ICF), 2025.

We’ve lost count of how many HR and L&D leaders have asked us the same question: does leadership coaching actually deliver a return?

Whether it’s senior leadership coaching, coaching for middle managers or support for first-time managers, the follow-up questions are always the same. How much difference does it really make? And how do we measure it? Anyone who has tried to measure the impact of leadership coaching knows the answer is rarely a single number. But that’s no reason not to try.

The rise of leadership coaching
Why it’s hard to measure the impact of leadership coaching
Before the programme: goals and a baseline
During the programme: feedback
After the programme: impact at the end and six months on
Performance metrics of leadership coaching
Return on investment (ROI) of leadership coaching
Final thoughts
References

The rise of leadership coaching

Coaching is no longer a perk reserved for the C-suite. The 2025 ICF study counted 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide, up 15% since 2023, in an industry now worth $5.34 billion. More than half of coaches (54%) specialise in leadership and executive coaching. With that much going in, it’s fair for organisations to ask what they’re getting back. If you’re new to it, start with what leadership coaching is.

Why it’s hard to measure the impact of leadership coaching

Leadership growth doesn’t show up in a single number the way a product launch might.

It’s gradual and contextual, and a lot of it happens in conversations and decisions that never get logged anywhere.

Nancy Maher, Kinkajou’s founder, found in her own research with coaches that coaching's impact can be hard to isolate. Leaders work within complex systems with many factors impacting their leadership approaches and impact. Definitions of coaching success also vary, sometimes even between the sponsor and the leader being coached.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t measure it. “I feel impact is hard to measure, but the stats show us that leadership coaching has a positive impact on so many fronts”, says Nancy. “You just need to start measuring something that matters to the organisation and the leaders being coached - and that can be their subjective experience of the impact both during the coaching programme and six months later”.

The trap is believing that if you can’t measure it perfectly, you shouldn’t measure it at all. A directionally useful metric, tracked consistently, beats a theoretically ideal one that never gets built.

Coaching isn’t one-size-fits-all, and neither is measuring it

Plenty of organisations reach for a generic scorecard, borrowed from someone else’s programme, then wonder why it never quite captures what changed. It misses because coaching itself isn’t generic. A programme supporting first-time managers through a tough transition looks nothing like one helping a senior tech team lead a digital transformation.

🧐 Example: A leader who starts coaching struggling to delegate might, six months later, have a team that’s more autonomous and far less bottlenecked. A leader focused on stakeholder relationships might have smoother cross-functional projects and fewer escalations. Both have real impact, and they’d never fit the same template.

“Since leadership coaching isn’t one-size-fits-all, you can adapt it to your context to drive the impact you want,” says Nancy. “First, you need to know your goals, then start measuring what really matters most”.

Start with the goal, not the metric

Decide what you’re trying to achieve before you decide what to measure. Are you trying to reduce attrition among high-potential leaders? Build a stronger leadership talent pipeline? Improve how leaders drive digital transformation through uncertainty and make decisions under pressure? Each points to different signals: retention data, promotion rates, shifts in 360 feedback, engagement scores, or simply the quality of a leader’s decisions three months compared with the start.

💡 Tip: Pick the two or three signals that matter most in your context, set a baseline, and put a date in the diary to check back in.

🤔 Reflective question: If your coaching programme worked brilliantly, what would you expect to see change in six months’ time?

Before the programme: goals and a baseline

Measurement starts before the first session. You need two things: a baseline, meaning where the leader is now, and a trajectory, meaning where they want to get to and how.

Goal identification and achievement

One of the simplest ways to measure coaching effectiveness is to agree goals at the outset and track progress against them. Leaders typically set objectives around their leadership skills and style, giving their team more autonomy, or building stronger relationships. In our group programmes, participants complete a check-in survey before they start, reflecting on a range of leadership skills and setting their first goals. We can then track progress objectively and subjectively, including through regular pulse surveys.

360 feedback and psychometric assessments

We use two tools, both built into our EMPOWER leadership programmes.

Appraisal 360 gathers anonymous feedback from the people who work most closely with a leader, such as their manager, peers and direct reports, alongside the leader’s own self-assessment, so they can see how others experience them before coaching begins and, repeated later, whether that view has shifted.

