How to measure the impact of leadership coaching
- Fern Beauchamp
- Jul 21
- 9 min read
Updated: Aug 17
Organisations typically see a return of seven times what they invest in coaching, as reported by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), 2024.
We’ve lost count of how many HR and L&D leaders have asked us the same question: do leadership development approaches, like leadership coaching, actually deliver a return? Is it worth investing in senior leadership coaching programmes, or in coaching for middle managers and first-time managers’ development?
And if it is, how much difference does it really make?
And how do we even go about measuring it?
Contents
Leadership coaching context
Leadership coaching’s impact is multi-layered: subjective and objective, immediate and slow-building, obvious and subtle. External factors shape the same outcomes too.
Nancy Maher, our Kinkajou Founder, found in her research with coaches that cause and effect of coaching can be hard to isolate. Coaching sits inside a complex system, and definitions of success vary, sometimes even between sponsor and coachee. That makes some programmes genuinely tricky to measure.
At Kinkajou, we’ve focused on evaluating the impact of our leadership coaching programmes directly, partnering with organisations to measure it as we go. Drawing on our experience, research and varied backgrounds, we’ve built a comprehensive package of techniques, detailed below.
There are several ways to measure coaching’s effectiveness. Harvard Business Review reports on a study showing that 85% of the time, executive coaching is assessed through post-hoc performance reviews, wellbeing and engagement surveys, learning effectiveness, perceived ROI and 360 assessments.
At Kinkajou, we measure before, during and after a coaching programme, giving us a baseline, a live view of progress, and a clear picture of impact at the end. This article walks through the key ways to assess coaching effectiveness using that framework.
Pre leadership coaching programmes: preparation
In order to measure the effectiveness of leadership coaching programmes, there's a bit of pre-work that needs doing before starting the journey.
It's important to establish both:
A baseline - a view of who the individual is and where they're at,
as well as
A plan of their trajectory - where they want to go and how we're going to get there.
While some of this includes organising and engaging in the logistics, identifying goals and completing a range of assessments provides a solid view of where individuals are starting from.
Goal identification and achievement
One of the simplest ways to measure coaching effectiveness is to identify goals at the outset and track their achievement. At the start of a programme, leaders typically set specific, measurable objectives, often around improving leadership skills, evolving authentic leadership styles, empowering their teams, or building positive relationships.
As part of preparation for Kinkajou’s EMPOWER leadership group coaching, participants complete a check-in survey, helping them reflect, self-assess across a range of leadership skills, and identify initial goals.
Tracking progress towards these goals gives a tangible measure of coaching effectiveness, and can be tracked both objectively and subjectively. Organisations can use regular pulse surveys, discussed in detail below, to gauge progress against particular goals.
Surveys and psychometric assessments
360-degree feedback
360-degree feedback is a powerful way for leaders to see how others perceive them. It draws input from a leader’s colleagues, managers, reports, clients, friends and family before the coaching programme begins.
Kinkajou uses AtMyBest 360, a third-party tool that stands apart from traditional 360s. Rather than endless questionnaires and ratings, it captures real stories about when others see a leader at their best, focusing on strengths over bar charts and data tables. Feedback isn’t anonymous. That helps leaders build trust, strengthen relationships and develop their skills in receiving feedback. We recommend leaders explore this feedback with their manager before their coaching programme begins.
These assessments also help organisations identify changes in leadership behaviours and effectiveness, as perceived by people working closely with the coached leader. They also build skills in giving and receiving feedback. A leader might get feedback on their ability to build trusting relationships or encourage innovation in their team. Improvements reported by colleagues after coaching point to its impact.
Emotional intelligence assessments
Knowing where you’re going starts with knowing who you are. Psychometric-style assessments at the start of a leadership development coaching programme give leaders a platform of self-insight, helping them raise self-awareness around mindsets, leadership styles, strengths and behaviour.
