One-to-one coaching for Directors stepping up to VP, VPs, SVPs, and C-suite executives — delivered by coaches who have actually held the seat you’re stepping into, not academics teaching from a textbook.
Executive coaching services pair a senior leader with a credentialed coach through a structured engagement: intake diagnostics such as a DISC or 360° assessment, a written development plan with three to five measurable goals, twice-monthly one-to-one sessions, between-session access, and formal impact measurement. Stratos Coaching delivers this for VPs, SVPs, and C-suite executives.
The return is measurable: in the ICF and PwC Global Coaching Client Study, companies reported a median ROI of 700% and 86% said they at least made their investment back; a separate MetrixGlobal study measured 788%. See the full cost breakdown.
The higher you go, the less the job rewards being the best operator in the room. It rewards judgment, alignment, and how you hold a point of view in a room full of other strong points of view. Most senior leaders hit that wall alone — and the cost of getting it wrong at altitude is measured in quarters, not weeks.
Director stepping into VP, VP moving to SVP, or C-suite — tell us the transition and we will map what an engagement would look like for it.
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Our coaches are current and former C-suite leaders with 20+ years of experience — we’ve navigated the board dynamics, the peer politics, and the first 90 days where everything feels wrong. Every engagement runs on The Altitude Framework: we establish where you operate today, define where the role needs you to be, and build the cadence that turns insight into changed behavior.
Thirty minutes is enough to map your Point A, your Point B, and the cadence to close the gap.
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You will work with a coach who has held a role at or above your altitude inside enterprise organizations. Not a generalist working from theory — a peer who can pressure-test your thinking and has made the calls you are about to make.
We match you with a coach who has operated at or above your altitude — no generalists, no theory.
Book a Free CallEvery engagement is built around your specific transition rather than a generic package. Three common shapes:
Engagements are custom-priced to the leader and the mandate — you get the exact number in one 30-minute call. See the industry ranges in our cost of executive coaching guide.
Six months, twelve, or ongoing advisory — the right shape depends on what you need to change and by when. One call settles it.
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Everything a Director, VP, SVP, or C-suite buyer — or the L&D team buying on their behalf — needs to evaluate an executive coaching service.
Executive coaching services are structured, contracted engagements in which a senior leader works one-to-one with a coach on the specific judgment, communication, and decision-making demands of their current or next level of responsibility. A complete service includes intake and diagnostics, a written development plan, recurring private sessions, access between sessions, and formal impact measurement. The single largest differentiator between providers is whether the coach has personally operated at or above the altitude of the leader being coached.
A complete executive coaching service has five components. Providers that offer only the third one are selling sessions, not a service, and the difference shows up in whether anything changes after the engagement ends.
1. Intake and diagnostics. A structured assessment of where the leader is operating today versus where the role requires them to operate. Strong providers use a behavioural instrument such as DISC, and many add 360° stakeholder feedback. Note that 360° assessments are frequently billed separately, typically adding $2,000–$7,000.
2. A written development plan. Three to five specific, measurable goals tied to the leader’s actual role and time horizon — not a generic competency model. If a provider cannot produce a sample plan, they are improvising.
3. Recurring private sessions. Typically two one-hour sessions per month over a six-, nine-, or twelve-month term. Shorter engagements rarely produce durable behaviour change, because the leader needs live situations between sessions to practise against.
4. Between-session access. The board paper lands on a Thursday and the meeting is Monday. Access between scheduled sessions is where a large share of the practical value sits, and it is the component most often missing from lower-cost services.
5. Impact measurement. A midpoint review, a wrap-up review, and ideally a follow-up survey several months after the engagement closes. Without measurement, neither the leader nor the sponsoring organization can tell coaching from conversation.
Executive coaching is a non-clinical professional development discipline. It is not therapy, and a responsible provider refers a client to a licensed mental-health professional when the presenting issue calls for one. If you are weighing coaching against adjacent options, our comparison of coaching, mentoring and consulting lays out the distinctions.
Services are usually organized by the altitude of the leader and the nature of the transition, rather than by industry.
Leadership coaching supports a leader moving to a materially different scope — most commonly the shift from running a function to leading other leaders. This is the highest-demand category, and the first ninety days carry disproportionate weight. See coaching for VPs and SVPs and the first 90 days at a new altitude.
C-suite and board-facing coaching concentrates on enterprise judgment, board and ELT communication, and the specific isolation of the top job. See C-suite coaching and board communication.
Corporate and sponsored coaching is bought by an L&D function, Head of Talent, or CHRO on behalf of a cohort of leaders, under an annual agreement with consolidated invoicing. See corporate coaching, leadership training programs, and how training programs compare with executive coaching.
