What Organisations Get Wrong When Commissioning Coaching Programmes

Organisations spend serious money on coaching. The global market is worth billions and growing. Yet a surprising number of coaching programmes deliver disappointing results. Not because the coaching is bad, but because the programme was set up to fail from day one.

We work with coaches and organisations every day. The same mistakes come up again and again.

Mistake 1: No baseline

This is the big one. An organisation commissions a coaching programme, matches coaches with participants, and kicks things off. Six months later, someone asks “did it work?” and nobody can answer because nobody measured where people started.

Without a baseline, you cannot demonstrate change. Full stop. It doesn’t matter how transformative the coaching feels if you can’t show where someone was before and where they are now.

A baseline doesn’t need to be elaborate. A self-assessment against key competencies. A short 360 survey. Even a structured goal-setting conversation with documented starting points. Something. Anything. Just do it before session one.

Mistake 2: Treating coaching as a perk

“We offer coaching as part of our benefits package.” Sounds generous. Often produces mediocre results.

When coaching is positioned as a perk, it attracts people who want it rather than people who need it. There’s nothing wrong with wanting coaching, but the highest-impact programmes are targeted. They identify specific development needs, match participants deliberately, and connect coaching to real business outcomes.

Coaching as a perk says “we’re a nice employer.” Coaching as a strategic development tool says “we’re investing in specific capabilities that matter to this organisation.” The second version gets budget renewed. The first gets cut when times are tight.

Mistake 3: Choosing coaches on price alone

Procurement departments love a competitive tender. Line up five coaching providers, compare day rates, pick the cheapest. Job done.

Except coaching is not a commodity. The difference between a good coach and an average one is enormous, and it’s almost impossible to assess from a proposal document. A coach’s ability to build rapport, challenge effectively, and hold space for difficult conversations doesn’t show up in a pricing spreadsheet.

This doesn’t mean price is irrelevant. But it should be one factor among several. Look at methodology. Ask about measurement approaches. Talk to references. Better yet, run a pilot with a small group before committing to a full programme. The cost of cheap coaching that doesn’t work is far higher than the premium for coaching that does.

Mistake 4: No visibility into what’s happening

Many organisations commission coaching and then have zero insight into the programme until it ends. They don’t know which participants are engaged. They don’t know what themes are emerging. They can’t tell whether sessions are actually happening.

This isn’t about reading session notes or breaking confidentiality. Coaching requires trust, and participants must feel safe to speak openly. But there’s a wide middle ground between “we know nothing” and “we read every transcript.”

Aggregate data is the answer. How many sessions have taken place? What percentage of participants have set goals? Are assessment scores trending in the right direction across the cohort? What themes are showing up most frequently? None of this compromises individual confidentiality, and all of it helps programme sponsors make informed decisions.

If your coaching provider can’t give you this kind of visibility, ask why.

Mistake 5: No clear outcomes defined

“We want to develop our leaders.” Great. What does that mean, specifically?

Vague programme objectives produce vague results. When outcomes aren’t defined upfront, coaches default to whatever the coachee wants to work on. Sometimes that aligns with organisational needs. Sometimes it becomes six months of someone processing workplace frustrations with no tangible development.

Good programmes define outcomes at two levels. At the programme level: what capabilities are we building? What does success look like for the organisation? At the individual level: what specific goals is each participant working toward, and how do those connect to the programme’s broader aims?

This doesn’t mean prescribing what happens in every session. Coaches need flexibility to follow the coachee’s agenda. But there should be a clear line of sight between individual coaching goals and organisational priorities.

Mistake 6: One and done

A programme runs. It ends. Everyone moves on. No follow-up. No longitudinal measurement. No reinforcement.

Behaviour change takes time. A twelve-session coaching engagement can spark real development, but without reinforcement, old patterns creep back. The best programmes build in follow-up: check-in sessions three or six months after the programme ends, repeat assessments to track whether gains held, peer support structures to maintain momentum.

This is also where data from the programme itself becomes valuable. If you tracked goals, assessments, and 360 feedback during the engagement, you have a foundation for follow-up conversations. If you didn’t track anything, you’re starting from scratch every time.

Getting it right

None of these mistakes are hard to fix. They just require intentionality at the design stage rather than scrambling for evidence at the end.

Set a baseline before coaching starts. Define what success looks like. Give coaches room to work while maintaining programme-level visibility. Choose providers on quality, not just cost. And build in follow-up so the investment compounds over time.

The organisations that get the most from coaching are the ones that treat it as a serious intervention, not an HR tick-box. The coaching profession is ready to deliver measurable results. But it needs commissioning partners who are willing to do the groundwork to make that possible.