March 2007

ithout a doubt, coaching is the hottest approach to enhancing the performance of the people in an enterprise—whether it’s teams of coaches working with managers in a Fortune 500 company, transition coaching for new C-level executive hires, or coaches working with the owners of a small businesses or sole proprietorships. It is clear from the increasing acceptance and investment in coaching, among the broad spectrum of business in many countries, that we believe coaching works.

But how well does it work? And how hard is it to measure?

In recent years, there have been a couple of detailed, well-documented studies that put the ROI of major coaching engagements within Fortune 500 companies between 600% and 700%, depending upon how improved retention was calculated.

But studies of this precision—funded by the corporate clients—are generally too costly to be meaningful as a sustained way of assessing the business benefits of coaching even at the level of large corporations.

Moreover, the issue of the benefits of coaching is, if anything, even more relevant to small business. For many firms considering hiring a coach, the notion of funding a major study to assess the results is laughable, yet it is critical that they be able to associate the benefits they are deriving from their investment in coaching.

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