Why CEOs need a business coach (and why I became one)

Let me start with a confession. For years, I thought “business coaching” sounded a bit happy-clappy. Like something you did when you’d run out of real problems and needed a new identity. Flipcharts. Nodding. Feelings. A room full of people saying things like “What would future-you do?”

And then I became a CEO coach.

Not because I had some grand calling. Mostly because I realised consulting involved doing loads of work. I don’t do work.

(That line usually gets a laugh. It’s also painfully true.)

But once you’ve watched coaching change outcomes, not just moods, you can’t unsee it. A Stanford University and Miles Group survey found that nearly two-thirds of CEOs receive no outside coaching or leadership advice, even though almost all of them wanted it. The cost of that gap is enormous. Every week without it, the blind spots compound.

You can’t watch a founder-CEO get unstuck, build a leadership team that finally functions, and stop being the bottleneck, and then go back to pretending the CEO role is something you just “figure out.

Because being a CEO is a weird job. You’re expected to be strategic, decisive, calm, commercially sharp, emotionally intelligent, and still be the person everyone stares at when something goes wrong. Your calendar fills up. Your inbox multiplies. Your thinking time gets mugged in broad daylight.

And in almost every company, the CEO is the only person who doesn’t have anyone responsible for helping them get better at the job. Everyone else gets personal development all the time.

Salespeople get training. Managers get development programmes. Senior teams get executive coaching. Teams get facilitation and frameworks and offsites and feedback loops.

The CEO gets more meetings. No training. No guidance. No help building the new skills the role demands as the company scales.

So yes. CEO coaching matters. Not because you’re broken. Not because you need a hug. Because the cost of blind spots, fuzzy thinking, and slow decisions at the top is enormous, and it compounds every single quarter.

Why have I used coaches for 30 years?

I’ve been working with coaches since 1995.

My first sales director role was at a company called Meditel. My coach was a former manager from Glaxo. Old-school, experienced, no nonsense. I can still remember some of those conversations. Not because they were “inspiring”. Because they were useful. He was full of knowledge: things that actually worked, not just theory.

That’s what good coaching is. Practical help, at the moment you need it, from someone with enough experience to see what you can’t.

I’ve also had mentors who changed my life in very unglamorous ways.

David Fish, a director at Littlewoods, used to invite me round for Sunday lunch every week when I was in Liverpool. No agenda. No big speech. Just listening, challenging me, and helping me think. That was mentoring at its best.

Then there was Ken Austin at Glaxo. He taught me how to build a team, despite us driving each other mad. I’d wake up at 3am in a cold sweat if I was due to spend the day with Ken. But I learned. And I got better.

That’s the bit people miss. Good coaching doesn’t always feel “nice”. Sometimes it feels like being seen a bit too clearly.

When does the CEO job outgrow the founder?

There are moments as a founder-CEO where you think, right, we’ve made it.

You hire a big-name leader. You hit a revenue milestone. You sign the customer you used to daydream about. You move into a proper office. You go from “scrappy start-up” to “real company”.

And then nothing gets easier. In fact, that’s often when it starts to get heavy.

Once you’re past 50 employees, the game changes. I call it the basketball-to-football transition. At £3m and 30 people, you’re playing basketball: everyone sees the ball, the founder touches every play. At £10m and 100 people, you need football: specialised positions, management through managers, and a CEO who stays off the pitch. The critical inflection point hits at around £7m and 70 people, and it catches almost every founder off guard.

At that stage, many CEOs struggle because they’re trying to run a bigger company using the same behaviours that worked when it was smaller. The skills that got you to 50 employees will sink you at 250. And the early team members who got you here? Many of them won’t make it to the next level. Loyalty over ability is the most expensive mistake founders make at scale.

That’s where a business coach comes in. Not to tell you what to do. To help you evolve faster than the company is forcing you to.

Why did I become a CEO coach instead of a consultant?

After Peer 1, I did what looked like the sensible thing. I became a non-exec.

It’s a very respectable role. You turn up once a month, sit in a board meeting, ask some good questions, give a bit of advice, and “mark the homework”.

I hated it.

Not because the companies were bad. But because I wanted to actually help the founders who ran them change things outside the meeting. You can’t do that in a board meeting. Not properly. You can comment on what’s happening, but you can’t install structure.

So I made a decision. I wanted to work with founder-CEOs and actually help them build the systems and leadership team that make the company scale.

I joined Shirlaws because I wanted to learn and get sharper. I learned loads: coaching in pairs, getting feedback in real time, watching other coaches work. But I didn’t love their tools. So I went back to what I trust: Scaling Up and the Rockefeller Habits. The sort of frameworks that give you a shared language, a cadence, and a way to turn talk into execution.

