Is coaching worth it
for VPs and directors?

You have reached the level where nobody tells you what to do, and nobody tells you how you are doing either. The question in front of you is practical: is it worth paying someone to think with you, or is this just what the job feels like?

For many senior leaders, yes, with conditions. A 2023 meta-analysis of 37 randomised trials found a moderate, real effect of executive coaching. It pays off most when you have a live decision, no peers to think with, and the willingness to be honest. It is the wrong tool in a crisis, or if you want to be told the answer.

This is a decision page, not a sales page. I coach VPs and directors for a living, so read the case for with that in mind; I have tried to make the case against just as carefully. If your question is the general one, whether getting help is worth the money at all, that is in getting help costs money, so does waiting. This page is about the senior-role decision specifically.

Why is this a different question at senior levels?

Because the job changes what is available to you. You still have problems to think through, but the people you used to think them through with now report to you, compete with you, or sit on the committee that decides your next step. The thinking does not stop. It just goes private.

Gallup's 2026 analysis of 9,880 leaders worldwide, defined as managers of managers, found that they rate their lives higher and are more engaged than the people they lead, yet are more likely to report a bad day. Compared with individual contributors, leaders were more likely to have felt a lot of stress the previous day (46% against 39%), anger (33% against 21%), sadness (34% against 23%) and loneliness (31% against 21%). Gallup's explanation is the one you will recognise: greater social distance from colleagues, and the burden of difficult, sometimes unpopular, decisions on ambiguous information. More on that in everyone reports to you, no one checks on you.

Then there is the identity cost of being the one who holds it together. In most senior rooms, composure is part of the role description. You absorb the worry so the team does not have to. That is useful, and it is also expensive, because the habit does not switch off at home. I covered that in you're the one who holds it together, who holds you?

And in India specifically, the ground under senior roles has been moving. Gallup's 2026 State of the Global Workplace reports that global manager engagement fell from 27% to 22% between 2024 and 2025, its sharpest one-year drop, after falling from 30% to 27% the year before. South Asia, primarily India in Gallup's sample, saw an eight-point decline, the largest of any region, and the share of employees who are managers also fell, which Gallup reads as employers cutting management layers. The report points to a hiring slowdown and cuts to mid-level and senior roles in India's IT sector in 2025, possibly driven in part by AI adoption. If your role is being redrawn by AI and flatter structures at once, "what am I for now?" is a reasonable thing to need help with. That is the identity side of the fear that you're no longer steering.

What does the evidence on executive coaching actually say?

Better than the marketing suggests, and smaller than the marketing claims.

The strongest evidence comes from a 2023 meta-analysis in Academy of Management Learning & Education by Erik de Haan and Viktor Nilsson. It included only randomised controlled trials, the most demanding study design, pooling 37 studies and 2,528 participants from 1994 to 2021. Across personal and leadership outcomes, coached people did better than controls, with a moderate effect (Hedges' g = 0.59). Two caveats are in the paper itself: effects were larger when people rated their own change than when others rated it, and there were signs of publication bias, which usually means the true effect is somewhat smaller than the pooled figure.

An earlier 2016 meta-analysis in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology by Jones, Woods and Guillaume looked at 17 studies of coaching by internal or external coaches and found a smaller overall effect (δ = 0.36), larger for affective outcomes such as wellbeing and attitudes (δ = 0.51) than for skills (δ = 0.28). Three of its secondary findings matter more for your decision than the headline number:

• Format did not matter. Face-to-face coaching was not significantly better than blended or online coaching.
• Length did not matter. Neither the number of sessions nor how long the engagement ran changed the effect. Longer was not reliably better.
• Internal coaches did at least as well as external ones. The effect was in fact stronger for internal coaches. If your company has a good internal coaching programme, use it before you pay anyone, me included.

What you will not find in either paper is a return-on-investment figure. The industry's own numbers on that come from the International Coaching Federation's client surveys, which I took apart in the cost post and will not repeat here.

What the ICF's 2023 Global Coaching Study does tell you is who you are buying from. The profession grew 54% between 2019 and 2022 to an estimated 109,200 coaches. Among the 14,591 coaches surveyed, 85% said they hold a credential from a coaching body, 80% agreed their clients expect one, and a little over half said their clients are mostly managers (31%) or executives (25%). It is a crowded market in which anyone can call themselves a coach, which is why the section on judging a coach exists.

The honest case for coaching at your level

Three things coaching does that nothing else in your week does.

It gives you a peer-free room. Everyone else you talk to about work has a stake in what you decide. A coach does not need you to be confident, loyal, or right. Gallup's data hints at why this matters: among leaders who were engaged at work, 16% reported daily loneliness; among those who were not, 37%. Engagement is not the same as having someone to think with, but a 21-point gap suggests connection at work, or the lack of it, is doing a lot of the damage.

It makes you say the thing out loud. Most senior leaders already know roughly what the problem is. What they have not done is state it plainly to another person. A good proportion of sessions contain a sentence that begins "I haven't said this to anyone, but." The sentence does the work. The coach mostly makes it safe to say.

