Is Executive Coaching Worth It? A Founder’s Honest Answer

Executive coaching is worth it when the founder is committed to their own transformation. Gene Hammett, founder of Core Elevation, says founders who do the work don’t slide back into old habits of control, reactiveness, or avoiding tough conversations. Executive coaching isn’t worth it for leaders who hire a coach because it looks good and don’t do the work between sessions.

I’ve sat in both chairs, as the coached founder and as the coach. So when you ask me “is executive coaching worth it?”, you get both sides, plus what 1,200-plus leaders have told me on Growth Think Tank.

Executive Coaching Is Worth It When You Actually Want It

I still remember the knots in my stomach the first time I wrote a big check for coaching. Signing it scared me.

Here’s the strange part. The breakthrough started before my first session, because the moment I signed, I was all in.

That’s the whole answer in one story. Whether coaching pays off depends more on you than on the coach, and founders don’t always like hearing that.

I say this all the time: “Executive coaching is worth it when the person really wants it.”

You get out of coaching what you put into it. A good coach can ask the one question that changes how you lead, but you are still the one who has to walk into the office on Monday and act on it.

I call that “the Monday test.” What you do on Monday, after the session, decides whether the money was well spent.

Simple. Not easy.

The flip side is just as true. “If a founder isn’t committed to their own transformation, it’s not worth it.” No coach on earth can want your growth more than you do, and the good ones won’t pretend to.

Hiring a coach and being coached are two different things. Hiring a coach takes a signature on an agreement, and being coached takes a willingness to hear what you’ve been avoiding.

So before you ask whether a coach is any good, ask yourself a harder question.

Do you want to change, or do you want to feel like you’re working on it?

Those are two very different purchases. One of them pays for itself, and the other one is an expensive way to stay exactly the same.

Check Your Own Odds Before You Hire a Coach

You can predict whether coaching will pay off by looking at four conditions. Here’s the framework I use when a founder asks me if they’re ready.

Read the left column like a mirror (an honest one). Three of the four conditions sit with you, and only one of them sits with the coach.

Most founders who come to me already have the desire. Where they slip is the second row, because the calendar fills up, the sessions turn into status updates, and nothing changes in between.

You might be thinking, “Gene, you don’t know how busy I am right now.” You’re right, I don’t, but I know that being too busy to change is exactly how founders end up stuck in the middle of everything.

Busy is the excuse. Change is the job.

The last row matters too. Running a 40-person company and running a 4,000-person company are two different jobs, so a coach who has never sat with founders at your stage ends up guessing (on your dime).

Which column would your leadership team put you in today?

Not sure which column you’re in?

Know What You Are Buying From an Executive Coach

A lot of disappointment with coaching comes from buying the wrong thing. You expect a pep talk, a consultant, or a therapist, and then you’re surprised when the coach keeps asking questions.

Here’s how I separate them.

Coaching is also something other than motivation. Want someone to pump you up before a big week? Hire a speaker.

A real coach challenges you, reflects back what you can’t see, and holds you to the work you said you would do.

Good coaching can feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is usually the sign it is working.

Does Executive Coaching Actually Work?

Yes, and the research is more useful than most people expect. Two meta-analyses, which pool the results of many separate studies, point in the same direction.

A 2016 analysis of 17 workplace coaching studies, published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, showed that coaching improved results for the organizations that used it, and the biggest gains showed up in individual results. The researchers saw no difference by format, face-to-face or online, or by how long the coaching ran.

A 2023 update in Frontiers in Psychology reached the same verdict. Workplace coaching produced positive organizational outcomes, virtual coaching held up against in-person coaching, and the number of sessions did not predict how well it worked.

In other words, more hours with a coach will not buy you more change.

Read that again.

That matches what I see with founders, because what you do between the sessions is where the change happens.

You will see big ROI multiples quoted all over the internet. I am not going to hand you one, because no honest coach can promise a number to a founder who has not done the work yet.

Nobody honest can.

My First Coach Asked Two Questions That Changed My Company

I know coaching works because it worked on me first. Early in my first company, I was a young founder buried in fires every single day, and I hired my first coach.

She asked me two questions I still think about.

“Who Are Your Most Valuable Customers?”

I didn’t know.

I thought I did, but when she pushed, I couldn’t answer with any confidence. Not my proudest moment as a CEO.

So I spent three days in the data, looking at what it cost us to win each client and how profitable each one was. What I found changed where we put our energy.

We focused on better clients, and I changed how the sales team approached new business. The company grew into the millions over the next few years, and that one question was a big part of why.

“Why Do You Take On the Hard Things?”

The second question hit harder. I told her I felt more like a firefighter than a CEO, and she asked why I kept taking on the hard things myself.

I said it made my team’s jobs easier. I thought that was a good answer (the kind of thing a caring leader says), and I was a little proud of it.

Then she asked, “Well, if you do the hard things for them, when do they learn to do them?”

I didn’t have an answer for that either. I realized I wasn’t building my team’s confidence or their ownership, because every hard problem ended up on my desk.

I still use that question with clients today. A consultant would have handed me a delegation checklist, and my coach handed me a mirror.

What if the hard things on your desk right now are the exact lessons your team is missing?

What ROI Can a Founder Expect From Executive Coaching?

I will be straight with you. The return is never guaranteed, and it is never the same for two founders, because the commitment is never the same.