That’s where coaching stops being “a chat” and becomes a proven methodology.

What happens when one coaching conversation changes someone’s career?

Let me tell you the story that really converted me.

A founder asked me to coach someone on their team one-to-one. The brief was blunt: “He’s got potential but he’s failing to deliver. If you can fix him, brilliant. If not, we’ll move him on.”

I expected a 20-minute call. It turned into a three-hour conversation.

The problem wasn’t intelligence. It wasn’t even skill. It was behaviour. He couldn’t have difficult conversations.

So he was quietly doing other people’s work instead of managing them. Four days a week fixing stuff. One day a week doing his own job, and failing at it because he was only doing it 20% of the time.

Occasionally he’d snap, tell someone they were rubbish, and then still do their work for them anyway. Absolute carnage. And it was all happening under the CEO’s nose, because it looked like “hard work”.

So we built a plan. He went back to the ten people he’d annoyed the most, owned it, apologised, and ran Stop, Start, Continue with each of them. Proper adult conversations. No HR theatre. No anonymous forms. Just accountability and clarity.

A few months later, people said to me: “What have you done to him? He’s a different human.”

He got promoted twice. Then, later, when he moved companies, he hired me again.

That’s when I thought: right, this work actually changes lives.

If a few hours of focused coaching can turn one person around like that, imagine what consistent coaching can do for the person running the whole company.

What are the real reasons CEOs need a business coach?

Your blind spots are expensive

Everyone has them. The difference is whether you spot them early or they bite you later. Your team can probably see what yours are, but they won’t always tell you. A good CEO coach acts as a mirror. Not a fan, not a critic. Someone who helps you close the gap between intent and impact.

One question I ask every founder I work with: would you enthusiastically rehire every person on your leadership team? Not “would you keep them”. Would you actively go out and recruit them again, knowing what you know now? The answer is almost never yes for everyone. And the gap between “keeping someone” and “enthusiastically choosing them” is where the expensive problems hide.

Leadership is lonely in a very specific way

You can’t say everything to your team (they need confidence), your board (they’re judging performance), or your peers (half are posturing). So you carry it. A coach gives you a confidential place to think out loud. No politics, no pretending.

Under pressure, you default to habit

When things heat up, you don’t get more strategic. You get more hands-on, more reactive, more “just send it to me”. It might save the day once, but it trains the business to need you for everything. A coach spots the loop and keeps you honest: are you building a company that scales, or one that needs you as the operating system?

Your leadership team won’t fix itself

You can have brilliant individuals and still have a leadership team that doesn’t function. They co-exist, protect turf, avoid conflict, and everything comes back to you. An external coach can facilitate the hard conversations and create the conditions for trust, clarity, and proper execution.

Why do the most dysfunctional teams produce the biggest breakthroughs?

My first solo client, Gerry Tombs, didn’t hire me to be a Scaling Up coach. He hired me to run Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team with his leadership team. They’d tried it with another coach first, but the team basically decided they didn’t like that guy. (When a leadership team hates the coach, that’s usually a clue. Either the coach is rubbish, or they’re telling the truth badly.)

Here’s the bit that makes me sound slightly unhinged: I really like working with leadership teams that hate each other. Because that’s where it matters.

When a team is genuinely dysfunctional, you can feel it in the room. The side-eyes. The sarcasm. The “I’m fine” energy. People showing up physically but opting out mentally.

And the CEO is stuck. They can’t sit their team down and say: “Right, you lot are a mess, and I might be part of the problem” without it becoming a political minefield.

That’s where a coach makes a crucial difference. Creating a situation where the truth can be said, trust can be rebuilt, and the team can start behaving like a team again.

The pattern never changes. Months of avoidance. Then one conversation, usually forced, where the real issues finally surface. And the unlock is always the same: vulnerability from the top. When the CEO says “I might be part of the problem” and means it, the rest of the team finally has permission to be honest. I’ve seen it turn companies around in a single quarter.

What does CEO coaching actually change in a business?

When coaching works, it shows up in very specific ways:

• The CEO stops being the bottleneck for decision-making.
• The leadership team stops “playing meetings” and starts executing.
• The company gets a rhythm: defined priorities, accountability, follow-through.
• People stop doing everything and start doing the right things.
• Hard conversations happen sooner.
• The CEO gets their head, and their diary, back.

And sometimes it’s even more direct. A single coaching intervention saves a key leader, turns around performance, prevents a costly departure, or stops a bad hire from quietly destroying six months of progress.

The International Coaching Federation found that 86% of companies get a positive return on their coaching investment. The median return was seven times the original cost. That’s not soft. That’s maths.

Which is why the “is coaching worth it?” question is usually the wrong one. The real question is: what is it costing you not to have it?

