20 Considerations When Hiring An Executive Coach For Your Business
Hiring an executive coach can help both budding and seasoned businesses accelerate business success. From building clarity and creating internal structure to offering needed feedback, the right executive coach enables leaders and teams to boost decision making and achieve set goals, while saving time and money.
However, bringing on a coach may not always be the right strategy for your business or business needs. While a coach can unlock significant opportunities, it’s important to only make that investment after carefully thinking through the advantages and disadvantages. Below, 20 Forbes Business Council members share specific factors to consider when bringing an executive coach into your business.
1. Do A Thorough Discovery Process
Consider doing a thorough discovery process to dive deep into your team’s culture and strengths, as well as any opportunities and unspoken challenges they face. Working on your goals is essential to your success, but this alone is not enough. Your team must be willing, capable and committed to driving these goals forward. In addition, have a clear understanding of what could be blocking progress from the people and process sides of change. - Loubna Noureddin, Mind Market
2. Define What Success Looks Like
Before hiring a coach, it’s important to define what success looks like. Too many leaders bring one in as a quick fix rather than a growth catalyst. If you have not aligned on measurable goals, whether they are cultural, strategic or performance-driven, you risk turning coaching into a check-the-box exercise instead of a transformative investment. - Mike Vietri, AmeriLife
3. Determine Your Team’s Readiness
Before bringing on a coach, your team must be ready. They must be humble enough to hear tough truths and align on values. Before we launched the Entrepreneurial Operating System, we met with our implementer three times before committing and then invested the necessary time and money. Coaching isn’t magic; it only works if you are willing to put in the hard work. You’re hiring a coach, not a fairy godmother. - Linda Varrell, Broadreach Public Relations
4. Get Clear On Intent
Before hiring a coach, get clear on intent. Coaching is most powerful when tied to specific outcomes, not just development. Define what success looks like, ensure readiness to stay in the learning zone, and link it to strategy. When leaders commit with clarity and openness, coaching drives measurable impact for individuals, teams and the business. - Andy Springer, RAIN Group
5. Assess Your Coachability, Desire To Improve And Vulnerability
Are you and your team coachable? Does the team have a desire to improve and be vulnerable? This is where growth happens. A good executive coach or coaching company will run a personality profile and ask you and your team for feedback to check self-awareness levels, coachability and vulnerability. As a CEO, your team needs to see you being open to this and leading by example. - Fiona Kesby, GoTeam
6. Ensure Leaders Are Bought-In
Leaders will rarely admit when poor leadership is the real issue. The best coach in the world can’t overcome that challenge if leaders are in denial. Coaching succeeds only when executives are willing to face uncomfortable truths, accept feedback and model change for their teams. They need to be willing to “walk the talk” in the shoes of the teams they lead. - Judi Hays, Judi Hays, Inc.
7. Define The Outcome
Too many leaders hire coaches without a clear success metric, which makes progress impossible to measure. Decide whether you need a sharper strategy, a stronger team culture or personal growth. With clear goals, you can choose the right coach, track ROI and ensure engagement drives measurable change rather than just good conversations. - Douglas Gregory, Promotion Products Pty Ltd
8. Get Team Alignment On Goals
Are you and your team aligned on the outcomes you want to achieve? Coaching makes the greatest impact when there’s a shared vision, whether that’s strengthening organizational culture, building leadership capacity or navigating change. When goals are clearly defined, the coaching process becomes less about exploration in the abstract and more about making progress with clear intentions. - Natasha Cox, Avani Services
9. Perform A Cultural Audit
Before engaging a coach, run a quick cultural audit. Is your environment psychologically safe enough for people to admit mistakes and try new behaviors? Coaching fails in cultures where fear blocks honesty. When safety is in place, feedback becomes fuel, not threat, and that’s when coaching transforms performance. - Johan Hajji, The BnB Group
10. Focus On Alignment
Before bringing on an executive coach, ensure their approach aligns with your company’s culture and long-term vision. True coaching goes beyond performance; it’s about building leaders who amplify culture, inspire teams and scale impact. When culture drives growth, coaching becomes a catalyst for lasting transformation and unlocks the full potential of both people and organizations. - Daniel Pena, DevSavant Inc.
