What Do Executive Coaching Services Actually Include?
The deliverables behind the rate, and what to ask a provider to put in writing.
Executive coaching services should include six things: intake with the sponsor, stakeholder input before the first session, one or two target behaviors, live practice, monthly measurement by named raters, and a formal review. Most engagements run $300 to $1,000 per session and $7,500 to $30,000 over six to twelve months. The price buys the deliverables, not the hours.
What are executive coaching services, exactly?
Executive coaching services are a structured, time-bound engagement in which a trained coach works one to one with a senior leader on specific, observable changes in how that leader operates, while the sponsoring organization tracks the result. It is a performance practice. It is not therapy, counseling, or mentoring.
The category is large. The 2025 ICF Global Coaching Study reported 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide and $5.34 billion in annual revenue. With that many providers, “services” can mean anything from a monthly check-in call to a measured behavior change program. The six deliverables below are how you tell them apart.
What happens before the first session?
The first two deliverables happen before anyone coaches anything. The first is sponsor intake: a conversation with the CEO, CHRO, or the leader’s manager about which change would make the engagement worth the money. The second is stakeholder input: short, confidential conversations with the people the leader works with above, beside, and below.
The Certified Executive Coach (CEC) curriculum, which the lead coach at Stratos Coaching holds, builds this step around a verbal 360 degree assessment of three questions asked by the coach in conversation. A conversation surfaces context that a rating scale cannot, and it gives the coach something specific to work from on day one.
What should the engagement actually work on?
The third deliverable is the target behavior. The CEC curriculum is blunt about the rule: a target behavior is stated as “something to do, not something to stop doing,” so that it can be observed and measured. “Be less controlling” fails that test. “Ask the team for input before making a decision” passes it, because anyone in the room can see whether it happened.
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The curriculum also argues for restraint. When a leader has a pattern made of many behaviors, pick one. The CEC material calls this picking up a single pearl to pick up the necklace, because working on one behavior brings attention to the whole pattern. A provider who promises to transform your leader’s style is selling something that cannot be measured. A provider who names one behavior in week one is selling something you can verify.
What does a session itself include?
The fourth deliverable is live practice. In the CEC approach, the coach leads with active inquiry rather than directing the conversation like a movie director: questions about what worked and what the leader will change, with advice reserved for glaring issues. Practice is real rather than hypothetical, which means the leader rehearses the actual conversation they are dreading, not a description of what they might say.
Between sessions, the work is the behavior itself. The CEC curriculum uses a simple three step habit tool called the Triple A: become Aware of the trigger, choose to Avert, and choose an Alternative. Ask any provider how much of a typical session is practice and how much is status update. If the answer is mostly status, you are buying a standing conversation, not a service.
How is progress measured?
The fifth deliverable is measurement, and it is the one most proposals skip. In the CEC method, about five stakeholders each rate, on a scale of one to five, how often they have seen the target behavior, and they do it monthly, in a live conversation rather than by email. The scores go on a graph. The goal is a high average held for three months in a row. The curriculum credits the approach to Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered feedback.
The sixth deliverable is a formal review. The CEC coaching methods material recommends sitting down with the client every three to six months to revisit the development plan. That is the moment the sponsor sees what changed and decides what comes next.
This matters commercially. In the ICF Global Coaching Client Study, 86 percent of companies said they at least made their investment back. Measured engagements are the ones that can show the same thing to your finance team.
What do these services cost, and what are the red flags?
Executive coaching typically runs $300 to $1,000+ per session, and $7,500 to $30,000 for a full engagement of six to twelve months. The spread comes from the coach’s background, the number of sessions, and whether stakeholder input and measurement are included or billed separately. Our breakdown of what drives each part of that range is on the cost of executive coaching page: https://stratoscoaching.com/cost-of-executive-coaching.html
Four red flags in a proposal: it lists hours but no deliverables; it has no named raters; it describes success as the leader “feeling more confident”; or it cannot state the target behavior until after you sign. Each one means the provider is not planning to measure anything.
For a company sponsoring several leaders, divide the engagement fee by the number of leaders and compare proposals on cost per leader, with everything above included in the number. A lower rate that leaves out stakeholder input and measurement is usually the more expensive option per result, because nobody can show what the money changed. A higher rate that includes all six lets the sponsor see the return at the three month mark rather than guessing at the end of the year.
How do you use this when comparing providers?
Ask every provider to put the six deliverables in writing, with a date or cadence next to each: sponsor intake, stakeholder input, target behaviors, live practice, monthly measurement, and the review. Then compare the proposals on what they contain, not on the hourly rate.
At Stratos Coaching, engagements are built around The Altitude Framework, our approach to leading at executive altitude, and these six deliverables are in the scope of every one. If you are weighing proposals and want a second read on what is missing from them, we are glad to give one.
