Dr. Corrie Block is a Tier-1 Executive Performance & Neuroscience Coach, Amazon #1 Bestselling Author and 3xTEDˣSpeaker, based in Dubai, UAE.
Take any world-class athlete and strip away the coaching staff. No performance psychologist. No tactical advisor. No one to review Monday morning footage after the Sunday night upset. How long before results slip?
Nobody would suggest that, because it would be stupid. Yet we run this experiment with executives every day and then act surprised when leadership becomes the gameday bottleneck.
I hear you. You’re offended because I’m calling uncoached executives amateurs. Fair enough. But what if this is performance science making an uncomfortable point? Would you have the courage to accept some coaching yourself? Right now?
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Meta-analyses and peer-reviewed studies show that coaching functions as a comparable performance differentiator for executives and athletes alike. So why is coaching mandatory for athletes but optional for executives? Don’t we want both to win?
The most compelling evidence is that meta-analytic effect sizes for athletic and executive coaching fall in the same moderate range. Sport psychology interventions show a moderate effect (d = 0.51) across 30 meta-analyses. Randomized controlled trials of executive coaching show a similar moderate effect (g = 0.59) across 37 randomized controlled trials. Broader workplace coaching studies land in the g = 0.43–0.51 range, while executive coaching shows a large effect on goal attainment (g = 1.29).
In plain language: coaching moves the needle by roughly the same amount whether you’re preparing for the Olympics or the boardroom.
That matters because business likes to imagine itself as rational. Moneyball. Data-driven. Performance-obsessed. Yet the same board that will fund AI transformation, wellness apps, psychometrics, dashboards and catered offsites often still hesitates to fund serious executive coaching for the people making the highest-risk decisions in the company.
Congrats on the kombucha fridge. Now who is coaching your CEO?
Treating Management Like Team Captains
University of Chicago researchers Berry and Fowler found that coaches explain 20% to 30% of variation in team success across Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and college sports. In practical terms, swapping a below-average coach for an above-average one in the NBA is worth roughly 14 extra wins per season. That’s not inspiration. That’s infrastructure.
On the corporate side, Gallup’s research shows managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, the closest corporate equivalent to wins and losses. More engaged employees are 17% higher-performing and 21% more profitable, with 41% less absenteeism and up to 59% less turnover.
Different arenas. Same principle.
The person leading the team is one of the most impactful variables in performance outcomes. Not the laminated values poster. Not the Nespresso machine in the innovation lab. The leader.
Of course, the sports team and its captain always have a coach. So why not in business?
When Talent, Intelligence And Experience Aren’t Enough
When you index baseline performance at 100, the improvement pattern is shockingly parallel. Athletes with sport psychology support perform roughly half a standard deviation better than those without, moving from around the 50th to the 70th percentile. Executives who receive coaching report a 70% increase in individual performance, 50% in team performance and 48% in organizational performance, according to ICF survey data. (These are self-reported figures, so they should be treated with caution, but they’re still directionally powerful.)
This is where the comparison becomes difficult to ignore.
Athletes have coaches because talent isn’t enough. Executives need coaches for the same reason. Intelligence isn’t enough. Experience isn’t enough. Charisma isn’t enough. Even a strong track record isn’t enough, because yesterday’s success can become tomorrow’s cognitive bias or aging heuristic.
The brain isn’t designed to see itself clearly under pressure. It protects identity, justifies decisions and edits memory. It confuses confidence with accuracy. That’s not a moral failure; it’s just biology.
A good coach interrupts the loop.
Coaching As Multiplier
Here’s where the multiplier appears. The landmark Olivero, Bane and Kopelman study found that management training alone improved executive productivity by 22%. Add coaching on top of training and productivity jumped by 88%. That’s a 4x multiplier from the same people, in the same organization.
Training gives knowledge. Coaching gives application. The gap between the two is where performance lives.
We really need to stop confusing information with transformation.
You can send an executive to Harvard for a week, and they might return with a beautiful binder, a new vocabulary and a few impressive frameworks. Good. But what happens on Tuesday morning when the CFO challenges the acquisition logic, the board wants a faster answer and the CEO’s arrogance dominates the room?
That’s where coaching earns its keep.
If you want to know where the expanded margin of your company is really hiding, try the shadow of your executive’s ego.
The ROI tells the same story. A widely cited MetrixGlobal study found a 788% return on investment at a Fortune 500 company. The ICF/PwC Global Coaching Client Study (2024) reports a more conservative median return of 5–7x the investment, with 86% of organizations reporting positive returns.
On the athletic side, researchers note that even a small beneficial effect on competitive performance may be the difference between success and failure. And the measured effect of sport psychology interventions (d = 0.51) is larger than the effect size for healthy eating and exercise interventions (d = 0.31).
Read that again.
Coaching has a bigger measurable impact on athletic performance than diet and exercise. Yet we still treat executive coaching like an expense, an L&D luxury item or a polite punishment for remedial performance.
This is the amateur-executive mindset.
Final Thoughts
No elite athlete would compete without a coach. Yet a Stanford–Miles Group survey found nearly two-thirds of CEOs don’t receive any outside coaching or leadership advice, while 100% said they were open to it.
The demand is there. The evidence is there. The gap is a failure of competence, not available science.
So here’s the question: Who is watching your game tape?
Pressure itself doesn’t make people better; it reveals their preparation. If you wouldn’t send an athlete to the Olympics without a coach, don’t send executives into the market without one.
Unless, of course, you’re not that bothered about winning.
