Executive Development Has Become Theatre. The Data Suggests It Doesn't Have To.

A Reddit thread in r/Leadership pulled in 29 comments last month, but the top reply was brutal:

“Most of executive development has become theatre.”

That stings because it’s true in the way uncomfortable things usually are. Most of us have sat through the polished offsite. The personality assessment with its four quadrants. The framework printed on a lanyard. The certificate handed out at the end like a participation ribbon. Plenty of motion. Very little evidence anyone behaved differently the following Monday.

So is the commenter right? The research says something more interesting than yes or no.

Coaching, the actual one on one kind, works

Here’s what bugs me about the cynical take. Coaching, the real kind where someone sits across from you and asks hard questions, works. It’s one of the few things in this whole industry where the evidence has caught up to the hype.

A 2023 meta analysis by de Haan and colleagues pooled 37 randomized controlled trials of workplace coaching and landed on an effect size of g = .59. In plain terms that’s moderate to strong, the kind of result researchers treat as real signal rather than noise. Thirty seven randomized studies. That’s not a fluke.

An earlier 2014 meta analysis by Theeboom and colleagues zeroed in on goal attainment, the outcome most sponsors actually care about. Effect size there: g = .74. Closer to what people imagine when they pitch a coaching program internally.

So the Reddit cynicism and the journal evidence are pointing at two different things. The theatre critique is about how organizations buy and stage development. The research is about what happens in the room when a competent coach is actually doing the work.

Longer programs are not better programs

Now for the finding that should reshape how leaders buy this stuff.

In the de Haan 2023 analysis, the length of the engagement did not predict outcomes. More sessions, more months, more hours — none of it tracked with stronger results. Read that twice if you need to. The default assumption inside almost every development budget is that a six month engagement must beat a three month one. The randomized evidence says otherwise.

What probably matters more is the clarity of the goal. The relationship. Whether the person being coached is actually willing to do something different when they leave the room. Length is the proxy buyers reach for because it feels rigorous. The data calls that bluff.

Where the theatre charge actually sticks

Theatre is the keynote with no follow up. Theatre is the 360 report that lives in a drawer until the next reorg. Theatre is the cohort program priced by prestige rather than outcome. Theatre is the personality test cited at every offsite that never connects to anyone behaving differently.

The research literature has been steadily accumulating evidence for one specific intervention. Structured coaching with a goal focus moves the needle. Most of the rest of the industry sells adjacent things and borrows the credibility.

What the evidence actually recommends

Pay for coaching rather than spectacle. The randomized evidence is on coaching. It is not on retreats, frameworks, or assessments in isolation. That’s not snark. It’s just where the data sits.

Set the goal up front and make it specific. Theeboom found the strongest effects on goal attainment at g = .74, and that was not an accident. Coaching with a clear target outperforms coaching as a vague support service. Vague coaching is mostly expensive empathy.

Stop equating duration with quality. If length does not predict outcomes across 37 randomized trials, you can probably get the result you want in fewer sessions than the vendor quoted you. Use the savings to coach more people, not the same person for longer.

Audit the rest of the portfolio. Ask which line items have any randomized evidence behind them at all. Most will not. That isn’t a reason to cut everything — some things have value even without RCTs behind them — but it is a reason to stop pretending the evidence base is uniform.

The Reddit commenter was half right. A lot of what gets sold as executive development is theatre, and 29 people piling on suggests the experience is widespread enough to be worth naming.

But the underlying activity, when it’s the actual coaching part, has 37 randomized trials and two strong meta analyses behind it. The theatre is what happens when buyers cannot tell the difference between the intervention with the evidence and the marketing built around it.

The fix is not to be more cynical. It is to be more specific about what you are paying for.

Sources

de Haan, E., et al. (2023). What Can We Know about the Effectiveness of Coaching? Academy of Management Learning & Education.

Theeboom, T., Beersma, B., & van Vianen, A. E. M. (2014). Does coaching work? The Journal of Positive Psychology.

Reddit r/Leadership. Executive development in companies today. 1 month ago, 29 comments.