Yes — for the right leaders, working with the right coach, on the right challenges, executive coaching is absolutely worth it. But "worth it" requires more precision than a blanket endorsement.
Todd Palmer, founder of Extraordinary Advisors, has been on both sides of that question. He hired his first executive coach when his own company was $600,000 in debt and 60 days from closing — then went on to make the Inc. 5000 list six times. His take after 25+ years as a CEO and a decade-plus coaching founders: the ROI is real, but it's earned, not automatic.
Executive coaching delivers significant results when leaders enter the relationship with genuine openness, specific challenges, and the willingness to have uncomfortable conversations. When those conditions aren't present, the same investment produces little.
Understanding the difference is what this piece is about.
A Client Story: When Detachment Was the Real Problem
Generic ROI statistics don't hold up well under scrutiny — a multiple pulled from a broad survey tells you little about what coaching will do for you specifically. What tells you more is what changes when the work is real.
I had a client running a company north of $30 million who told me flat out he didn't want to run it anymore. Not burned out on a particular problem — checked out of the whole identity. He'd built a second home, had the metrics of someone who'd "made it," and felt nothing. That's not a strategy problem. That's learned helplessness wearing a business suit.
We didn't start with the org chart. We started with a two-column exercise: what's actually in your control, and what isn't. Most executives at that altitude have quietly stopped believing the first column exists. And here's the pattern that matters — his detachment wasn't staying contained to him. It was mirroring straight through the organization. Leaders who've gone emotionally numb don't just underperform themselves; their teams absorb the flatness and stop bringing energy to problems too.
Underneath it was toxic shame, not guilt. Guilt says "I did something wrong." Toxic shame says "I am something wrong." He'd been carrying the second one for years and calling it drive. Once we separated those, the business conversation got easy — he already knew what to do. He just hadn't believed he was allowed to want to do it.
That's the return that matters: not a multiple applied against a coaching fee, but a leader who stops exporting his detachment to everyone below him.
What Executive Coaching Actually Changes
The leaders who see the most value from coaching aren't necessarily those who walk in with the most complex business problems. They're the ones who are willing to look at the problem beneath the problem.
Consider the difference between these two versions of the same challenge:
Surface level: "I need help managing my business partner. We can't agree on direction and it's affecting the company."
Deeper level: "My partner and I have been running this business together for 25 years. We've stopped having real conversations. He resists every change I propose, and I've started going quiet instead of pushing back. We've both lost the ability to ask for what we actually need."
A systems-based coach might give you a conflict resolution framework. A great executive coach goes somewhere else entirely. They help you understand why you've stopped speaking up. They surface the fear beneath the silence. And they help you build the foundation for a different kind of conversation than the ones you've been having.
That's the work that actually changes things. The pattern I see most consistently across clients: people not asking for what they want — in business relationships, in partnerships, in marriages. The presenting issue is always practical. The real issue is almost always relational. The coaching that shifts outcomes is the kind that goes there.
Real Results: What Clients Experience
Faster clarity on hard decisions — Leaders who work with coaches report spending less time spinning on problems they can't solve alone. The external perspective of a coach — someone who isn't inside the organization and doesn't have a stake in a particular outcome — creates the distance needed to see clearly.
Breakthrough in stuck conversations — Many leaders carry the weight of conversations they know they need to have but don't. With a board member. A co-founder. A key employee. Coaching doesn't just give you permission to have these conversations — it gives you the language, the timing, and the emotional readiness to have them well.
Meaningful gains in a short time — One of the most striking things I hear from clients who've worked with multiple coaches: the right match accelerates everything. Lauren Bateman, who runs a music school, came to coaching after working with three previous coaches over several years. Within weeks of working together, she told me: "I've gotten more from you in 60 days than I've gotten from my previous coaches in years." The difference wasn't the quantity of sessions. It was the willingness to go somewhere real — and she knew it immediately. The breakthrough she had was significant enough that she made the trip to Boston just to deliver the news in person.
Leadership that can outlast a single role — The best executive coaching builds a kind of capacity that stays with you — not a set of tactics for your current role, but a deeper self-awareness and emotional intelligence that makes you more effective in every role, relationship, and decision you'll ever face.
A Client Story: When the Numbers Follow the Internal Work
Joe Anderson was 38 years old, had built $20 million in net worth, and described himself as feeling like a failure. By the time we finished working together, he had grown his business to $40 million and reached the top ranks of his industry — #9 out of more than 13,000 Northwestern Mutual agents nationally.
The numbers matter. But they're not the part Joe talks about most.
What stayed with him was the peace of mind. The clarity that came from finally answering questions he'd been carrying for years without knowing how to name them. As someone who knows Joe well put it: he got answers to questions he didn't know he needed answers to.
That's the arc I see most consistently. The business results are real. But they follow something internal — a shift in how you see yourself, what you believe is possible, and how you make decisions under pressure.
Our sales are up 70% and our profits have increased by 500% since hiring Extraordinary Advisors.
— Tom Schwab, CEO, Interview Valet
When Executive Coaching Doesn't Work
When the leader isn't actually open to change — Coaching is not a performance improvement plan. If you enter the relationship to satisfy an HR requirement or because someone else thinks you need it, the results will be limited. Coaching requires genuine willingness to look at yourself honestly.
When the coach is primarily selling a system — The coaches who add irreplaceable value are those who bring lived experience and the ability to go deep. As AI becomes capable of delivering frameworks on demand, the coaches who survive are the ones doing work a chatbot can't — asking the question that only someone who has lived through something similar would know to ask.
When the presenting problem is actually a different kind of problem — Sometimes what a leader needs isn't coaching. They need a therapist, a strategist, a mediator, or a lawyer. A good coach recognizes this quickly and will tell you.
When the chemistry isn't right — The coaching relationship requires enough trust that you'll say things out loud you've never said before. If you don't feel safe enough to be honest, you won't get there. Chemistry matters, and a good coach will acknowledge it if it's not working.
Is Executive Coaching Worth the Cost?
Think about it this way: a single decision — about a partnership, a hire, an acquisition, a difficult conversation you've been avoiding — can be worth multiples of the annual coaching investment. The question isn't whether coaching is expensive. It's what the problems you're trying to solve are costing you without it.
The leaders who most consistently get value from coaching share a few traits: they come prepared, they're honest about what's actually happening (not just the version they'd tell their board), and they do the work between sessions. The coach can only go where you're willing to go.
Todd is a remarkable coach. Within one session, he helped me get to the root of my issue, bring clarity to my situation, and make the decision I needed to make about where to take my career next. Since that decision, I am more successful and happier than I've ever been.
— Dan Bubniak, Dirty Hands
Personal Patterns Become Organizational Patterns
The engagements that return the most have something in common: they stopped treating five symptoms as five unrelated problems. Personal patterns become organizational patterns, so the same avoidance that costs you a hard conversation with a senior leader is usually costing you margin, retention, and decision speed at the same time. Fix the pattern and several numbers move together. That compounding is the real case for pattern-based executive coaching.