AI-assisted coaching has emerged as a distinct tier. It does not replace a human coach for a high-stakes transition, but it gives leaders somewhere to rehearse a difficult conversation at eleven at night. See Stratos Coaching AI.
Four categories of provider serve this market, and the trade-off between them is consistent: the larger the firm, the stronger the process and the weaker the guarantee about who your individual coach will be. See how to choose an executive coaching firm for the full firm level checklist. For how an engagement actually runs from intake to close, see how executive coaching works.
| Provider type | Strength | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Global consultancies | Assessment depth, global coverage, procurement-friendly | Highest cost; the coach assigned to you is drawn from a large bench and may never have held your role |
| Boutique specialist firms | Deep fit for a specific altitude or transition; you usually know your coach before signing | Limited capacity; less useful for a large multi-country cohort |
| Independent coaches | Direct relationship, flexible terms, often the lowest rate | Quality varies enormously; measurement and diagnostics are frequently absent |
| Platform marketplaces | Fast matching, scalable across a large population, transparent pricing | Built for volume across all levels; rarely the right instrument for a senior transition |
The category matters less than one question, which cuts across all four: has the specific coach you will be working with operated at or above your altitude? Ask for that person’s operating history before you evaluate anything else about the firm.
Published industry ranges for executive coaching services are $300–$1,000+ per session, $5,000–$20,000+ for a six-month engagement, and $15,000–$65,000+ annually for C-suite advisory work. Organizations budgeting through an L&D function typically plan $10,000–$15,000 per leader per year. A 360° assessment, where offered as an add-on, adds $2,000–$7,000.
Price varies primarily with the coach’s operating background, not with the number of sessions. A coach who has run a $500M P&L prices differently from one who has completed a certification, and the gap is rational: the first has judgment about your situation, the second has frameworks about situations in general.
On return, the frequently cited ICF/PwC study found a median return of 700%, and a separate MetrixGlobal analysis measured 788%. Roughly 70% of coached executives show measurable performance improvement. Treat headline multiples with appropriate scepticism — the more defensible case is the downside one, since the cost of a senior leader derailing dwarfs the cost of the engagement that prevents it. Our full cost guide and ROI analysis work through both sides of the arithmetic.
Six questions separate providers quickly. Ask them in this order.
1. Has my coach held a role at or above my altitude? Not the firm — the individual. This is the single strongest predictor of whether the engagement is useful.
2. Do I meet my coach before I commit? If matching happens after signature, you are buying the firm’s process and accepting its bench.
3. What is measured, and when? A provider without a midpoint review and a wrap-up has no mechanism for noticing that the engagement is not working.
4. What is genuinely included? Diagnostics, development plan, between-session access, and measurement are all commonly billed as extras. Get the full number before comparing providers.
5. How long is the minimum term? Anything under six months rarely survives contact with a real quarter.
6. What happens if the fit is wrong? A confident provider will tell you their reassignment policy without being pushed. A longer walkthrough is in our guide to choosing an executive coach.
Tell us the altitude and the transition — we will tell you honestly whether coaching is the right move, and what an engagement would look like.
Book a Free CallEvery Stratos Coaching engagement is led by a former C-suite or SVP operator with 25+ years of enterprise leadership experience who holds the Certified Executive Coach (CEC) credential and has sat on the other side of the promotion decision.
There is no associate handoff and no rotating roster. The coach you meet on the complimentary altitude call is the coach you work with from the first session to the last.
Two of the questions this page tells you to ask any provider — how coaches are matched, and how progress is measured — are answered for Stratos Coaching in full on our track record page, along with the week-by-week engagement calendar.
Healthcare leadership coaching is executive coaching for senior leaders inside hospitals, health systems, payers, and provider groups — CMOs, CNOs, COOs, service-line VPs, and the executives above them. The coaching content is the same discipline that applies in any large organisation; what changes is the operating context: clinical governance, physician and administrative leadership sitting side by side, and decisions that carry patient as well as commercial consequences.
Physician executive coaching addresses a specific transition. A clinician moving into enterprise leadership is asked to lead peers who were recently colleagues, to hold budget and staffing decisions that trade against clinical preference, and to represent the clinical view to a board that speaks in financial terms. The training that made them an excellent clinician does not cover any of it.
Healthcare executive coaching engagements typically focus on three things: holding authority with a physician body that grants it socially rather than structurally, communicating to a board that is balancing margin against mission, and leading through regulatory or system change that the executive did not choose.
