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The future executive coach may therefore sit at the intersection of Coaching × OD × Business Advisory

Executive coaching is not becoming consulting. But high-value executive coaching is moving much closer to the business.

The future executive coach may therefore sit at the intersection of Coaching × OD × Business Advisory.

And this distinction is important:

Coach works through the leader.

Consultant works on the problem.

OD works on the system.

The contemporary executive coach increasingly needs to understand all three.

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In “What’s missing in leadership development?” 2017 article, McKinsey reported that only 11% of 500+ executives strongly agreed that their leadership-development interventions achieved and sustained the desired results. Their analysis identifies four factors associated with effectiveness: contextualizing development to strategy, reaching sufficient leaders, transferring learning into work, and reinforcing change through organizational systems.

Unfortunately, there is overwhelming evidence that the plethora of services, books, articles, seminars, conferences, and TED-like talks purporting to have the answers—a global industry estimated to be worth more than $50 billion—are delivering disappointing results. According to a recent Fortune survey, only 7 percent of CEOs believe their companies are building effective global leaders, and just 10 percent said that their leadership-development initiatives have a clear business impact.

McKinsey's “Building capabilities for performance” is also useful. Only about one-third of surveyed executives said their organizations used formal or informal coaching extensively. But among the organizations McKinsey classified as the most effective capability builders, that figure was 60%.

And in “Developing leadership capabilities,” McKinsey explicitly describes one-to-one coaching as a mechanism for developing both functional and behavioral capability and overcoming individual barriers.

McKinsey doesn't draw a hard wall between coaching and business context.

Its model is closer to:

Strategy → capabilities required → leader behavior → practice in actual work → coaching/feedback → performance

rather than:

Leader → private coaching conversation → self-awareness → satisfaction.

BCG states that research shows coaching senior leaders can increase the likelihood of transformation success by more than 70%. Note that this is a claim on BCG's service page rather than a finding I would present as an independent BCG empirical study without tracing the underlying research.

But something else on that page is highly relevant to your thinking.



BCG says its executive coaches are often former C-suite executives and describes one-to-one executive coaching as operating at the intersection of strategy and leadership, using both critical and operational lenses and working across the coaching and mentoring spectrum.

BCG's proposition is much closer to:

I understand the business context deeply enough to challenge your assumptions while helping you discover and execute better leadership choices. 



In a related piece, he reported that the research involved 800+ large organizations and that coaching generated a 150% greater return than performance assessment and almost 200% greater return than pay-for-performance processes, according to the study's business-impact methodology.

His Chevron example is interesting. Bersin reported that more than 1,200 Chevron leaders received personalized development and 94% said coaching made them more effective at their jobs; reported assessment/reflection measures included improvements in business alignment, problem-solving and strategic planning. These are vendor/client-reported outcomes, so I would treat them as illustrative rather than independent causal evidence. 


In Oct 2021, BetterUp announced another $300M round of funding, valuing the company at $4.7 Billion. Recurring revenues are already over $100 Million this year more than doubling year over year. Vendors like SpringHealth (Unicorn on the therapy side of coaching), CoachHub (fast follower to BetterUp), Torch (coaching integrated into L&D), and others are now riding this wave.

An interesting paper on link above, as offered by the Pune chapter of @ICF \

"State of Executive Coaching in South and Southeast Asia — Trends 2025–26"

Go download it if you have interest in learning, OD, coaching etc.
This report is bold is calling out the coaching TRUTH! The Coaching engagement needle has moved drastically away from its conventional setting of a Guru syndrome!
For SPONSORS, the payer, coaching now, "officially" and "seriously" is a business consulting engagement and no more a socializing pod, sponsored by a socialite-gullible and attention seeking, event photo-op CHRO :)
Thankfully, Coaching has now been rescued from an agenda-holding executive! It means business outcomes that can be measured for its true impact! Can't thank this "Sponsor" constituent being cognizant of the meaning & purpose of coaching! Sanctity of this function is restored!

Every sponsor now is endorsing a Ram Charan or like of him as a Coach! A Linda Hill and a Gary Hamel or a Vineet Nayar. Ram was not wrong when he wrote the nerve ticking HBR article: Time to Split HR---and the HR meltdown was an epic theatre... Josh Bersin's rebuttal article did assuage some scars though but, fact remains, Coaching Sponsor now has to the Business not HR!
While Project Aristotle and Oxygen became landmark research, besides HCL tech transformation story, the Humu, a Perceptyx Company, couldn't cut it well as a practical tool, when sponsors craved for "Performance" and not just wellbeing and engagement etc.

Great effort by the team that brought this report out. Sincere gratitude folks!
Special thanks to Dr Rupinder Kaur PHD , ICF - MCC, EMCC - Senior Practitioner Jayshree Kirtane Jonathan Passmore.

This report by ICF Pune chapter must be taken seriously by all three cohorts: Coach, Coachee and the Sponsors. $5 Bn plus Annual business of Coaching can't sell if it doesn't payback as a service! It's not DEIB folks :)

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