11. Decide if You Want A Partner Or Consultant
Before bringing on an executive coach, get clear on whether you want a partner who works alongside you or a consultant who advises you from the outside. For example, our approach to coaching is deeply collaborative, building trust and working as part of the team. When leaders choose coaching that fits their culture, the impact is lasting and aligned with their goals. - Julia Rafal-Baer, ILO Group
12. Prioritize Trust
It is essential that you feel that you can trust the coach you are bringing in. In a way, they will be a short-term member of your team. They will need to both listen carefully and share accurate, sometimes difficult, truths. That trust creates the safety needed to be vulnerable, engage in honest reflection and ultimately use the feedback to grow in meaningful ways. - Catherine Wehlburg, Athens State University
13. Outline The Purpose And Expectations
The key to a successful coaching relationship lies in having the purpose of the engagement made crystal clear combined with measurable expectations. After that, a relationship must be developed in which the individual trusts the coach’s ability to create psychological safety and help them move past any issues that arise in achieving their goals. - Jason Richmond, Ideal Outcomes, Inc.
14. Ensure They’ve Been In Your Current Shoes
I’ve worked with several executive coaches with varying success. The best experiences happen when the coach has some experience at the stage of business you are at. In other words, you want someone who can deeply relate to what you are going through and offer advice from experience. - Dylan Gans, Baton
15. Make Time For The Coach
Don’t buy insight you have no time to use. Before hiring a coach, clear calendar space and take care of some “behavioral plumbing”—like any weekly one-on-one meetings, commitments and follow-through with task owners. Coaching only makes sense when the team members can absorb new habits. Otherwise, it becomes just inspirational shelfware without any added value. - Volen Vulkov, Enhancv
16. Examine The Team’s Humility
Before engaging an executive coach, humility is an essential trait in both the leader and the team. Speaking from experience, we’ve seen coaching work brilliantly and we’ve seen it fail. The difference comes down to whether people are willing to be deeply honest, open to feedback and ready to lean into discomfort. When those conditions are in place, the outcomes can be transformative. - Tina Vatanka Murphy, GHX
17. Prepare For Honest Feedback And Advice
Be prepared to recognize that a coach is not your friend. They are being hired to give feedback and establish accountability from the top down. Most executives are not used to hearing feedback from anyone, and if they are, it’s very unlikely that it is done publicly. A good coach will support you and help you see your blind spots rather than pat you on the back. This may sting the ego if you are not prepared. - Ariya Malek, Educational Awakening Center
18. Ensure Your Team Is Open To Change
Before hiring an executive coach, clarify whether your team is truly open to change. Coaching only works if there is a willingness to be challenged and held accountable. Without that readiness, even the best coach becomes an expensive echo. Alignment around a growth mindset ensures coaching drives transformation, not resistance. - David Price, The Price Group
19. Avoid Hiring A Coach ‘Just Because’
Don’t hire a coach just because it feels like the “next step.” Too many leaders outsource self-reflection before doing the hard work themselves. If you haven’t already gathered candid feedback from your team and owned the changes you can make, you’re not ready for a coach; you’re just paying to avoid the mirror. - Henry McIntosh, Twenty One Twelve Marketing
20. Consider The Long-Term Investment
Consider if you are willing to put in the time, energy and money to get the right coach and have them work with your team over time. Coaching isn’t a magic wand, but the payoff can be huge if you are committed. With over 18 years of experience coaching executives and their teams, we’ve seen leaders underestimate the value of the coaching, as well as the time and repetitions it will take to achieve an impact. - Maren Perry, Arden Coaching
This article was published on Forbes.com.
