I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, and after more than 130 interviews with scaling CEOs, here is my answer: organizations fund executive coaching to keep the leaders they already have. Jennifer Barnes, CEO of Optima Office, runs a 108-person consulting firm at 86% retention, a number she ties directly to investing in her team before problems turn into resignations.
Quick Answer
I’m Glenn Gow, and after more than 130 interviews with scaling CEOs, I’ve found that companies who fund coaching for their top performers keep more people than companies who only send struggling managers to remedial training. Ankur Ahlowalia, CEO of Chronus, is proof: Motorola selected him for a two-year leadership program out of a workforce of more than one hundred thousand employees, and his own playbook today accelerates top performers instead of trying to fix underperformers. Coaching pays for itself in retained payroll, avoided recruiting fees, and preserved momentum.
The CFO Objection Every Coaching Budget Runs Into
Every CFO asks the same question before signing off on a coaching budget. What happens if we spend this money and the person leaves anyway? Ankur hears that objection constantly, and he answers it with a second question instead of a defense. Chris Rolls, CEO of the Americas and Group Chief Revenue Officer at TTC Global, got the other side of that same bet early in his career, when the founders of his company decided to fund him rather than replace him. “When I was beginning to step up as a leader in the organization, one of the things that I was very thankful for is that the founders invested in me. And I worked with a CEO coach. One of the activities we went through was both a self analysis of where my strengths and weaknesses are, but also an analysis from my peers, and then we came up with a personalized professional development plan to improve on the areas which I needed to in order to be successful in my new roles.” Ankur answers the same objection Chris lived through. “I love the funny phrase where the CFO is looking at a proposal to develop the people in the company. And the CFO says, ‘What if we spend all this effort and time and money and they leave?’ And the CEO says, ‘What if we don’t do that and they stay?’ I just believe if you develop your people and you give them opportunity to grow, they won’t leave.”
Ankur has personal proof this works. Motorola selected him for a two-year leadership cohort out of a workforce of more than one hundred thousand employees. “I am where I am today, largely in part to the Motorola Leadership Program. I was a software engineer. They picked 25 of us out of a hundred plus thousand workforce and they put us through a two-year leadership program. It changed my life.”
Why the Best Leaders Get the Coaching Budget
Most companies point coaching dollars at the leader who is struggling. Ankur points his in the other direction. “My entire playbook in any company I walk in is to identify the talent. Take your top talent, you empower them more, you give them more opportunities, and you find a faster way of acceleration without having to spend a lot.”
Chris scales this idea past a single hire. He tells his team to build a leadership engine, a structure built to keep replenishing itself as the company scales. “You can’t just go off and indefinitely hire top tier talent with all the skills that you need within your organization. One of the areas that I’m really passionate about is the investment in our people, the coaching of them, mentoring. I tell the team, you don’t just need to build a leadership team, you need to build a leadership engine because you’re always having to replenish those leaders as you scale up.”
Krishna Srinivasan, CEO of Live Oak, watches this breakdown happen at a specific point in a company’s growth, right around the $10 million to $20 million revenue range, when a founder can no longer manage every employee directly. “As a company scales, you start to appreciate the importance of having a mid layer of managers to help drive that. So investing in enough professional development resources to go make that happen is really important.”
I tell every CEO in my coaching practice to run the same test before they set a development budget. List your top ten performers by name. Ask which three you would fight hardest to keep if a competitor called them tomorrow. Those three get the coaching budget first. The person who missed their numbers last quarter goes on a performance plan, not a coaching plan.
The Turnover Cost Nobody Puts on the P&L
A coaching budget shows up as a line item. The cost of losing an executive shows up on no line item at all, and most companies never build the spreadsheet that would show it. Jennifer built hers. “If we were to lose somebody, let’s say a controller is on five accounts and we lose that person, all of the time to replace them is put to staff transition cost. And so we know exactly what that is. We know the exact cost to replace certain people, recruiting costs.”
Jennifer frames the same math as an investment runway. “Burnout and not taking care of your team, it ends up costing you more. And so you have to think of it as an investment runway. If I do this now, that means six months from now, a year from now, it’s gonna pay positively.” Lindsay Johnson, CEO of FitPros, makes the same case to a skeptical CFO using data instead of a feeling. “The very first thing in front of their face is look at your data claims. Your medical insurance claims are telling you that your employees are struggling. If those were taken care of, those claims would go down, so you will save money. It’s ROI in front of their face.”
