Jun29
(Hint: yes, it is)
Take any world-class athlete and strip away their coaching staff. No performance psychologist, no tactical advisor, no one to review film with on Monday morning after the Sunday night upset. How long before results slip? Nobody would even suggest the experiment… because it would be absurd. Yet we run that exact experiment with executives every single day, and wonder why executive performance remains the number-one organizational bottleneck.
I get it, you’re offended already because I’m calling your uncoached executives amateurs. Well, what if I was following the science on this? Would you be brave enough to have a look at it with me?
A review of meta-analyses and peer-reviewed studies reveals a mountain of evidence showing that coaching functions as a comparable performance differentiator for executives and athletes alike. So why is coaching mandatory for athletes but optional for executives? I honestly don’t understand this and I welcome your help. Don’t we want them both to win? Don’t investors, employees, and the executives themselves all benefit when leaders perform better?
Come with me. I want to show you something.
The most compelling evidence is that meta-analytic effect sizes for athletic and executive coaching fall in the same moderate range:
| Domain | Effect Size | Source | Sample |
| Sport psychology interventions |
d = 0.51 (moderate) | Lochbaum et al., PLOS ONE (2022) | 30 meta-analyses, 16 constructs |
| Executive coaching (RCTs only) | g = 0.59 (moderate) | de Haan & Nilsson, AMLE (2023) | 37 RCTs, n = 2,528 |
| Workplace coaching (all studies) | g = 0.43–0.51 | Nicolau & Candel (2023); Wang et al. (2022) | 20 studies, n = 957 |
| Coach education → athlete outcomes | g = 0.38–0.47 | Li et al., IJSSC (2025) | k = 193, N = 180,658 |
| Executive coaching → goal attainment | g = 1.29 (large) | Wang et al., JWAM (2022) | k = 20, n = 957 |
Both athletic and executive domains consistently land in the 0.4–0.6 range for overall performance effect. In plain language: coaching moves the needle by about the same amount whether you’re preparing for the Olympics or the boardroom.
University of Chicago researchers Berry and Fowler found that coaches explain 20–30% of the variation in team success across Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL, and college sports. That’s not a trivial number. What it means is that swapping a below-average coach for an above-average one in the NBA is worth roughly 14 extra wins per season.
On the corporate side, Gallup’s research shows that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, and engagement is the closest corporate equivalent to wins and losses. More engaged employees are 17% higher performing and 21% more profitable, with 41% less absenteeism and 59% less turnover. Both findings confirm the same thing: the person leading the team is the single most impactful variable in performance outcomes.
Of course the sports team and its captain always has a coach. So why not in business?
When you index baseline performance at 100, the improvement pattern is strikingly parallel:
Athletes with sport psychology support perform roughly half a standard deviation better than those without. That’s like moving from the 50th to the 70th percentile of performance.
Executives who receive coaching report a 70% increase in individual performance, 50% in team performance, and 48% in organizational performance, according to ICF survey data. (Worth noting: these are self-reported figures from coaching clients, which makes them directionally powerful even if the exact percentages should be taken with a grain of salt.)
The Multiplier Nobody Can Ignore
Here’s where it gets really interesting. The landmark Olivero, Bane & Kopelman study in Public Personnel Management, found that management training alone improves executive productivity by 22%. But add coaching on top of that training and productivity jumps to 88%. That’s a four-times multiplier from the same people, in the same organization.
This mirrors what we see in athletic coaching, where structured psychological skills training delivers effect sizes of g = 0.83 compared to uncoached controls. Training gives you knowledge. Coaching gives you application. The gap between the two is where performance lives.
If you want to know where the expanded margin of your company is really hiding, try the shadow of your executive’s ego.
The ROI Tells the Same Story
Executive coaching ROI: A widely cited MetrixGlobal study found a 788% return on investment at a Fortune 500 company. The ICF/PwC Global Coaching Client Study (2024) reports a more conservative (and arguably more reliable) median of 5–7x the investment, with 86% of organizations reporting positive returns.
Athletic coaching: In competitive sports, “even a small beneficial effect on performance derived from a psychological intervention may prove the difference between success and failure.” And the measured effect (d = 0.51) is actually larger than the effect size for healthy eating and exercise interventions (d = 0.31).
