Good morning!
In the last 15 years, we’ve coached thousands of senior leaders. From that extensive experience, we’ve found that coaching can have significant impact in at least five talent scenarios.
1. Transitions – When senior leaders join an organization from the outside or take on larger roles, they need to quickly understand their new context, create a plan, and execute that plan so they deliver results in a way that is aligned with their culture. Coaching provides thoughtful and pragmatic support during those shifts and aligns with McKinsey research showing that 40% of leadership transitions fail within 18 months without structured support.
2. Navigating significant change – HBR research indicates that 70% of change initiatives fail without proper leadership support. During transformative periods (changes in strategy, culture, operating models, and/or org structure), coaching helps leaders build self-awareness, adapt their mindset, adjust their approach, and lead by example for others in the organization.
3. Succession planning and preparation – Organizations are accelerating the readiness of identified successors through targeted coaching, ensuring leaders are appropriately prepared and ready when needed. According to Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends, organizations with robust succession planning are 2.6x more likely to outperform their peers financially.
4. High-potential development – Gartner research shows companies with strong HiPo programs realize 2.3x the profit of organizations with weak development approaches. Identifying leaders with significant potential for future impact is an important step, and it needs to be followed by investing in those leaders to help them build capabilities. Coaching—either as part of a leadership development program or standalone—helps high potential leaders expand their capacity and have more impact.
5. Addressing gaps – Even the strongest senior leader has development areas. Whether it’s empowering their team, navigating conflict, articulating a vision and strategy, or communicating more effectively, coaching helps leaders understand their strengths and development areas, explore how they’ve been operating, experiment with new ways of working, and build better habits. According to research published in Personnel Psychology, executives who received targeted coaching showed improvement in 86% of their identified skill gaps within 12 months, compared to just 18% improvement in a control group.
We’d welcome your insights on how these patterns align with your organization’s coaching strategy. What other applications are you finding most valuable?
Sincerely,
Your Boda/BTS Executive Coaching Team
P.S. We’re also happy to discuss how these insights might apply to your specific talent development needs.