Here is the choice in front of every CEO reading this, laid out side by side.
| Decision | What the CFO Fears | What Actually Happens | Downstream Outcome for the CEO |
| Skip the coaching budget | Money spent on people who might leave | Top performers plateau and start interviewing elsewhere | Higher turnover, invisible replacement costs, a thinner leadership bench |
| Fund the coaching budget | Same dollars, same risk of departure | Top performers grow inside the company instead of outside it | Higher retention, a deeper bench, a lower total cost of turnover |
Coaching Teaches CEOs to Let Go, Not Just Level Up
Dan Corrigan, Co-Founder and CEO of Organic 3, resisted coaching before he tried it. He describes the shift a phrase gave him once he did. “Coaching is kind of like, that’s not for me. That was kind of my mindset. But once you get into it, it really allowed me to view what my value to the company is. One of the things that I came across that really stuck with me was the phrase ‘who not how,’ finding people that can do certain things that you’re not very good at, and getting out of the way so somebody else can thrive in that role.”
Michael Cherney, Co-Founder and CEO of Cooler Logistics, uses weekly coaching sessions to keep the company’s problems small instead of company-threatening. “I’ve been fortunate enough to work with an executive coach on a weekly basis. It’s allowed us to navigate startup entrepreneurial challenges and make them molehills, not mountains. We’ve been able to navigate challenges that would normally derail a company.” When Michael describes his leadership team, he means people with specific, coached-into roles, not a group figuring it out as they go. “I’ve worked with each and every one of them. We’ve also worked with executive coaches. They know exactly what the role is. There’s clarity of role, clarity of objective, and I have full confidence that they are going to treat each other with that type of respect.”
Neutral Coaches Fix What the Org Chart Can’t
A CEO cannot referee a fight between two of their own executives and stay neutral at the same time. Dave Gilbert, CEO of Fairsquare, solved that by bringing in coaches who sit outside the org chart entirely. “I think true leadership is always trying to learn. We have a variety of coaches at our company that help at different levels within the organization, and that really helps on the communication part. Sometimes the coaches are good to help clear the air on a neutral site, and it brings any tension down.”
Adam Hasemeyer, CEO of Valtech, runs both individual coaching and team coaching in parallel, using tools built to surface how people actually operate under pressure. “I’ve also had executive coaches for myself personally. We’ve had team-based coaches that we’ve worked on team dynamics and trust and credibility. We’ve used all the tools, whether it’s StrengthsFinder or Enneagram. Understanding the dynamics of a leadership team and your organization is super, super important.”
I see the same pattern across almost every fast-growing company I interview on my podcast. Companies that bring in a neutral coach before politics slow down a decision keep more of their leadership team than companies that wait for a blowup to force the conversation.
Coaching Only Works When the CEO Does It Too
Damon Lembi, CEO of Learnit, has watched enough coaching programs fail to know exactly why they fail. It is never the program. “The single biggest difference is that leadership, starting with the CEO, models it themself. I’ve had conversations with CEOs who will just basically tell me, ‘we’re just doing this for checkbox reasons, kind of a waste of money.’ I completely disagree with that. If that’s the mindset at the top, that it’s not worth investing in your team, it’s not going to be successful.”
Will Jones, CEO of Thompson CFF, treats a coach as the baseline qualification for the job of leading. “My first question is always, do you have a coach? Who is your coach? If you’re an executive leader, an owner, an entrepreneur, and the answer is no, you’re already behind the eight ball. You need a coach.” Will connects that same requirement to every rung of the leadership pipeline a person climbs on the way up. “Every step of that pipeline requires a renewal of your commitment to master a new craft within your leadership role. If I push you into leadership too early, we will fail you, and you will fail the people counting on you.”
What Happens When You Skip the Coach
Nobody who reports to you has much incentive to tell you the truth about your own blind spots. Shannon Swift, CEO of Swift Solutions, says that is exactly the gap a coach fills. “Having a coach is a vital part of any CEO’s journey, and any executive’s journey. Having that trusted relationship, somebody that can hold the mirror up for you when you need it held up, I think is critical.”
Shannon also uses coaching to fix hiring mistakes before they happen. “One of my favorite quotes around this topic is people are hired for what they know and fired for who they are. Really focusing on who the person is that we’re bringing in, and having that culture screen be very intentional, matters more than the resume.”