When the founder does the work, though, the return can be enormous. Here’s what it looked like for one client who is happy to be named.

How Mike Woeber Got Off the Critical Path

Mike Woeber is the CEO of Corporate Tax Advisors, which has made the Inc 5000 three times. (The Inc 5000 is Inc magazine’s yearly ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.)

When we started working together, too much of the company’s work still ran through Mike. Together we found team members who could take on some pretty big responsibilities, and handing those off let the company do more and more client work.

In Mike’s own words, the first year “we almost doubled in revenue,” and he called it “a great return on investment.” You can read his full comments on our client results page.

Mike did the hard work, and he deserves the credit for it. I just helped him see who on his team was ready for more.

Why Coaching Shortens the Founder Transition

Most founders would make the shift from doing the work to building people who do the work eventually. The problem is that it usually takes years, and the company stalls while they figure it out.

Coaching compresses that timeline. A lot.

When I describe one founder I coached through that shift, I put it simply: “We accelerated him through that phase in months.”

Where to Measure Your Return

Revenue is the number everyone wants to talk about (me included). In my experience, it is the last place the return shows up, so you want to watch these earlier signals.

If those four numbers move, the revenue tends to follow. If they do not move, no amount of coaching is going to fix your top line.

What Changes in the First 90 Days of CEO Foundation

CEO Foundation is where I start the work with founders. If you are doing the work, here’s what you will notice at the 90-day mark, across the four pillars of CEO Foundation.

The first thing you notice is your calendar. Meetings you used to own get handed to someone else, and the work only you can do finally gets your best hours.

If handing work off is where you get stuck, some good books on delegation can help you start before you ever hire a coach.

Next, you stop controlling and start empowering. Your best people get room to make decisions, which is exactly why they stay and keep developing.

The stakes are real, and the numbers should bother you. In its 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, Gallup found that global employee engagement fell to 20 percent in 2025, its lowest level since 2020.

When you control every decision, you make that problem worse inside your own company. Building ownership means developing leaders at every level, so the people closest to the work can act without waiting for you.

You get clear, crisp, and confident in how you talk to your team. The big change is that you stop avoiding tough conversations.

You likely have one conversation you’ve been putting off for months. You know the one, right? Learning the basics of having tough conversations is often where the biggest weight comes off.

The last pillar is the one founders do not see coming. You start becoming the leader your team deserves, and I call it the thing you didn’t know you needed.

Nobody writes that one on their goal list. Everybody is glad when it shows up.

Here’s how I explain the value to founders weighing the investment: “From a ‘worth it’ standpoint, just one of those factors is worth it, in my opinion, for what they’re investing.”

Coaching Results Last When the Change Comes From the Inside

Founders always ask me whether the change sticks. My answer depends on where the change happened.

Change that comes from rules, reminders, and willpower fades the minute life gets busy. I’ve tried running on willpower, and you likely have too.

Change that comes from who you are as a leader stays.

Here’s how I put it: “When they want to transform, and a good coach is guiding them through this and reflecting back to them, and they are transforming from inside out, they don’t go backward.”

The old habits I watch for are always the same three:

• ●Control. Grabbing decisions back the moment something goes sideways.
• ●Reactiveness. Jumping into every fire because it feels productive.
• ●Avoidance. Putting off the tough conversation one more week.

When the shift is real, you still feel the pull of those habits. You just stop acting on it, and your team notices before you do.

Which of those three habits shows up first when your week falls apart?

Great Coaches Have Coaches Too

People are sometimes surprised that I still hire coaches. I have worked with coaches for sales, marketing, speaking, and coaching itself.

After I lost $3 million in one day in 2010, I leaned on a coach to help me rebuild. Every pro athlete has a coach. Not some of them- every one of them- so why would the person running your company be any different?

I can’t see my own blind spots, and neither can you. So here’s a simple test for any coach you’re considering. Ask who coaches them, and listen closely to the answer, because a coach who believes in coaching invests in it personally.

How to Get Your Money’s Worth From an Executive Coach

You’ve heard “you get out what you put in” a thousand times. But are you applying it to the coach you hire? Here’s how to make sure the investment pays off.

Grab a pen and some paper, give yourself ten minutes today, and write down the one or two things that have to be different in six months. Be specific: “I’m out of the weekly pipeline meeting” beats “I want to be a better leader.”

Ask how many founders at your size and growth rate the coach has worked with. Pattern experience is what lets a coach spot your problem in the first conversation instead of the tenth.

Treat every session as the start of the work, and pass the Monday test. Block time on your calendar for the conversation you committed to, the role you said you’d hand off, or the habit you said you’d break.

Tell your coach up front that you want to be pushed (yes, really). If you only hear things you agree with, you are paying for a mirror that flatters you.

At the 90-day mark, review your time, how you empower people, how you communicate, and how you see yourself as a leader. If nothing has moved, have an honest talk with your coach about why.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are quick answers to what founders most often want to know before they hire a coach.

Make the Call Like an Owner

I started by telling you I’ve sat in both chairs. From both of them, the answer looks the same: coaching is worth it when you want it badly enough to do the work.

So let me ask you. Are you ready to be challenged? Are you willing to do the work between sessions, even in your busiest month?

If that’s you, the next step is a conversation. If it isn’t you yet, that’s fine too, and it’s better to know now than three months into an engagement.

Your move.

Lead with courage.