Why Most Executive Coaching in India Is a Waste of Money

I'm going to say something that most coaches won't say.

Because it's uncomfortable. Because it implicates an entire industry. And because, as a coach myself, it would be easier to stay quiet.

But I've been on both sides of this conversation — as a senior professional who was coached for large parts of a nearly three-decade corporate career, and now as a reinvention coach working with senior leaders across India.

And what I've seen from both sides has convinced me of something:

Most executive coaching in India is not delivering what it promises.

Not because coaching doesn't work. It does — profoundly, when done right.

But because the way it is being sold, selected, and delivered in India today is fundamentally broken.

The Certification Problem

Walk into any room of coaches in India today and you will find an impressive collection of acronyms.

ICF. PCC. MCC. NLP. CPCC.

Certifications have become the primary way coaches signal credibility — and the primary way organisations and individuals choose who to hire.

The problem is this: a certification tells you that someone has completed a training programme. It tells you nothing about whether they can actually help you.

Coaching is not a knowledge transfer exercise. It is a human relationship — one that requires wisdom, real-world context, genuine empathy, and the ability to hold complexity. None of these things are assessed in a certification exam.

I have met extraordinarily gifted coaches with modest credentials. And I have met certified coaches who should not be anywhere near a senior professional in crisis.

Certifications matter — but they are the beginning of a conversation about competence, not the end of it.

The Lived Experience Gap

Here is the question I wish more people asked before hiring an executive coach:

Have you actually lived what I am navigating?

Not read about it. Not studied it. Not observed it in others.

Lived it.

Have you led large teams under pressure? Have you navigated a restructuring from the inside? Have you felt the identity crisis that comes when a role you gave everything to disappears overnight? Have you made the decision to walk away from a corporate career and build something of your own — not knowing if it would work?

For large parts of my corporate career, I was assigned coaches by my organisation. Some of them were technically skilled. Some asked good questions. But there was always a ceiling to the conversation — a point beyond which they could not follow me, because they had never been where I was standing.

Lived experience is not the only thing that makes a great coach. But its absence is a limitation that no amount of certification can fully compensate for.

When a senior professional is navigating a genuine identity crisis — not just a skills gap or a performance issue — they need someone who has been in that territory. Someone who knows from the inside what it costs to reinvent at a senior level. Someone who can say, with genuine authority: I have been here. And here is what I learned.

The Generic Coaching Problem

Most executive coaching programmes in India follow a similar structure.

Goal setting. Competency assessment. Behavioural feedback. Action planning. Review.

This structure is not wrong. For certain goals — improving communication, managing upward, developing specific leadership behaviours — it works reasonably well.

But it is completely inadequate for the kind of challenge most senior professionals actually face.

A senior professional navigating a career transition does not have a competency gap. They have an identity question. A senior leader feeling deeply misaligned after twenty years of success does not need action planning. They need a structured process for understanding who they are now and what they actually want next.

Generic coaching applies generic tools to specific human situations. And the result, more often than not, is a client who feels heard — but not changed. Supported — but not moved.

The Company-Assigned Coach Problem

In large organisations across India, executive coaching is often provided as a benefit — or a development intervention. A coach is assigned. The organisation pays. The coaching begins.

I experienced this myself for large parts of my corporate career.

And here is what I observed from the inside:

When a coach is assigned and paid by your organisation, there is an inherent tension in the room. Who is the coach ultimately serving — you, or the organisation that hired them? When you want to explore whether you should leave, can you speak freely? When the real issue is your relationship with your own identity rather than your performance metrics, will the coaching go there?

Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't.

The most powerful coaching relationships I have witnessed — and experienced — are those where the professional chooses their own coach, pays for it themselves or negotiates it independently, and enters the relationship with full ownership of the agenda.

When you choose your coach, you choose your direction. That is not a small thing.

The Everyone-Coaches-Everyone Problem

Coaching in India has democratised rapidly. That is largely a good thing — more people have access to support, more professionals are willing to seek it, and the stigma around needing a thinking partner is slowly fading.

But democratisation has also created a serious problem:

Everyone is coaching everyone.

Life coaches are working with CEOs on strategic career decisions. Business coaches are working with people navigating grief and identity loss. Wellness coaches are advising on professional transitions. And senior professionals — who need a very specific kind of support — are ending up in coaching relationships that are simply not designed for what they are going through.

Coaching is not a generic service. A great coach for a 28-year-old entrepreneur building their first startup is not necessarily the right coach for a 52-year-old General Manager navigating what comes after three decades of corporate leadership.

The maturity of the challenge requires the maturity of the coach.

Niche is not a limitation in coaching. It is a requirement for genuine excellence.

What Good Executive Coaching Actually Looks Like

Let me be clear: I am not saying coaching doesn't work.

I am saying that the right coaching, with the right coach, at the right stage, is one of the most powerful investments a senior professional can make.

The difference between coaching that transforms and coaching that merely passes the time comes down to a few things:

Specificity. Does this coach work with people at your stage, navigating your kind of challenge? Or do they work with everyone?

Lived experience. Has this coach navigated terrain that is genuinely relevant to what you are facing? Not identical — but meaningfully similar.

Chemistry and trust. Can you say the thing you are most afraid to say in this room? If not, the coaching will stay at the surface.

A real framework. Not just good questions — but a structured approach that creates actual movement, not just insight.

Independence. Is this coach working for you — or for the organisation that hired them?

The Question Worth Asking

Before you invest in executive coaching — whether your organisation is offering it or you are considering it yourself — ask one question:

Is this coach specifically equipped to help me with what I am actually navigating?

Not: are they certified? Not: did my company recommend them? Not: do they have a large LinkedIn following?

Are they specifically equipped — by experience, by methodology, by genuine understanding — to help me with this?

If the answer is yes, coaching can change everything.

If the answer is no, no amount of good intentions on either side will bridge that gap.

The coaching industry in India is growing fast. That growth will only be meaningful if the people it serves start asking harder questions — and the coaches who serve them start being more honest about what they are, and are not, equipped to do.

I believe in this work deeply. Which is exactly why I think it deserves better than what it is currently offering most senior professionals.

Book a free 25-minute discovery call — let's talk about whether this is the right fit for you. That question matters more than any other.

Ruchika Singhal is a reinvention coach for senior professionals in India, founder of Elevare Advisory, and author of "Happiness is Right Here: The Reinvention Playbook™ for When Life No Longer Fits."