At Kinkajou, we focus on emotional intelligence (EQ) using the Everything DiSC Agile EQ Report, a personalised profile that helps leaders discover their natural EQ mindsets and DiSC styles, with strategies to become more agile in responding to challenges. It’s a useful reflective tool both before the programme (to help identify goals) and during it (to drive action).
During leadership coaching programmes: feedback
Leadership coaching pulse surveys
Beyond tracking goal progress, pulse surveys help monitor and promote continuous improvement throughout the coaching programme, evaluating the experience as it happens rather than waiting until the end. Kinkajou runs monthly anonymous feedback surveys throughout EMPOWER, our leadership group coaching programme, prompting self-reflection and surfacing what’s working and what could improve. That continuous feedback loop is central to how we operate.
Leadership coaching sponsor check-ins
Regular check-ins with sponsors of the coaching programme are another effective measurement technique. They pair well with pulse surveys, feeding key themes into evidence-based decisions, and give sponsors real insight into business impact as the programme progresses. As a boutique coaching company, we can tailor programmes to organisational needs and pivot when required, offering a genuinely personalised view of how things are going.
End of leadership coaching programmes: assessments
Every coaching programme deserves a proper send-off, ideally with more than a limp handshake and a certificate. The final session doubles as a valuable checkpoint to capture what’s changed, covering goals achieved, key learnings, development and overall experience right as the programme wraps up. Kinkajou’s EMPOWER leadership coaching programme sets aside time in that closing session to celebrate.
Post leadership coaching programmes: impacts
Leadership coaching impact assessments
The impact of a coaching programme can keep evolving after it closes; transformational changes may take time to percolate. An impact assessment once the programme has ended is a valuable way to measure its effectiveness.
Kinkajou conducts an impact assessment as part of our leadership coaching programmes six months post-programme. It assesses areas at both an individual and organisational level including:
Behavioural change
The coaching’s value to the organisation and its clients
Impact on relationships
How well the coaching has been sustained
Whether the desired outcomes were achieved
As well as measuring the effectiveness of a leadership coaching programme, this generates data-driven, actionable insights organisations can use to improve going forward.
Leadership coaching behavioural changes
In addition to formal assessments, observable changes in a leader’s behaviour can be a strong indicator of coaching effectiveness. These shifts are usually picked up through 360-degree feedback, sponsor check-ins or direct manager observation, rather than a single test score. Colleagues and team members may notice improvements in areas such as:
Increased confidence
Empowering others
Communication
Improved client relationships
Relationship building
Empathy and emotional intelligence
Self-reported outcomes of leadership coaching
Self-reported outcomes from coached leaders offer valuable insight into the perceived effectiveness of coaching. Kinkajou captures these through end-of-programme reflections and the same pulse surveys used to track goal progress, giving leaders a structured way to record how they feel they’ve changed.
Leaders can assess their own growth in areas such as:
Leadership self-awareness
Confidence in decision-making
Ability to manage uncertainty
Ability to thrive and not just survive
Client relationships
These self-assessments, when combined with other measures, can paint a more comprehensive picture of coaching impact and effectiveness.
Performance metrics of leadership coaching
Linking coaching outcomes to concrete business metrics gives an objective measure of effectiveness. Depending on the leader’s role and coaching goals, relevant key performance indicators (KPIs), alongside impact assessments, might include:
Employee retention rates
Customer satisfaction scores
Sales figures
As Nancy Maher’s research shows, cause and effect of coaching can be hard to determine when a leader sits inside a complex organisational system. That makes coaching’s impact genuinely difficult to measure, so while these metrics are useful, they rarely prove direct cause and effect on their own.
Return on investment (ROI) of leadership coaching
Return on investment puts a number on all of this. It’s rarely exact, but organisations can estimate the financial value of improvements in productivity, employee engagement or revenue growth that coaching helped bring about.
For instance, according to the ICF, a global study by PwC and the Association Resource Center found that companies investing in coaching reported an average return of 7 times the initial investment.