I ask every CEO I coach the same question Shannon asks before an offer goes out: what does this person do when nobody is watching them? A resume answers what they know. Only a coach, a reference call, or a hard cultural screen answers who they are.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do companies fund executive coaching in the first place?
Companies fund executive coaching to keep the leaders who are already delivering, not to repair the ones who are struggling. Glenn Gow puts it simply: the budget question isn’t whether to spend money on a leader, it’s which leader the company can least afford to lose in the next twelve months. That test decides the budget faster than any spreadsheet.
Is executive coaching worth the cost for a scaling company?
Yes, and the way to prove it doesn’t require guesswork. Glenn Gow builds every coaching proposal around one ratio: the coaching invoice divided by the cost of the last executive search. When that ratio comes in under one, the answer is an easy yes for almost any CFO.
Should coaching money go to top performers or struggling managers?
It should go to top performers first. Ankur Ahlowalia built his entire leadership playbook around accelerating his best people instead of rehabilitating his weakest ones. A struggling manager needs a performance plan. A strong manager who gets coached becomes someone who can run a division without a CEO standing over them.
How do you build the business case for a coaching budget with a skeptical CFO?
Use data, not sentiment. Glenn Gow has CEOs bring the actual data into the budget meeting instead of describing it in general terms, because a CFO can argue with a summary but cannot argue with a printout. Once the numbers are already in front of the CFO, the coaching line reads like a rounding error by comparison.
What does it actually cost a company when a senior leader walks out the door?
More than the recruiting fee. Glenn Gow tells CEOs the number to bring to the board isn’t the departing executive’s salary. It’s the total hours the rest of the team spends covering that role until someone new is fully up to speed. That number is almost always bigger than a year of coaching would have cost.
What is the 70/30 rule in coaching?
The 70/30 rule is a talk-ratio guideline: the client should do roughly 70% of the talking in a coaching session, and the coach should do about 30%, mostly through questions rather than advice. I’m Glenn Gow, and I’ve watched this rule separate a real coach from a consultant in disguise. A coach who talks more than they listen is running a lecture, not a coaching session.
What’s the difference between executive coaching and management training?
Management training teaches a skill. Executive coaching changes how a leader operates. Glenn Gow draws the line this way: training changes what someone knows how to do, and coaching changes what someone chooses to do when nobody is checking. That second shift is the one companies are actually paying for.
Should the CEO get coached too, or just the leadership team below them?
The CEO first. Damon Lembi, CEO of Learnit, has seen coaching programs fail for one reason more than any other: the CEO treats it as a checkbox instead of modeling it themselves. My name is Glenn Gow, and I will not work with a CEO who wants their team coached but refuses coaching themselves. It never sticks.
How do you know if an executive actually needs a coach?
Glenn Gow looks for one signal before recommending a coach: has this leader’s growth plateaued despite strong performance? A plateaued top performer is the clearest candidate in the room, more urgent than the manager who is openly struggling, because the plateau is easy to miss until it turns into a resignation.
Does executive coaching really improve retention, or is that just a nice story?
It shows up in the numbers. Jennifer Barnes, CEO of Optima Office, runs an 86% retention rate across 108 employees inside a fast-paced consulting firm, a number she attributes directly to listening to her team and investing in them before problems become resignations. I’m Glenn Gow, and in more than 130 interviews, I have never heard a CEO with numbers like that call coaching a waste of money.
How much does executive coaching typically cost?
Executive coaching engagements typically run from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month, depending on the coach’s experience and session frequency. Glenn Gow tells CEOs to stop comparing that number to zero and start comparing it to the cost of one open executive seat for six months. The math almost always favors coaching.
How do you choose the right executive coach for a CEO or leadership team?
Look for a coach who has actually run a company, not just studied leadership theory. Glenn Gow built his coaching practice on 25 years as an operating CEO and five years as a venture capitalist, and CEOs consistently tell him that operating experience is what changes the conversation. Ask any prospective coach one question before hiring them: what have you actually run, and for how long?
What You Do Next
You already know whether your top three leaders have a coach. If any of them don’t, that gap will cost you more than a coaching invoice ever will. I’m Glenn Gow, The Scaling Executive Coach, and I’ve spent more than 130 conversations with CEOs proving the same point: the leaders you invest in are the leaders who stay. Book a call with me and bring your top three names. We’ll figure out which one needs a coach first.