Read that again.
Coaching has a bigger measurable impact on athletic performance than diet and exercise. And we’re still treating executive coaching like a expense, an L&D luxury item, or a punishment for remedial performance?
Perhaps it’s time we strengthened our corporate wellness programs, boardroom mindfulness sessions, and executive meal plans with something the data says works better… good executive coaching.
Tell Me Again, Why Aren’t We Doing This?
No elite athlete would compete without a coach, yet a Stanford-Miles Group survey found that nearly two-thirds of CEOs don’t receive any outside coaching or leadership advice, while 100% said they were open to it. The demand is there. The evidence is there. The gap is a failure of organizational competence, not of available science.
Here’s what the research shows:
The effect sizes are comparable: moderate (g ≈ 0.5) in both athletic and executive domains.
Coaching explains a significant portion of performance variance in both arenas: 20–30% in sports; 70% of engagement variance in the workplace.
The “training alone vs. training plus coaching” gap is massive: from a mere 22% to a staggering 88% for executives, mirroring how psychological skills training outperforms no-intervention controls for athletes (g = 0.83).
Both domains show that the coach-performer relationship itself is a key mechanism driving outcomes.
The data doesn’t just suggest a comparison here, it shows, rather compellingly, that coaching occupies the same evidence tier as a performance differentiator regardless of whether the arena is a stadium or a boardroom.
If you wouldn’t send an athlete to the Olympics without a coach, don’t send your executives to compete in the market without one either. Unless, of course, you’re not that bothered about winning.
References
1. Lochbaum, M., et al. (2022). Sport psychology and performance meta-analyses: A systematic review. PLOS ONE, 17(2), e0263408. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0263408
2. de Haan, E. & Nilsson, V.O. (2023). What can we know about the effectiveness of coaching? A meta-analysis based only on randomized controlled trials. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 22(4). https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amle.2022.0107
3. Nicolau, A. & Candel, O.S. (2023). The effects of executive coaching on behaviors, attitudes, and personal characteristics: A meta-analysis of randomized control trial studies. Frontiers in Psychology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10272735/
4. Wang, Q., Lai, Y., Xu, X. & McDowall, A. (2022). The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of contemporary psychologically informed coaching approaches. Journal of Work-Applied Management, 14(1). https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/jwam-04-2021-0030/full/pdf
5. Li, C. et al. (2025). Coach education and athlete outcomes. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/17479541241283442
6. Berry, C. & Fowler, A. (2019). Do coaches matter? Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/how-much-do-coaches-impact-success-sports
7. Gallup (2015). Managers account for 70% of variance in employee engagement. https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx
8. Olivero, G., Bane, K.D. & Kopelman, R.E. (1997). Executive coaching as a transfer of training tool: Effects on productivity in a public agency. Public Personnel Management, 26(4), 461-469.
9. MetrixGlobal (2023). Executive coaching ROI study. As cited in Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertamatuson/2023/06/16/unlocking-potential-how-executive-coaching-transforms-organizations/
10. ICF/PwC (2024). Global Coaching Client Study. https://highperformanceorgs.com/executive-coaching-roi/
11. American University (n.d.). The ROI of executive coaching. https://www.american.edu/provost/ogps/executive-education/executive-coaching/roi-of-executive-coaching.cfm
12. Psychologische Interventionen im Sport (2023). Effects of psychological interventions on competitive athletic performance. Sports Medicine. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10933186/
13. Stanford GSB & The Miles Group (2013). Executive coaching survey. https://suzipomerantz.com/executiveexcellence/stanford-executive-coaching-study-reveals-most-ceos-want-coaching/
14. How coach leadership behavior influences athletes’ performance (2025). Frontiers in Psychology. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11794316/
By Dr. Corrie Jonn Block, PhD, DBA
Keywords: Leadership, Business Strategy, Coaching
The Amateur CEO: Is Coaching as Much of a Performance Differentiator for Executives as It Is for Athletes?
How to Go From Culture Clash to Culture Match
When the Customer Can’t Be Seen: Rudeness, Distance, and the Psychology of Contact Centres
The Dangerous Comfort of Power
Friday’s Change Reflection Quote - Leadership of Change - Change Leaders Build Resilient Institutions
