What Companies and Executives Should Expect from C-Level Coaching
By Nick Roud Founder & Executive Coach, June 2025
“C-level” refers to the highest roles / executives within an organization such as CEO, CFO, CIO, CMO etc.
It is this leadership group at the C-level who set the organsisations strategy, makes key critical decisions, and ensures day to day aligns with strategic goals and values. Leaders at the C-level have different leadership expectations than managers, and will therefore, have different coaching needs.
Just as other organizational leaders benefit from coaching, the very top executives benefit from C-level coaching that is personalized, bespoke and tailored to the positions held.
Typically we see a CEO and or other C-level executives stay in an organizations for a period of 5-7 years, it is alarmingly high that we see replacements of C-level officers which can be hugely expensive and disruptive. Ensuring a productive and ‘long-term’ tenure in a C-level office is one of the reasons so many top companies around the world invest in C-level coaching.
The role of the C-level coach isn’t to teach the CEO, CIO, CFO etc. how to do their job, they should expect the coach to work with the C-level executive on key skills like, communication, decision making, prioritization, leading individuals, teams and other key aspects. The C-level executive should expect coaching to result in better performance, closing blind-spots and better receptivity to feedback (gained throughout the C-level coaching)
Other Benefits
Expect to use tools and leadership assessments to learn their own strengths and weaknesses, expect to develop a realistic actionable plan to address them. The C-level executive should expect honesty, candor and strict confidentiality from the coach as well as regular communication. Follow up, helpful resources is all part of the C-level coaching engagement.
How C-Level Coaching Differs from Leadership and Career Coaching!
Leadership Coaching is appropriate for those in a leadership position, even if they are not operating at the executive level. Department heads, team leaders, and Heads of can and do benefit from leadership coaching and learn how to ‘effectively’ lead.
Career coaches may work with professionals at any career level. Working with a career coach helps the client set short-and-long term goals, balance work and life and plan to accomplish specific goals. Those who engage with a leadership coach or career coach may or may not have the appetite for a C-level role but they can benefit from coaching just the same.
In the past 10 years as an executive coach, I have personally worked with leaders at all levels, including many CEOs and C-level here in NZ and other countries. The little nugget about coaching is that it is very personalized to the needs of the leader. Coaching helps businesses maximise the chances of greater success for their top leaders.
If the very concept of C-level coaching interest you, I invite you to learn more about my executive coaching services.
Nick Roud is an award winning and world class executive coach. As the founder of Nick Roud Coaching, he has coached NZX listed CEOs, government leaders, and many C-level executives across multiple countries. Find out more about Nick here