What Is CEO Coaching?

What is C-suite executive coaching?

C-suite executive coaching is confidential, one-to-one development for leaders who already hold a top-level role. It targets problems that only appear at the top: leading an organization you cannot touch directly, earning board trust, and making enterprise-wide calls with little honest feedback. The goal is sharper judgment, not more functional expertise.

Functional excellence counts for less in the C-suite, and what got you promoted will not sustain you here. The role calls for enterprise thinking and board fluency.

Honest feedback becomes scarce, and each decision affects thousands of people.

Most C-suite coaching covers four areas: board readiness and communication, enterprise strategy and direction, coalition building with peers and directors, and the working relationship with the CEO. For a CTO or CFO, it usually means moving from top expert in a function to an enterprise leader who owns one.

What does a CEO coaching engagement focus on?

The work starts from what is on the CEO’s desk now. Situations CEOs commonly bring:

• A board meeting after a quarter that missed plan, and deciding what to say before the deck goes out.
• A board chair or lead investor who wants more say in operating decisions than the CEO thinks is useful.
• Replacing an executive who has been there since the early days, or one the board likes.
• An executive team that agrees in the meeting and then does something different afterward.
• A capital decision (raise, cut costs, or move budget from one bet to another) where everyone around the CEO has a stake in the answer.
• The first year after an internal promotion, when former peers now report to the CEO.
• A founder handing day-to-day operations to a COO or president and deciding what to keep.

What the engagement looks like for a CEO

• Baseline and goals. A 360 with the executive team, or a DISC assessment, then one or two goals the engagement is measured against. For a CEO these are usually concrete: board meetings spent on decisions instead of reporting, or an executive team that settles disagreements in the meeting.
• Sessions around the board calendar. Typically two 60-minute sessions a month. Where it helps, one falls before a board meeting to prepare and one after to review how it went.
• Midpoint and close. Progress is reviewed against the goals set at the start, using feedback from the people who work most closely with the CEO.

To talk through your own situation, book a free 30-minute consultation. It is confidential, and we will tell you plainly whether coaching fits.

What does CEO coaching cost?

Across the market, CEO coaching is priced at the top of the range because few coaches can work at that level. Industry ranges: sessions run $300 to $1,000+, and annual C-suite advisory engagements typically run $15,000 to $65,000+ depending on scope.

Stratos sets the fee for every CEO and C-suite engagement around the person and the mandate, and shares the confidential number in one 30-minute call. See our cost of executive coaching guide.

How Stratos Coaching works with CEOs and C-level officers

Our CEO and C-suite coaching runs six or twelve months on the Altitude Framework, with a DISC or 360° assessment, a measurable goal, two 60-minute virtual sessions a month and email support between sessions. Each engagement is led by a former C-suite executive with 25+ years in executive C-suite leadership.

Sources cited on this page

• Larcker, Miles, Tayan & Gutman. 2013 Executive Coaching Survey. Stanford Graduate School of Business and The Miles Group (CEO coaching rates).
• Center for Executive Coaching. Certified Executive Coach (CEC) methodology: the method Stratos coaches are trained in.

Published by Stratos Coaching under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). When citing, please attribute to “Stratos Coaching” with a link to stratoscoaching.com.