The Everything DiSC Agile EQ report, a practitioner tool rather than a peer-reviewed measure, adds a personalised profile of a leader’s emotional intelligence mindsets and DiSC style. It's useful for setting goals at the start and driving action during the programme. Our 360-degree feedback playbook has more on how to get the most from a 360.

During the programme: feedback

Pulse surveys

Pulse surveys evaluate the experience as it happens rather than waiting until the end. We run monthly anonymous feedback surveys throughout our coaching programmes, prompting self-reflection and surfacing what’s working and what could be better.

Sponsor check-ins

Regular check-ins with the programme’s sponsors pair well with pulse surveys. They feed key themes into decisions and give sponsors a view of business impact while the programme is still running. As a boutique coaching company, we can adapt a programme to what those check-ins tell us, rather than waiting until the end to change course.

After the programme: impact at the end and six months on

Impact doesn’t stop when the final session ends. The most meaningful changes often take time to settle in, so we measure at two points.

At the final session

Every programme deserves a proper send-off, ideally with more than a limp handshake. The closing session doubles as a checkpoint to capture what’s changed: goals achieved, key learnings, and the leader’s own view of how they’ve grown, from self-awareness and confidence in decision-making to managing uncertainty and client relationships. We also set time aside to celebrate. Our guide to finishing with intention has more on making that last session count.

Six months later: the impact assessment

Six months after the programme closes, we run a formal impact assessment. It’s built into EMPOWER, our leadership development programme, and looks at both the individual and the organisation: behavioural change, the coaching’s value to the organisation and its clients, the impact on relationships, how well the change has been sustained, and whether the desired outcomes were achieved. It also gives organisations data they can act on to continue supporting their leaders.

Behaviour change and career progression

Some of the strongest evidence won’t come from a survey. Colleagues and managers notice shifts in confidence, communication, delegation and empathy, and a repeat 360 can capture them. Over the longer term, watch career progression too: promotions, bigger responsibilities, leading key initiatives, and coached leaders going on to develop others.

Performance metrics of leadership coaching

Linking coaching to business metrics adds an objective layer. Depending on the leader’s role and goals, relevant KPIs might include employee engagement, retention, customer satisfaction or sales. The effect rarely stops with one leader, either. When a leader grows, it tends to show up in their team’s engagement, collaboration and levels of conflict as well.

Because cause and effect is hard to isolate, treat these metrics as signals worth tracking, not proof on their own.

Return on investment (ROI) of leadership coaching

According to the ICF, a global survey by PwC and the Association Resource Center found that organisations got back, on average, seven times what they spent on coaching.

ROI puts a number on all of this. It’s rarely exact, but you can estimate the financial value of improvements in productivity, engagement or revenue that coaching helped bring about. Writing in Forbes, Melanie Espeland sets out three pillars: (1) quantitative value, (2) qualitative value, and (3) the consequences of not investing. Everything rests on a clear baseline and a clear idea of what you want to change. Her quantitative method has four steps, shown here with her turnover example:

Pick a lever: the business metric the coaching is meant to move, such as revenue, productivity, customer satisfaction or retention.
Estimate the initial impact using internal data and the coach’s track record. A 10% drop in turnover that keeps 100 employees, each saving $10,000 in onboarding costs, is worth $1 million a year, or $3 million over three years.
Adjust the impact by crediting coaching with a realistic share. Attributing 50% to the coaching gives an adjusted value of $1.5 million.
Calculate the ROI by subtracting the programme’s cost. $1.5 million minus a $250,000 investment leaves $1.25 million.

Every figure here rests on estimates and assumptions, so treat the result as a useful signal rather than an exact number. And don’t skip that third pillar - the impact of not investing in developing your leaders.

🤔 Reflective question: What would it cost your organisation if your leaders stayed exactly as they are for another year?

Final thoughts

Impact is hard to measure, but it isn’t impossible. The organisations that get the most from coaching usually don’t have the fanciest dashboards. They got clear on their goals early and started measuring from day one, even imperfectly.

Set a baseline, choose the few measures that matter in your context, and check in during the programme and again six months after it. That will tell you far more than waiting for the perfect metric. For the wider evidence base, see our top coaching statistics, and if you’re a leader tracking your own growth, our guide to measuring your progress will help.