Does coaching work? A meta-analysis on the effects of coaching on individual level outcomes in an organizational context

TLDR

Coaching is popular, yet evidence of its effectiveness is limited and existing studies are heterogeneous and theoretically weak. This meta‑analysis aims to clarify coaching’s effectiveness within an organizational context. The authors examined five individual‑level outcome categories—performance/skills, well‑being, coping, work attitudes, and goal‑directed self‑regulation—using a meta‑analysis. Coaching produces significant positive effects across all five outcomes, with effect sizes ranging from g = 0.43 to g = 0.74, confirming its overall effectiveness in organizations.

Abstract

Whereas coaching is very popular as a management tool, research on coaching effectiveness is lagging behind. Moreover, the studies on coaching that are currently available have focused on a large variety of processes and outcome measures and generally lack a firm theoretical foundation. With the meta-analysis presented in this article, we aim to shed light on the effectiveness of coaching within an organizational context. We address the question whether coaching has an effect on five both theoretically and practically relevant individual-level outcome categories: performance/skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation. The results show that coaching has significant positive effects on all outcomes with effect sizes ranging from g = 0.43 (coping) to g = 0.74 (goal-directed self-regulation). These findings indicate that coaching is, overall, an effective intervention in organizations.