Published in Business World on Dec 29, 2025. Read the article here!
“Executive coaching works best when it sharpens judgement, not just confidence,because at senior levels, how decisions are made matters as much as how leaders show up,” explains industry veteran Khurshed Dordi
Leadership challenges rarely arrive with a warning sign. More often, they build up quietly through rushed decisions, conversations that don’t land, or leaders who project confidence but leave teams uncertain about direction or intent.
Executive coaching operates in this same quiet space. It is widely used, usually well-meant, and often genuinely helpful. Yet it is also one of the least relied leadership interventions today.
This gives us reason enough to pause and take a second look.
When Does Coaching Not Fully Serve the Organisation?
Consider a situation familiar to many of us. Coaching is offered to a leader heading a business unit. The intention is to provide support, help the leader manage complexity, and strengthen presence at the top table.
Over time, this leader does come across as more confident and decisive. What is less clear is whether their governance judgement has matured at the same pace. Do Control partners feel more consulted than before? Are risks addressed in a timely manner? Do conversations become more positional?
When concerns eventually surface (often quietly) the question raised is not accusatory, but reflective: “Is the coaching helping this leader think through consequences as well as confidence?” It is not always easy to answer.
In such cases, coaching has not failed. It has simply not been anchored clearly enough to the organisation’s wider context.
What Senior Leaders Already Recognise
Most experienced leaders understand that executive coaching:
- Can accelerate leadership growth, but also shape behaviour in unintended ways
- Can strengthen confidence, but not always judgement
- Can support individuals, yet leave organisational concerns unresolved
Boards today are paying closer attention to how leaders make decisions, not just how they present themselves. The underlying question has shifted subtly but meaningfully: Can we rely on this leader’s judgement when pressure increases and scrutiny follows?
Despite this shift, coaching is still often treated as a largely personal intervention: valuable, well intentioned, but lightly governed. That gap is worth addressing.
At Senior Levels, Coaching Is About Judgement
As leaders move into larger roles, the nature of their challenges is different. The issue is rarely effort or capability. It is judgement, especially exercised when information received is incomplete, incentives are not aligned, or feedback is filtered across levels.
In the Indian context, senior leaders often navigate:
- Rapid scale and compressed timelines
- Multiple stakeholders with competing priorities
- Regulatory and reputational sensitivities
- Founder legacies alongside professional management expectations
Coaching at this level works best when it helps leaders slow down their thinking, test assumptions and widen their perspective. When these elements are missing, confidence can move faster than judgement, and organisations begin to feel the imbalance.
A More Grounded Way to Approach Coaching
Executive coaching should be included as part of leadership stewardship rather than a discretionary benefit. The following pointers will help us better understand
- Clear alignment at the outset.
Purpose, scope, and context matter. Confidentiality remains important, but coaching is more effective when it is aligned with organisational realities. - Awareness of the wider system.
Senior leaders operate within complex environments,strategy, risk appetite, culture, regulation, and stakeholder expectations. Coaching should acknowledge this. - Intentional timing.
Certain situations will benefit more from coaching like: promotions, succession, founder-to-professional shifts or periods of heightened external scrutiny. - HR discretion and oversight.
Strong HR functions retain the ability to guide or course-correct coaching engagements if they are no longer serving their intended purpose.
Governance becomes an enabler and not a restriction.
Why This Matters in India Today
Across India Inc., leadership exposure is increasing earlier than ever. Founder-led businesses are professionalising. Boards are becoming more engaged. Regulatory expectations are expanding. Succession pipelines are thinner. Leaders are stepping into complex roles sooner, often without the luxury of margin for error.
In this environment, leadership missteps are rarely dramatic. They are made up of small decisions that compound quietly over time. Approaching executive coaching with a little more structure and intent can help organisations stay steady through this transition.
To conclude, leadership reliability is now a shared concern for CEOs, boards, and HR leaders therefore executive coaching deserves to be handled with corresponding thoughtfulness.
The dimension on clearer intent should be added to the executive coaching engagements resulting in: –
- Coaching that supports judgement as much as confidence.
- Coaching that respects both the individual and the institution.
- Coaching that leadership teams can stand behind when decisions matter.
In the end, leadership development is not only about helping leaders grow. It is also about helping organisations remain steady as they do.