It is bounded and private. It is not therapy, not performance review, and not on anyone's dashboard. For people whose instinct is to handle everything alone, a defined hour with a defined purpose is often easier to accept than an open-ended "get support".

The honest case against

The effect is moderate, not transformative. A g of 0.59 is real and worth having. It is not a new personality, and it will not make a bad job good or a bad boss decent.

It is expensive relative to the alternatives. A peer group of two or three people at your level from other companies, meeting monthly and telling each other the truth, is free and in some ways better, because they know your world. If you can build that, build it.

The research cannot yet tell you which coach, or which method, works. Both meta-analyses pool very different interventions. The honest reading is "coaching, on average, helps", not "this approach works". Fit is doing much of the work, and fit is something you have to test yourself.

It can become a comfortable place to not decide. A coach who likes you and bills monthly has a quiet incentive to keep you thinking. Agree an end point before you start.

Who gets the most out of coaching as a VP or director?

From the evidence above and from the people I have sat across from, coaching tends to earn its fee for senior leaders who:

1. Have a live question. A role being redrawn, a decision about whether to stay, a team you are failing with, a promotion you are unsure you want. Vague "development" produces vague results.
2. Have no peers left to think with. If the honest conversation you need cannot happen with anyone inside your company, the peer-free room was built for you.
3. Are tired of being the steady one. If composure has become a performance you cannot drop, an hour where you do not have to perform is often the first relief in months.
4. Will actually do something. Coaching converts to change through decisions and behaviour between sessions. It works when you act on it.
5. Can be honest in the room. If you spend the first three sessions managing the coach's impression of you, you are paying for an expensive mirror.

Who should not bother, and what do they need instead?

Some people should keep their money, or spend it elsewhere. This matters more than the list above.

• If you are in crisis, or having thoughts of harming yourself. Coaching is the wrong place, full stop. Call Tele-MANAS on 14416, the Government of India's free, 24-hour mental health line, or go to the nearest emergency department.
• If low mood or anxiety has lasted weeks and is affecting your sleep, appetite or ability to function. See a doctor or a psychiatrist first. Coaching and counselling at Clearhead are not medical care and are not a substitute for it. Deloitte's 2022 survey of 3,995 employees in corporate India found more than 80% reporting at least one symptom of poor mental health, yet of those who did something about it, only 34% went to a professional (45% in the older age groups, 30% among the youngest).
• If the problem is the organisation and you have decided not to change anything. Coaching will not make an untenable role tenable. What you need is a decision to leave, or to stay with your eyes open, and you can make that in an afternoon with a notebook.
• If you want to be told what to do. That is advice, mentoring or consulting, and all three are legitimate. A good coach will refuse to give you the answer, and you will find that irritating.
• If you have a good internal coach available. The 2016 meta-analysis found stronger effects for internal than external coaches. Use what your employer already pays for, including any employee assistance programme, first.
• If money is genuinely tight this quarter. Start with what is free. Paying for help should not become a new source of the stress you are trying to reduce.

How do you judge a coach before you pay?

Because the market is unregulated, the first filter is yours to run. Five questions in the first conversation will tell you most of what you need.

1. What is your credential, and who holds you to it? ICF PCC or MCC, or an equivalent body with a code of ethics and a complaints route. A weekend-course certificate is not the same thing. A good coach will not be offended by the question.
2. What will you not work on? A coach with no boundary will try to handle clinical depression with goal-setting. The right answer names clinical issues and says where they would refer you.
3. If my company pays, who hears what? Sponsored coaching is the norm; in the ICF study, 57% of clients were sponsored. Get the confidentiality arrangement in writing before the first session.
4. What does a first block look like, and how will we know whether to stop? Watch for a coach who proposes an open-ended retainer before they know your question.
5. Did I say something true in that call that I have not said to anyone at work? Ask yourself this one afterwards. If the answer is no, the fit is probably wrong, however impressive the coach.

Walk away from anyone who promises outcomes, talks mostly about themselves, or diagnoses you in the first call.

How to decide in 10 minutes

Put the two columns on one page. Be as honest in the second column as you are in the first.

If the left column wins, the next step costs nothing: a free first conversation with one or two coaches, and the question about whether you said something true. If the right column wins, you have saved money and found the thing you actually need, whether that is a doctor, a peer group, or a decision you have been avoiding.

For what it is worth, this is how Clearhead is set up. The first conversation is 15 minutes and free, so we both know whether this is the right fit before any money changes hands. If you continue, the three packages run from 4 to 12 sixty-minute sessions at ₹5,500 to ₹6,500 a session, online across India or in person in Lokhandwala, Andheri West. Pick a bounded block, bring one question, and tell me honestly at the end whether it was worth it.

The test of a first conversation is not whether you liked the coach. It is whether you said something true in it.

What to take from this

The evidence says coaching helps senior leaders, moderately and on average, and that length and format matter less than fit. The data on leadership says the loneliness and the bad days are real, not a personal failing. So the decision is less about whether coaching works than whether you have a question, a room to ask it in, and the honesty to use it. If you have all three, it is probably worth a bounded try. If not, you now know what to find first.

Common questions about coaching for senior leaders