It’s tricky, but according to Forbes, the key is to establish your starting point: a clear baseline and a clear idea of what you want to change. Together, these enable a proper pre-post measurement approach.
Forbes breaks this down into three pillars: quantitative value, qualitative value, and the cost of doing nothing. The quantitative side follows four steps, worked through here with a simplified example:
Pick a lever, a 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. If a coach has historically cut turnover by 10% across 1,000 employees, and replacing each leaver costs $10,000, that's roughly $1 million saved a year, or $3 million over three years.
Adjust the impact by attributing only a realistic share of that saving to the coaching itself, alongside factors like employee effort and the difficulty of the goal. Crediting coaching with half of that $3 million gives an adjusted value of $1.5 million.
Calculate the ROI by subtracting the programme's total cost from that adjusted value. $1.5 million minus a $250,000 investment leaves $1.25 million in realised ROI.
Every figure here rests on estimates and assumptions, from the coach’s track record to the attribution percentage, so treat the final number as a useful signal rather than an exact one.
Ripple effects of leadership coaching
Coaching one leader is a bit like dropping a stone in a pond, the splash is personal, but the ripples reach the whole team. Improvements in leadership skills often show up as increased employee engagement and stronger team performance too.
Metrics to consider could be:
Employee satisfaction scores
Team collaboration effectiveness
Innovation and idea generation within the team
Reduction in workplace conflicts
Workplace culture metrics
By monitoring these team-level indicators, organisations can assess the broader impact of leadership coaching.
Long-term career progression
Coaching’s effects can continue long after a programme ends. Tracking the career progression of coached leaders over time gives insight into its long-term effectiveness, and might include monitoring:
Promotions and career advancements
Expanded responsibilities
Leadership roles in key initiatives
Mentoring and developing other leaders
Common challenges of measuring leadership coaching
There can be a variety of challenges that inherently come with measuring the impact of leadership coaching programmes.
Some of the most common challenges are:
Defining clear metrics. One of the primary challenges is establishing clear, measurable metrics for success. Leadership coaching often creates intangible outcomes that can be difficult to quantify. However, these can be overcome by identifying a clear starting point, measuring progress and using impact assessments alongside key business metrics.
Time constraints. The impact of leadership coaching may take time to manifest, making it difficult to measure keenly anticipated results. Kinkajou's suite of assessment tools can help with this.
Isolating coaching impact. It can be tricky to attribute changes in leadership performance solely to coaching, as other factors may also influence outcomes.
Data collection and analysis. Gathering comprehensive and reliable data to evaluate coaching effectiveness can be complex; it also requires accurate analysis and interpretation.
Resistance to evaluation. Some leaders may be reluctant to participate in thorough evaluations, fearing potential negative consequences. Building a culture of continuous improvement can help with this, and 360-degree feedback is a good way to start.
Sustainability of change. Assessing whether coaching-induced changes are sustained over time can present another challenge. Considering follow-up evaluations and longer-term check-ins, like Kinkajou's impact assessment, could help manage this.
Consequences of not investing in leadership coaching
All of this can help you measure coaching’s effectiveness. But have you considered the consequences if you decide not to invest in coaching for your senior leaders, first-time managers or middle managers?
You’d miss out on the good stuff: helping employees thrive, building leadership skills, advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and all the other benefits shown in these coaching statistics:
Conclusion
Measuring coaching’s effectiveness takes a multi-faceted approach. It’s not always easy, but combining quantitative metrics with qualitative assessments gives organisations a genuinely comprehensive picture of impact.
Part of the challenge is navigating varying definitions of success, external factors, and realistic timelines. Clear baselines need to be established before coaching begins, alongside agreement on which metrics matter most.
By consistently measuring and analysing the outcomes of leadership coaching, organisations can refine their programmes, demonstrate ROI, and ensure they're making the most of their investment in leadership development.
Ready to explore leadership coaching for your organisation?
