What Does a Six Month Executive Coaching Engagement Include?
Published August 12, 2026 · By the Stratos Coaching Team — Certified Executive Coach (CEC)
The structure senior leaders buy most often, and the one described least clearly. Here is what belongs inside one, month by month.
What does a six month executive coaching engagement include?
A six month executive coaching engagement typically includes an intake and assessment phase, a written set of goals, ten to twelve one to one sessions, structured feedback gathered from the leader's manager, peers, and direct reports, a midpoint review against those goals, and a closing measurement of what changed.
What is included in the six months?
Most proposals for executive coaching services name a session count and a price. That is the smallest part of what you are buying. A six month engagement has five components, and a proposal listing only the first deserves scrutiny.
One, the sessions: ten to twelve conversations of 60 to 90 minutes, on live situations rather than case studies. Two, an assessment at the front, which at senior level means structured verbal feedback from the people around the leader. Three, a written goal specific enough that someone else could tell whether it happened. Four, feedback cycles between sessions, so progress is observed rather than self reported. Five, a measured review against that goal at the end. Stratos Coaching builds engagements around The Altitude Framework on one rule: nothing goes in that cannot be observed by someone other than coach and client.
What happens month by month?
Month one is assessment and contracting. The coach gathers input from the leader's manager, peers, and direct reports, and you agree what the engagement is for. Sessions are weekly. A formal 360 instrument, if the design includes one, runs now and is priced separately.
Month two is behavior selection and rehearsal. One behavior gets chosen, not five, and the leader identifies roughly five colleagues to observe it. Sessions move to biweekly, and most session time goes to rehearsing conversations already on the calendar.
Months three and four are the working phase, with monthly feedback cycles underneath. At month four comes the midpoint review, which brings the sponsor back in and repeats the verbal assessment while there is time to act. The Certified Executive Coach curriculum writes this into proposal language, as a "midcourse review with the sponsors of this coaching engagement, as well as a second 360-degree verbal assessment at the four-month mark."
Months five and six are consolidation. Frequency drops toward monthly on purpose, so the leader runs the practice without the coach in the room, and the engagement closes with a measurement against the original goal. See also VP and SVP coaching.
How do you know the behavior is actually changing?
The Certified Executive Coach curriculum our lead coach trained in is strict here, and the strictness is the value.
The target behavior must be stated as something to do, not something to stop doing, in the curriculum's words, "so that it can be observed and measured." That rules out most of what leaders bring to a first session. "Be less impatient in staff meetings" is not a target behavior. "Ask each functional lead one question before offering my own view" is. Broad patterns like arrogance or perfectionism are excluded, since nobody can reliably observe them.
One behavior is worked at a time, a principle the curriculum calls the pearl necklace, since "when a person focuses on one behavior, they also focus on the overall pattern." Measurement then runs monthly through the observers: each rates, in a live conversation rather than by email, how often they saw the behavior on a scale of one to five. The bar is three consecutive months averaging four to five, which is why six months is built the way it is. Session time goes to rehearsal, not theory, and the instruction to coaches is blunt: "Do not let the client be hypothetical. Have the real conversation." See also how to know if executive coaching is working.
What does a six month engagement cost?
In the 2026 market, senior leader coaching runs $300 to $1,000+ per session, and six month engagements are most commonly packaged at $5,000 to $20,000+. A formal 360 process, when included rather than assumed, typically adds $2,000 to $7,000.
The spread is not mostly about session count. It tracks the seniority of the leader, how much assessment and stakeholder work is built in, and above all whether the coach has operated at or above the client's altitude. Two proposals quoting the same session count can differ threefold, because one includes assessment, feedback cycles, and a review while the other includes twelve conversations. Our cost of executive coaching guide is the canonical reference for these ranges.
Does the structure actually change behavior?
The most useful study here is also one of the oldest. In an action research study in Public Personnel Management, thirty-one managers in a public agency completed a management training program, then eight weeks of one to one coaching. Training alone produced a 22.4 percent productivity gain. Training followed by coaching produced 88 percent. The record is at ERIC, the paper at SAGE Journals.
