Pathways to executive coaching – Are you expecting champagne results on a beer budget?

When you buy executive coaching, do you actually know what you need? Are you paying premium fees for a commodity product or, worse, expecting champagne results on a beer budget?

If we take a broad view, coaching contributed an estimated $5.34 billion to the global economy last year (ICF 2025). In a self-regulated industry, it is impossible to estimate the true number of executive coaches worldwide, particularly if you include unaccredited coaches. The evolution of the coaching sector has widened access, improved cost control and produced formats that a bespoke model could never have reached. However, it has also commoditised coaching, which carries risks for executives, coaches and buyers of coaching.

This is not the human-versus-AI argument; the real question is sharper. When does commoditised coaching genuinely serve the need for executives, and when is it quietly selling convenience and efficiency in place of depth? Scalable, low-cost, AI-enabled coaching has a legitimate place; however, more choice has not necessarily resulted in more effective buying decisions. The problem we see is not confusion; it is a lack of discernment. Too few buyers do the due diligence, weigh the options against one another or ask the hard questions before they commit, and skipping that scrutiny is expensive and risky when you are commissioning at senior level.

Don’t spend a penny until you’ve asked these two questions

Before you start looking for a coach, two questions come first, and both have teeth.

1. Is coaching even the right intervention?

Coaching buyers frequently reach for coaching when training, mentoring or plain performance management would do the job better and cheaper. We see two mistakes repeatedly recurring. The first is that delivering a KPI is not a coaching goal; it’s the executive’s job. Secondly, managing underperformance is not coaching; it’s management!

Executive coaching earns its place where there is no single right answer, where a genuine developmental shift in leadership is wanted and where the organisation will actively support the change rather than quietly resist it or abdicate any responsibility for the success of this process.

2. Is the executive coaching-ready?

Has the executive been honestly assessed against motivation, appetite for change, self-awareness and openness to challenge? Coaching a leader who has no intention of doing anything differently as a result of the coaching sessions is pointless – to enjoy champagne, it has to be drunk!

Four pathways, one expensive trap

Once the above two questions have been answered, buyers can start to determine what coaching solution will serve the coaching need best. As we see it, the current coaching market generally sorts into four classifications. We believe each is legitimate; however, the way they are pitched and priced are worlds apart. The trap is buying one and expecting the outcomes of another, then blaming coaching when the two fail to align.

Our table below identifies the key buying considerations when commissioning one-off, one-to-one executive coaching assignments to address the individual needs of the executive in furtherance of delivering the organisation’s agenda. This table does not identify the buying points for a systematic coaching programme to bring about organisational change through an entire population. If that were required, an organisation could use all or any combination of these to effect that change as part of its portfolio strategy.

Table 1 – Classifying executive coaching: a pathway to buying discernment

Source: Humphrey and Sinclair, 2026

The full framework (available on request) separates these four classifications across nine dimensions, from contracting and commercial drivers to the pricing each level commands. You can see from this abridged version that, as you move through this framework, the coaching need evolves from transactional to co-created. This highlights the importance of a robust coaching-need diagnosis. Armed with a clear diagnosis, the appropriate coaching solution readily surfaces.

We are at pains to point out that there is no wrong coaching solution, only a misaligned one. Buying a rocket science coaching solution for a standardised need is as costly and ineffective as doing the reverse.

The buying task is discernment

We propose that the question buyers ask is not what is available, but what is most aligned to the executive’s need. A platform-based service may be exactly right for a tactical skill or broad engagement; however, it is the wrong tool for deep, high-stakes change.

The message here is pointed. Buying on scale, speed and price rarely captures what executive coaching is worth, and one-size-fits-all commissioning is a false economy dressed up as efficiency. The harder truth is that the buying process is missing the complexity and diversity of the coaching market, and we see that many organizations have lost the capability to commission executive coaching well. Rebuilding this capability—the knowledge, the criteria and the confidence to procure properly – is important and not an optional extra to a heavily loaded HR or L&D role.

Standardised and customised models are fine for standardised and customised needs, and they will keep growing because they meet a real demand. That is progress, and it should be welcomed. What they cannot do is carry the depth, maturity and artistry that leaders need when the challenge is genuinely complex and the stakes are high. That is champagne work, and it cannot be bought on a beer budget. Pretending otherwise is precisely where organisations waste their money.