The question usually arrives at renewal. What are we getting for this? By then the useful evidence has gone. Nobody wrote down the Tuesday your client raised a problem early for the first time, or how their manager responded.
How do you show the value of coaching?
Agree at the start what should be different, with whom. Then collect dated examples while it happens, not at the end.
That sounds obvious. Most coaching still starts with a goal like “be a more confident leader” and ends with a conversation about whether it feels better. Neither the client nor the sponsor can check that against anything.
Why isn’t “coaching works” enough?
Because the research answers a different question.
There is good evidence that coaching helps on average. Tim Theeboom and colleagues pooled 18 studies and found positive effects on performance, well-being, coping, work attitudes and goal-directed self-regulation. Rebecca Jones and colleagues found a positive overall effect across 17 studies of workplace coaching.
That supports the case for coaching in general. It says nothing about this client, this year. The sponsor is not asking whether coaching works. They are asking whether it worked here.
What should you agree at the start?
Three things, in plain words your client would use:
- Where it should show. The people or situations where the change matters: a manager, a peer, a team, or a kind of conversation your client finds hard.
- The behaviours. What your client will do more of, in a way other people could see. “Raise risks while there’s still time to act” rather than “communicate better”.
- What others would notice. “She stops checking my dates.” “He brings me problems earlier.”
Your client chooses these. Your job is to help them get specific enough that there will be something to look for.
What counts as evidence between sessions?
Short, dated notes, written close to the moment:
- What they tried, and when.
- What happened. The other person’s response, described, not interpreted.
- What they’ll do next. Including the moments they saw and let pass.
None of this survives two weeks of memory. Written down, it means your next session starts from what happened at work, and the end-of-engagement review has something real to look at.
Can you prove coaching caused the change?
No, and it’s worth saying so before anyone asks.
Your client changed jobs, their manager left, a project ended. Any of those can move things. What you can show is contribution: what your client set out to do, what they did, and what they and the people around them noticed. That’s honest and specific, which is more than most evaluations manage.
The strongest evidence is the other person’s view, because it’s the one your client can’t award themselves. It’s also the hardest to move. Jones and colleagues found smaller effects where multisource feedback was used. Treat the other person’s view as a check, not a scorecard.
What should you bring to a review with the client or sponsor?
- The change you agreed at the start, in the client’s words.
- A handful of dated examples: what they tried and what happened.
- How their own view of the relationship moved, labelled as their view.
- What got in the way, and what they’ll keep doing.
Agree with your client what the sponsor sees before you meet. The examples are theirs. Sharing them is their decision, not something the sponsor is owed.
How does Trust Leader help?
In the Trust Leader Hub, your client finds the behaviours to work on, from a Self-Assessment or a Trust Map for a relationship that matters, practises them through short activities, and records a dated Reflection after each one. You see what they choose to share before you meet. The Trust Journey report brings it together, and it belongs to your client.