Research & press

Coaching: an evidence-based approach to sustainable growth and performance

Coaching is increasingly recognized as an effective approach for supporting leaders, professionals, and teams in achieving meaningful and sustainable change.

The evidence

What the research shows

A growing body of scientific research demonstrates that coaching can positively influence leadership effectiveness, goal achievement, confidence, well-being, learning, and workplace performance.

Recent meta-analyses provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of coaching interventions. A 2023 meta-analysis by de Haan and Nilsson, based exclusively on 37 randomized controlled trials involving more than 2,500 participants, found that workplace and executive coaching produced significant positive effects across leadership and personal development outcomes.

Further research confirms that coaching contributes to improved organizational outcomes, including skill development, performance, motivation, and workplace attitudes. Cannon-Bowers and colleagues (2023), in a comprehensive meta-analysis of workplace coaching research, concluded that coaching is an effective intervention for enhancing individual and organizational outcomes.

Research also indicates positive effects on collaboration and team effectiveness. While the scientific evidence for team coaching is still developing compared with individual coaching, studies on team development interventions show that structured support, reflection, and feedback can strengthen communication, coordination, and collective performance.

Coaching is therefore not simply a conversation or a motivational exercise — it is a structured developmental process supported by scientific evidence. By combining evidence-based methods with a personalized approach, coaching helps individuals and teams unlock potential, navigate complexity, and create lasting change.

The evidence suggests coaching is particularly valuable in helping people

  • Strengthen leadership capabilities and decision-making
  • Clarify goals and translate intentions into action
  • Build self-efficacy and confidence
  • Develop new perspectives and learning behaviors
  • Improve resilience and overall well-being
Selected research evidence

The evidence, study by study

For each study: the citation, what it found in plain English, and how that evidence shapes the way we work.

de Haan, E., & Nilsson, V. O. (2023) · Academy of Management Learning & Education

What Can We Know about the Effectiveness of Coaching? A Meta-Analysis Based Only on Randomized Controlled Trials

What the research says

This review deliberately included only randomized controlled trials — the most rigorous design available, where people are randomly assigned to coaching or to a comparison group. Pooling 37 such trials with more than 2,500 participants, the authors found significant positive effects across leadership and personal development outcomes. In plain terms: even when you strip out the weaker study designs that tend to flatter results, coaching still works.

How it informs our coaching

It's why we work in structured programs rather than one-off conversations. The trials that show results use a defined process over time — so we contract for a series of sessions, set explicit goals at the outset, and review them at the end.

Cannon-Bowers, J. A., et al. (2023) · Frontiers in Psychology

Workplace Coaching: A Meta-analysis and Recommendations for Advancing the Science of Coaching

What the research says

A broad synthesis of workplace coaching research concluding that coaching is an effective intervention for both individual and organizational outcomes — including skill development, performance, motivation, and workplace attitudes. Put simply: coaching doesn't only change how people feel about their work, it moves the things organizations actually measure.

How it informs our coaching

With organizations, we agree up front on what should visibly change — skills, behaviors, ways of working — and design the engagement around those outcomes rather than around satisfaction alone.

Nicolau, A., Candel, O. S., Constantin, T., & Kleingeld, A. (2023) · Frontiers in Psychology

The Effects of Executive Coaching on Behaviors, Attitudes, and Personal Characteristics: A Meta-analysis of Randomized Control Trial Studies

What the research says

Drawing only on randomized controlled trials, this meta-analysis asked what executive coaching actually changes — and found effects at three levels: what people do (behaviors), how they see things (attitudes), and more stable personal characteristics. The short version: coaching shifts behavior, not just outlook.

How it informs our coaching

We work at the level of observable behavior. Insight is the starting point, not the destination — which is why sessions end with something you will actually do differently before we next meet.

Read the study →
Jones, R. J., Woods, S. A., & Guillaume, Y. R. F. (2016) · Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology

The Effectiveness of Workplace Coaching: A Meta-analysis of Learning and Performance Outcomes from Coaching

What the research says

Pooling workplace coaching studies, the authors found significant positive effects on both learning and performance outcomes. In everyday language: after coaching, people don't just report feeling more capable — they demonstrably learn and perform better at work.

How it informs our coaching

It's why an assessment sits at both ends of the journey. A clear starting point and an end-of-journey review make learning and performance shifts visible, rather than something we assume happened.

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014) · The Journal of Positive Psychology

Does Coaching Work? A Meta-analysis on the Effects of Coaching on Individual Level Outcomes in an Organizational Context

What the research says

One of the earliest broad meta-analyses in the field, examining coaching's effect across several categories of individual outcome — including performance and skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation. The takeaway: the benefits of coaching show up across the whole person, not in one narrow slice of life.

How it informs our coaching

It's part of why we start wide — mapping career, health, relationships and the rest with the Wheel of Life — before narrowing in. Movement in one area tends to lift the others.

Further reading

In the press

Harvard Business Review

How to Coach Yourself Through Complex Problems

Read the article → LGA

How Coaching Unlocks Family Enterprise Potential

Read the article → IMD · Case study

The Implications of Neuroscience for Coaching: Key Concepts and a Toolkit

Read the case study →

Put the evidence to work

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