Because the CEO role is leverage. When the CEO improves, the whole organisation improves. When the CEO stays stuck, the whole organisation pays for it.

What is the difference between executive coaching and business coaching?

These two get confused all the time. The confusion costs founder-CEOs real money.

Executive coaching focuses on the individual leader. Personal effectiveness, communication style, leadership presence. It’s useful, but limited. It makes you a better version of yourself without touching the systems and structures around you.

Business coaching, the kind I do, works on both. The founder and the business together. The goal isn’t just a more self-aware CEO. It’s a company that can scale without the CEO being the bottleneck, the firefighter, and the chief decision-maker all at once.

	Executive coaching	Business coaching
Focus	Individual leader’s behaviour and skills	Building the systems, team, and culture that scale the company
Scope	One person improves	The whole business transforms
Who hires	Usually HR or the board	The founder-CEO directly
Method	Psychometric tools, 360-degree feedback	Operating frameworks: Scaling Up, quarterly planning, meeting cadence
Accountability	Behavioural goals	Revenue, team performance, freedom metrics
Duration	6 to 12 months, then done	Ongoing as the company keeps scaling
Result	A better leader	A business that runs without you

The short version: executive coaching makes the leader better. Business coaching makes the business work.

If you’re running a company with 50 to 150 people, you don’t just need to become a better leader. You need the systems, cadence, and team structure that let you lead properly. That’s the gap a working with a business coach fills.

How do you tell a great CEO coach from a mediocre one?

This industry is unregulated. Anyone can call themselves a coach. Some are brilliant. Some are well-meaning and ineffective. Some have never built anything and still want to teach you how to scale.

My view is blunt: many business coaches are mediocre. Most are former corporate employees without CEO experience. They’ve never built anything, never scaled anything, never had to make payroll on a Friday when the pipeline was empty. They wouldn’t know how to win if their lives depended on it. So if you’re a CEO who genuinely wants to build something world class, you need to be picky.

Someone who understands the job

Not theoretically. Not from a book. From lived experience of running things where the pressure is real.

Someone with tools, not just questions

Questions are good. Frameworks are better when you need to move fast, because you can actually put them to work. You want a coach with a method: a process to create clarity, focus, and accountability without building a bureaucracy museum.

Someone who tells you the truth

Not a bully. Not a people-pleaser. Someone who can challenge you without making it weird.

Someone who will say “no”

I’ve turned down work because I didn’t believe I could help, or I didn’t want to be associated with the industry. If I don’t think I can add value, I’ll say so rather than take the money and bumble along. A coach who says yes to everyone is a warning sign.

What is the real goal of working with a CEO coach?

I don’t think founders need coaching so they can become some serene monk who never swears and loves meetings. Trust me, if you work with me, you’ll probably end up swearing a lot more than you f**king used to.

CEOs need coaching so they can:

• Build a company that runs without them being the glue
• Stop firefighting and start leading
• Develop a leadership team that actually functions
• Make decisions with more clarity and confidence
• Scale the business without losing themselves in it

More joy. Better work. Beyond profit.

And if you’re serious about building something that lasts, and you don’t want to do it alone, the right CEO coach makes all the difference.

Frequently asked questions about CEO coaching

How much does CEO coaching cost in the UK?

Most UK CEO coaching programmes range from £2,000 to £10,000 per month, depending on the scope. A pure one-to-one arrangement sits at the lower end. A full programme that includes leadership team facilitation, quarterly planning, and ongoing support sits at the upper end. The real question isn’t cost per month but cost of delay. A CEO who stays stuck for six months while “thinking about it” burns far more in missed growth, bad hires, and team dysfunction than any coaching programme would cost. When the International Coaching Federation reports a median return of seven times the investment, the maths stops being theoretical. The cheapest coach is rarely the best one. Look for someone whose experience justifies the fee.

What qualifications should a CEO business coach have?

The most important qualification is operational experience at the level you’re trying to reach. Formal coaching certifications (ICF, EMCC) signal training in coaching methodology, but they don’t guarantee the coach understands what it’s like to run a company with 80 employees and a leadership team that won’t step up. Look for someone who has built or scaled businesses themselves, not just studied how it’s done. A good coach should also have a proven methodology, not just “powerful questions”. Ask them what framework they use, what outcomes their clients have achieved, and whether they’ll say no if they don’t think they can help. That last one tells you more than any credential.

How long does CEO coaching take to show results?

Expect to see the first changes within 90 days. That’s typically enough time to install a meeting cadence, clarify priorities, and start having the difficult conversations you’ve been avoiding. The bigger shifts, a leadership team that genuinely functions without you, a company that scales while you work fewer hours, take 12 to 18 months. Coaching is not a quick fix. It’s a sustained process of changing how you lead and how your company operates. The founders who get the most from coaching commit to at least 12 months. The ones who expect a transformation in six weeks usually aren’t ready to do the work that coaching actually requires.

