Workplace coaching works, and it works as well on a screen as in a room. Three research teams have pooled the evidence since 2014, from 18, 17 and 11 usable studies, and all three found a positive effect, of about 0.6, 0.36 and 0.43. The two that compared formats found no significant difference between face-to-face and remote coaching.
The three drew the line around "coaching" in different places, which is why their numbers differ. We read them side by side and lined up what each one let in. Read that way they tell a single, consistent story.
Three reviews, three rulebooks
Theeboom, Beersma and van Vianen, 2014. Eighteen studies, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology. Effects by outcome ranged from 0.43 for coping to 0.74 for goal-directed self-regulation, with performance and skills at 0.60 and work attitudes at 0.54.
Jones, Woods and Guillaume, 2016. Seventeen studies, in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. The authors kept only workplace coaching by internal or external coaches, and left out coaching by a person's own manager or by peers. Overall effect 0.36. Skill-based outcomes 0.28, affective outcomes 0.51, individual-level results 1.24.
Cannon-Bowers and colleagues, 2023. Eleven studies, ten once an outlier was removed, in Frontiers in Psychology. Overall effect 0.430, with a confidence interval from 0.301 to 0.558. Skill outcomes 0.72, affective outcomes 0.41.
| Theeboom 2014 | Jones 2016 | Cannon-Bowers 2023 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Studies pooled | 18 | 17 | 11 |
| Scope | Coaching in an organisational context | Workplace coaching only, internal or external coaches | Workplace coaching, tight methodological criteria |
| Headline effect | 0.43 to 0.74 by outcome | 0.36 overall | 0.430 overall |
The effect holds under every rulebook
The 2014 review has the largest numbers and the widest net. Six of its eighteen studies were general life coaching and one was health coaching. The authors did not hide this. They were asking whether coaching works at all, and the two later teams name that breadth as the reason they drew the line more tightly.
Restrict the sample to workplace coaching by a designated coach and the pooled effect falls to about 0.36. Raise the methodological bar again and it settles at 0.43, with a tight interval, on a much smaller set of studies.
This is how a maturing evidence base normally behaves. The effect survives every tightening. Three independent teams, working to three different rulebooks, put it between roughly 0.35 and 0.45 for workplace coaching. By the usual convention that is small to moderate.
Our analyses indicated that coaching had positive effects on organizational outcomes overall, and on specific forms of outcome criteria.
Remote coaching performs as well as coaching in person
The reviews disagree on size. On two variables they agree, and agreement across different samples and different methods is the strongest signal this literature produces.
Format made no measurable difference. Jones found no moderation by format, comparing face-to-face coaching with blended face-to-face and e-coaching. Cannon-Bowers put face-to-face at 0.48 and virtual at 0.35 and found the difference not significant. Remote coaching never had to win the argument on evidence. It simply performed the same.
The number of sessions predicted nothing either. Theeboom found session count unrelated to effectiveness. Jones found no moderation by the number of sessions or by how long the engagement lasted. Cannon-Bowers found neither sessions nor hours of coaching a significant predictor. Three teams, three datasets, the same null.
Coaching is still priced by the session. Take a firm coaching 20 managers, and assume 350 euro a session, an illustrative rate and not a quoted one. Moving them from an eight-session package to a twelve-session package adds 28,000 euro, all of it spent on the one variable that three reviews have tested and found to make no difference. What to negotiate instead of a session count is set out separately.
On skills against feelings, the reviews point opposite ways
Jones found affective outcomes at 0.51 against 0.28 for skills. Cannon-Bowers found the reverse, 0.72 for skills against 0.41 for affective outcomes. With seventeen and eleven studies behind them, neither can settle it, and we would not quote either pair as the answer.
Wrapping coaching in a 360 did not help
The Jones review also tested whether engagements built around multi-source feedback did better. They produced smaller positive effects than engagements without it. The sample is small and the finding has not been replicated, but it points the same way as the evidence on 360-degree feedback from the leadership training literature.
The next question is how long the effect lasts
Between them the three reviews draw on fewer than fifty distinct primary studies, and those overlap. The strictest review could find eleven.
The equivalent meta-analysis for leadership training pooled 335 independent samples. Large organisations have bought coaching at scale for thirty years, and the research behind it is an order of magnitude smaller than for the intervention next door.
The gap has concrete costs. With this few studies nobody can test which coachees benefit most, which coach qualifications predict results, or how long an effect lasts after the engagement ends. The 2023 review names the recurring weakness directly. The primary studies often say little about the coaches, the participants, or what happened in the sessions.
So the question a buyer most needs answered is the one the literature is least able to answer. There are too few follow-up studies for any of the three reviews to say how long the effect of coaching lasts once the coach has gone. It is the study we would most like to read.
Common questions
Does workplace coaching work? Yes, with a small to moderate effect. Three meta-analyses since 2014 report pooled effects between roughly 0.36 and 0.6 depending on which studies they include, all positive and all statistically significant.
Why do the meta-analyses report different numbers? Because they define coaching differently. The 2014 review included general life coaching and health coaching alongside workplace coaching; the 2016 review restricted itself to workplace coaching by a designated coach; the 2023 review applied tighter methodological criteria and found only eleven eligible studies.
How many coaching sessions are needed to see an effect? The evidence does not support any particular number. All three meta-analyses tested session count or duration as a moderator and none found a significant relationship with outcomes.
Is remote coaching less effective than face-to-face? No measurable difference has been found. One review found no moderation by format between face-to-face and blended or electronic delivery; another compared 0.48 for face-to-face against 0.35 for virtual and found the difference not significant.
How does coaching compare to leadership training on the evidence? Leadership training has a much larger evidence base, 335 independent samples against fewer than fifty studies, and larger reported effects, around 0.7 to 0.8 against 0.36 to 0.43. The two are not measuring identical outcomes, so the comparison is indicative rather than direct.
What is a 0.4 effect size in practical terms? By the usual convention 0.2 is small, 0.5 moderate and 0.8 large. An effect of 0.4 means the average coached person ends up better off than about 66 percent of an uncoached comparison group on the outcome measured.
Sources
- Theeboom, Beersma & van Vianen (2014), Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context, Journal of Positive Psychology 9(1), 1-18
- Jones, Woods & Guillaume (2016), The effectiveness of workplace coaching: A meta-analysis of learning and performance outcomes from coaching, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
- Cannon-Bowers, Bowers, Carlson, Doherty, Evans & Hall (2023), Workplace coaching: a meta-analysis and recommendations for advancing the science of coaching, Frontiers in Psychology 14:1204166