Nonprofit executive coaching supports executive directors, CEOs, and senior leaders in mission-driven organisations. The core challenge is structural: a nonprofit executive answers to a working board, carries fundraising responsibility alongside operations, and leads a staff that is frequently motivated by mission more than by compensation. Authority is more distributed and more negotiated than in a comparable commercial role.
Executive coaching for nonprofit leaders concentrates on the board relationship above all. An executive director who manages the board well has room to lead; one who does not spends the year defending decisions. The work covers how to bring a difficult recommendation to a board, how to handle a founder or long-tenured trustee, and how to hold a strategic line when funding pulls in a different direction.
Sales leadership coaching develops the senior commercial leader — the CRO, VP of Sales, or SVP of Revenue — rather than the sellers who report to them. It is a different discipline from sales training. Sales training improves how a rep runs a deal; leadership sales coaching improves how an executive builds a commercial organisation, forecasts credibly to a board, and holds a number they do not personally close.
The transition that most often triggers it: a leader who was outstanding at selling now has to build a system that sells without them. The instincts that carried them — taking over the hard call, running the key account personally — become the constraint on the team’s growth.
Typical focus areas: forecast credibility with the CEO and board, building a leadership layer beneath you, holding pipeline discipline without micromanaging, and the cross-functional work with product, marketing, and finance that a commercial leader cannot avoid at this altitude.
Executive coaching for lawyers supports general counsel, chief legal officers, and law-firm partners moving from practising law to leading an organisation. The professional training is precise, adversarial, and individual; enterprise leadership is ambiguous, collaborative, and exercised through other people. The gap between the two is where most of the coaching work sits.
For a general counsel the specific shift is from being the person who identifies risk to being an executive who helps the business make a decision in the presence of risk. A GC who only flags exposure is consulted late. A GC who is a full member of the executive team is consulted early, which is where legal leverage actually is.
Educational leadership coaching supports senior leaders in schools, districts, and higher education — superintendents, deans, provosts, and heads of school. The distinguishing feature is the governance environment: an elected or appointed board, a unionised or tenured staff, and a community of parents, faculty, and alumni who consider themselves stakeholders with standing.
Executive coaching for principals and heads of school focuses on the same problem at building level: leading a faculty you cannot easily reassign, holding an instructional standard without adversarial supervision, and managing a parent community that has direct access to your board.
Educational leadership training programmes typically deliver shared frameworks to a cohort. Coaching does something different — it works one leader’s live situation, which is why most districts pair the two rather than choosing between them.
A complete service includes intake diagnostics such as a DISC or 360° assessment, a written development plan with three to five measurable goals, recurring one-to-one sessions, access to the coach between sessions, and formal impact measurement at the midpoint and close of the engagement.
Industry rates run $300 to $1,000+ per session and $5,000 to $20,000+ for a six-month engagement. C-suite advisory work runs $15,000 to $65,000+ annually. Organizations budgeting through L&D typically plan $10,000 to $15,000 per leader per year. See our cost guide for the full breakdown.
They are designed for Directors moving into VP roles, VPs and SVPs leading other leaders, and C-suite executives facing enterprise-level decisions. The common thread is a change in altitude rather than a change in function or industry.
Most engagements run six to twelve months, with two one-hour sessions per month. Shorter arrangements rarely produce durable change, because leaders need live situations between sessions to practise against and a full cycle of feedback to measure against.
Yes, when the engagement is scoped to real business goals. In the ICF and PwC Global Coaching Client Study, companies reported a median ROI of 700%, and 86% said they at least earned their investment back; a separate MetrixGlobal study of a Fortune 500 program measured 788%. Stratos Coaching ties every engagement to three to five measurable goals so the return is visible, not assumed.
Results are measured against the goals set at intake. A rigorous engagement re-runs the opening 360° assessment at the close, scores goal attainment on a defined scale, gathers structured feedback from the leader's manager and direct reports, and tracks the business metrics the coaching was meant to move, such as team retention, decision speed, and stakeholder trust. Stratos Coaching builds this measurement into the midpoint and final reviews.
No. Executive coaching is a non-clinical professional development discipline focused on leadership behaviour, decisions, and outcomes. Therapy is clinical and delivered by licensed professionals. An ethical coach refers a client to a licensed mental-health professional when the situation calls for it.
The definitional references behind this service — what it is, how it works, what it costs, and how to choose well.
Tell us the transition you are navigating and what you need to be able to prove at the end of it. In thirty minutes we will map what an engagement would actually look like — and tell you honestly whether it is the right call.
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