Can a business coach help with exit planning?

Yes, and many founder-CEOs don’t realise this until too late. A good business coach helps you build the systems, leadership team, and culture that make a company sellable, often years before you’re ready to sell. The best exits happen when the business can run without the founder, and that’s exactly what coaching builds. Of the 200+ founder-CEOs I’ve coached, 12 have gone on to have substantial exits. Exit readiness isn’t a separate workstream. It’s the natural outcome of building a properly structured, well-led company. If you’re coaching the business properly, you’re also preparing it to sell.

What is the ROI of hiring a CEO coach?

The International Coaching Federation found that the median return on coaching investment is seven times the original cost, with 86% of companies reporting a positive return. But the real ROI shows up in ways that are harder to measure: decisions made faster, bad hires avoided, key people retained, leadership team conflicts resolved before they become expensive. For a founder-CEO running a £10m to £50m business, a single bad hire at senior level can cost £150,000 or more in salary, recruitment fees, lost productivity, and team disruption. One coaching conversation that prevents that hire pays for a year of coaching.

How often should a CEO meet with their business coach?

The standard cadence is fortnightly one-to-one sessions with the CEO, plus quarterly off-site planning sessions with the full leadership team. Some coaches also attend monthly leadership team meetings to observe dynamics and provide real-time coaching. The fortnightly rhythm works because it’s frequent enough to maintain momentum and accountability, but not so frequent that it becomes another meeting without enough time for implementation between sessions. Weekly sessions can work during a crisis, but they’re rarely sustainable long-term. The goal is to build your own leadership capability, not create dependency on the coach.

What is the difference between a mentor and a business coach?

A mentor shares their experience and gives advice based on what worked for them. A business coach uses structured frameworks and methodologies to help you find your own answers and build the systems your company needs. The best coaching relationships combine both: the coach brings a methodology (Scaling Up, quarterly planning, leadership team development) and the lived experience to know when the methodology needs adapting. Pure mentoring is limited by the mentor’s specific experience. Pure coaching without operational experience often lacks the credibility that founder-CEOs need. The ideal CEO coach has done the job themselves and has a proven system for helping you do it better.

If you’re at the point where you know you need a coach but aren’t sure what that looks like in practice, the clearest next step is a conversation. Find out more about our CEO mentoring programme. Or get in touch directly and we’ll work out together whether what we do is right for where you are.

Three ways I can help (ranked by impact, and by how much effort it requires from you)

1. Book a call. 45 minutes with me, free, no pitch. I’ll diagnose where you’re stuck and whether what I do is right for where you are. We’ll know within 15 minutes.
2. Grab the book. Mind Your F**king Business distils what I’ve learned coaching 200+ founder-CEOs through the 50-to-250 employee growth phase. Read it on a flight. Apply it on Monday.
3. Subscribe to the newsletter. One framework per week for founder-CEOs scaling £3m to £50m businesses. Free. Tactical. No fluff.

Your move.

Every founder I’ve worked with had the same hesitation. The ones who waited longest paid the most. Another quarter of firefighting, another missed hire, another leadership team meeting that changed nothing.

What should you do next?

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If this post has annoyed you slightly, good. The issue is probably not effort. It is design. The business is asking you to carry decisions, standards and exceptions that should now belong inside the team.

The goal is not to disappear. The goal is to build a company where your best work is not dragged back into every operational tangle.

That is the point. Scaling is not adding more people around the same bottleneck. It is rebuilding the business so the bottleneck is removed.

Four ways to take this further

1. Book a call. If growth is now making the company slower, heavier or more dependent on you, I can help you decide whether the constraint is people, strategy, execution, cash or your role as founder. No obligation, no pitch. You will know quickly whether this is the right kind of help.
2. Grab the book. F**k Plan B covers these principles in more depth, with the practical founder lessons behind customer obsession, honest communication, hiring, small teams and managers who coach.
3. Watch the £30m scaling video. Start there if you want the founder-level version of these principles, using Rackspace and Peer 1 as the proof base.
4. Subscribe to the newsletter. Get direct, practical thinking on scaling, founder bottlenecks, leadership rhythm and building a company that can run without you in every room.

Your move. Open Slack, Teams or your inbox. Find the decision that should not have come to you this week. That is where the scaling work starts.

About Dominic Monkhouse

Dominic Monkhouse scaled Rackspace UK and Peer 1 Hosting as Managing Director, taking both to a £30m annual run rate. He is the founder of Monkhouse & Company.