How to Select an Executive Coach

In 2012, conservators began restoring The Prodigal Son, a series of six 17th-century paintings by Spanish artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Over the next six years, careful conservation brought details, colors, and brushwork that had become obscured back into clearer view.

Restoration, at its best, isn’t an act of reinvention. It begins with careful attention to what is already present, an understanding of how all the elements work together, and the skill to bring greater clarity to the whole. There is something compelling about that idea.

Executive coaching can work in much the same way.

By the time someone reaches a senior leadership role, there is already a great deal on the canvas: years of experience, instincts sharpened by difficult decisions, relationships, successes, missteps, habits and ways of seeing the world. The role of a coach is not to arrive with a new picture in mind. It is to help a leader see more clearly what is already there, understand what may be getting in the way, and become more intentional about what comes forward next.

For CHROs and talent leaders, finding that coach means looking at business and leadership experience, professional coaching expertise, methodology, chemistry, organizational context and how progress will be measured.

What does the executive need from coaching?

Before looking at coaches, look at the leader.

What has brought coaching into the conversation now? Perhaps an executive is stepping into a broader role. A technically accomplished leader needs to become better at bringing people with them. A recurring piece of feedback keeps resurfacing. Or someone being prepared for greater responsibility needs to expand how they lead.

Clarify what needs to be different, why it matters now and what meaningful progress would look like. This also helps establish whether coaching is the right intervention. At Ariel, executive coaching engagements typically run six to twelve months and may include 360-degree feedback, stakeholder alignment and targeted coaching connected to what the leader is navigating in their day-to-day work.

What should you look for in an executive coach?

No single credential or quality tells you whether someone will be right for a particular executive. Look at the whole picture:

• Relevant business and leadership experience
• Professional coaching expertise and credentials
• A clear, rigorous methodology
• The ability to establish trust and offer meaningful challenge
• An understanding of organizational context
• A way to define and measure progress

Ariel’s own standards for its coaches offer a useful benchmark. Requirements include at least five years of independent coaching experience, demonstrated experience coaching at VP level and above, knowledge of industry-standard coaching processes and frontline business experience. Certifications such as ICF PCC or MCC, Hogan, Korn Ferry 360 and Benchmarks 360 are highly preferred.

Credentials establish one kind of credibility. Business experience brings another: an understanding of what leadership feels like when decisions are real, relationships are complex and the consequences extend beyond the individual.

How important is business experience?

Executive coaching happens in the middle of organizational life: changing strategies, complex stakeholder relationships, transformation, uncertainty and decisions where there may be no obvious right answer.

A coach who understands those realities can consider a leader’s behavior in the context of the team, role and organization around them.

This is central to Ariel’s approach. Its executive coaching practice is backed by more than 200 globally experienced executive coaches, and frontline business experience is one of Ariel’s stated requirements for coaches joining its network.

That perspective matters, especially when the leader across from them has spent years earning that chair.

What should you look for in a coaching methodology?

Insight can begin with a good conversation. Lasting change usually asks for more.

Ariel uses a globally consistent eight-step methodology that moves through setting expectations, introspection, data gathering and 360 feedback, stakeholder check-in, development planning and alignment, closing alignment, targeted coaching, and progress measurement.

The sequence matters because it connects insight to the leader’s actual work. Stakeholders help clarify what success should look like, targeted coaching focuses on real decisions and situations, and progress is ultimately tracked through shifts in behavior, decision-making and impact.

A strong methodology should provide that kind of structure while remaining responsive to the individual leader.

How should you measure executive coaching success?

Research gives us reason to take coaching seriously. A 2023 meta-analysis of workplace coaching studies found a moderate positive overall effect, with particularly strong results for skill-related outcomes.

For a CHRO, though, the more useful question is: what does success look like for this leader?

Perhaps they delegate differently and the team takes greater ownership. A difficult stakeholder relationship shifts. Meetings become more decisive. Communication becomes clearer.

Measurement should therefore begin before coaching does. Ariel’s methodology aligns stakeholders around expectations and what success will look like, then tracks changes in behavior, decision-making and impact over time.

The executive and the organization should ultimately be able to answer a simple question: What is this leader doing differently, and what difference is it making?

How do you know when you have found the right executive coach?

Finding the right executive coach ultimately comes down to how these qualities come together. The coach needs enough experience to understand the realities of the executive’s world, the expertise to turn insight into meaningful development, and a methodology that gives the work direction. Just as importantly, there needs to be the kind of trust that allows for candor, challenge, and conversations that can genuinely move a leader forward.

Once you have a shortlist, see our blog on the 10 questions you should ask when selecting an executive coach.

Like skilled restoration, great executive coaching brings existing strengths into clearer view, helping leaders see what they already bring and what they can draw forward as leadership asks more of them.

The work is not about creating something new, but revealing what is already there in its fullest expression. And sometimes, allowing it to be seen in its full glory.