Read it as directional, not proof: thirty-one people, one agency, 1997, productivity measured in that agency's own terms. What it shows is that the component which moved the number was structural, being goal setting, practice, feedback, supervisory involvement, and evaluation of end results. Those are the elements a six month engagement delivers, and the ones quietly dropped from cheap proposals.
For context, the 2025 ICF Global Coaching Study, run with PwC across 127 countries, counts 122,974 practitioners and $5.34 billion in revenue, 54 percent in leadership and executive coaching. A crowded field is why structure is what to compare. We cover returns in our executive coaching ROI guide.
What should you confirm before signing?
Five questions separate a structured engagement from a series of conversations. Ask before price comes up.
- What is the assessment at the front, and is it included or billed separately?
- How will we state the goal, and could a third party observe it?
- Who else gets asked for feedback, and how often?
- When is the midpoint review, and who attends?
- What does the sponsor receive, and what stays confidential?
Our piece on what an executive coaching agreement should specify covers the contract, and the executive coaching cost guide prices each component.
What people ask about six month coaching engagements on Reddit and in peer forums
Is six months an arbitrary package length designed to hit a price point?
The skepticism is fair, but there is a methodological reason six is common. If the standard is three consecutive strong months of observed ratings, you need a month to set up, a month to select the behavior, then three scored months. Six is the shortest honest container.
My company is paying. How much will my manager hear about?
Get it in writing before month one. The normal arrangement is that the sponsor hears about goals, participation, and progress, and nothing about session content. If a coach cannot state that boundary plainly on a first call, that is your answer.
Key Takeaways
- Five components, not one: sessions, front end assessment, a written observable goal, monthly stakeholder feedback, and a closing measurement.
- The Certified Executive Coach method works one behavior at a time, stated as something to do, scored one to five monthly by five colleagues.
- Market rates run $300 to $1,000+ per session and $5,000 to $20,000+ for six months, with a formal 360 adding $2,000 to $7,000.
Frequently asked questions
What does a six month executive coaching engagement include?
An intake and assessment phase, a written set of goals, ten to twelve one to one sessions, structured feedback from the leader's manager, peers, and direct reports, a midpoint review, and a closing measurement.
How often do executive coaching sessions happen in a six month engagement?
Weekly at the start, shifting to biweekly and then monthly. Over six months that totals ten to twelve sessions of 60 to 90 minutes, plus stakeholder feedback cycles between them.
How is progress measured during an executive coaching engagement?
By observed behavior, not session satisfaction. In the Certified Executive Coach method, roughly five colleagues each rate, in a live conversation rather than by email, how often they observed the target behavior on a scale of one to five. The bar is three consecutive months averaging four to five.
Is six months long enough for executive coaching to work?
Long enough to change one well chosen behavior and see it confirmed by the people around the leader. Not long enough to rebuild several habits at once. Engagements that try to fix everything produce a plan rather than a change.
Explore related guides: executive coaching services — what is executive leadership coaching — executive coaching cost — C-suite coaching.
Want the six months mapped to your situation?
Stratos Coaching works 1:1 with VPs, SVPs, and C-suite executives, and with Directors stepping into VP roles. Our coaches have held the seats, with 25+ years of enterprise leadership including SVP and C-suite roles inside Fortune 500 companies.
Sources cited in this article
- Olivero, G., Bane, K. D., & Kopelman, R. E. (1997). Executive Coaching as a Transfer of Training Tool. Public Personnel Management, 26(4), 461–469. Also at SAGE Journals.
- International Coaching Federation & PricewaterhouseCoopers. 2025 ICF Global Coaching Study ($5.34B revenue; 122,974 practitioners).
- Center for Executive Coaching. Certified Executive Coach (CEC) curriculum, Behavioral Coaching module.
Published by Stratos Coaching under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). When citing, attribute to "Stratos Coaching" with a link to stratoscoaching.com.