Executive coaching for organizations in Saudi Arabia
Sponsored executive coaching fails for one reason more than all the others combined: nobody agreed what it was for.
Three parties arrive with three unstated objectives. The sponsor wants a behavior changed. The participant wants a thinking partner, or wants to be left alone, or wants help leaving. The coach works on whatever is in front of them. Six months later the invoice is clear and the outcome is not, and the organization concludes that coaching does not work here.
It is an avoidable failure and it is avoided before the first session, in a conversation most programs skip.
This page is for the person buying — an HR or L&D leader, a chief executive, a board member. Individual, self-funded work is executive coaching; the wider organizational offer is leadership development for organizations.
ICF ACC · MBA · Riyadh · Arabic and English
Is coaching the right instrument?
The honest answer is often no, and a provider who never says so is not worth buying from.
| The situation | The right instrument |
|---|---|
| A capable executive facing a specific transition, decision or stakeholder problem | Coaching |
| An executive who does not know how to do something teachable | Training or a structured program |
| Sustained underperformance that has already been raised formally | A performance process, not coaching |
| Behavior that is a conduct matter | Your HR process, immediately |
| A role that has outgrown the person, or a person who has outgrown the role | A structural decision, which coaching will only delay |
| A team that cannot work together | Leadership team development — the unit is the team |
| Several managers with the same gap | Manager development — cohort, not individual |
Coaching used as a substitute for a decision is the most expensive thing on that list. It buys six months, it costs the participant's confidence, and the decision is still waiting at the end of it.
Buyer diagnostic
Score before you commission anything. 2 = yes, 1 = partly, 0 = no.
| Score | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | I can name the specific change we want, in one sentence, without using the word "leadership" | |
| 2 | The participant's line manager can name the same change | |
| 3 | The participant knows this is being considered and is not being surprised by it | |
| 4 | This is not a performance process wearing a development costume | |
| 5 | We know what we will look at in six months to decide whether it worked | |
| 6 | We are prepared for the possibility that the answer is structural | |
| 7 | We have agreed what the sponsor will and will not be told | |
| 8 | Someone senior will protect the time in the participant's diary |
13–16: you are ready to commission, and the engagement will probably work.
8–12: the gaps are usually rows 1, 5 and 7, and all three are fixed in one conversation before anything starts.
Below 8: commissioning now wastes the budget. Row 3 in particular — coaching arranged without the participant's knowledge is experienced as a sanction regardless of how it is described, and it rarely recovers.
Row 6 is the one buyers skip. If the honest finding is that the role and the person do not fit, an engagement that cannot say so is being paid to avoid the conclusion.
The three-way contract
Before the first session, in one conversation with the sponsor, the participant and the coach together.
What is the change we are working on? Specific, behavioral, and agreed by all three. Not "executive presence" — what the participant would be doing differently that someone would notice.
Who decided this, and how was it communicated? A participant who was told in a corridor starts from a different place than one whose manager made a case for the investment.
What does the participant want out of it? Their objective is not required to match the sponsor's, and it usually does not. What matters is that both are on the table.
What will the sponsor be told, and when? Agreed explicitly, in front of the participant, before anything begins. See below.
What happens if the finding is structural? Who hears it, and how.
When does it end? A date, and what will be looked at on that date.
This conversation takes forty minutes and it is the difference between an engagement and a series of meetings.
Confidentiality: the position
The line on the SaadsBrain corporate page is the whole architecture:
"The organization pays. The session still belongs to the participant."
What that means in practice: individual session content is not reported back to the sponsor. Review happens against the engagement-level objectives agreed at the start, not against a transcript of what was discussed.
What the sponsor does get: confirmation that sessions are happening, progress against the agreed objective, and any structural finding that the organization needs in order to act — raised with the participant's knowledge, not behind them.
Why this is not a limitation on the buyer's side: an executive who believes the coach reports upward will not use the sessions for anything that matters, and you will have bought attendance. The confidentiality is what makes the engagement produce anything worth paying for.
Anything that is a conduct or safety matter belongs in your own process, not in coaching, and that boundary should be stated to everyone at the start rather than discovered later.
Program design checklist
- [ ] The change, in one sentence, agreed by sponsor and participant
- [ ] The three-way contracting conversation is scheduled before session one
- [ ] The number of sessions and the end date are fixed, with a review point
- [ ] Reporting is defined: what, to whom, how often, and what is excluded
- [ ] The language of delivery is agreed with the participant, not assumed
- [ ] Diary protection is someone's explicit responsibility
- [ ] The manager has one defined touchpoint, not an open channel
- [ ] What happens if the engagement should stop early is agreed in advance
- [ ] The participant knows how to end it, and that ending it is permitted
- [ ] It is clear whether this is one engagement or the start of a cohort
The seventh item prevents the commonest engagement failure after unclear objectives: a line manager who treats the coach as a channel for messages they have not delivered themselves.
Evidence: what you can honestly expect to see
You will encounter figures claiming a return multiple on coaching spend. Treat them with suspicion. They are not verifiable for your organization, the studies behind them are rarely comparable to your situation, and no provider should offer you one as a projection. None is offered here.
What can reasonably be looked at, by agreement, at the review point:
- Whether the specific behavioral change named at the start is visible to the people who named it
- The participant's own assessment, which is data even though it is subjective
- The line manager's assessment against the same one sentence
- Whether the situation that triggered the engagement has moved
- Retention and progression of the individual, over a longer horizon than the engagement
- Whether a structural issue was surfaced that the organization can now act on — a legitimate and often valuable outcome even when the behavioral objective is only partly met
What cannot honestly be attributed to coaching: team performance, business results, or anything with enough other causes to make attribution meaningless. A provider claiming those is selling you a story.
How engagements are structured here
The stated organizational process is Understand → Design → Deliver → Apply → Review, and entry configurations range from a single senior leader to coaching attached to an existing program.
The six organizational service areas are executive and senior leadership coaching, manager development, career development for employees, internal mobility and promotion readiness, professional positioning, and career transition support — across six audience levels from emerging talent to executives.
Delivery is in Arabic or English, and the participant chooses.
The first conversation is about scope, not about selling a format. Bring the diagnostic above, and the answer may be that a different instrument fits better.
Book a discovery call · Message Saad on WhatsApp · See the organizational page
In the Saudi context
Confirm the language with the participant, not with the sponsor. An executive coached in their second language works at a fraction of their thinking speed, and the sponsor frequently assumes English because the paperwork is in English.
Discretion inside the organization matters as much as confidentiality outside it. In a senior population where everyone knows who is being coached, how the engagement is described internally shapes whether it is experienced as investment or as remediation. Describing it in advance, plainly, is worth doing.
Governance context changes the work. An executive in a government-linked entity operates inside approval structures that a private-sector equivalent does not, and coaching that ignores that is coaching a different job.
Board and committee exposure is common at this level in listed companies, government-linked entities and larger family businesses, and it is frequently the real content of the engagement rather than a detail of it.
Sponsorship and rapid growth have created senior roles faster than experience has accumulated. Coaching is often being used to close a real gap between a capable person and a scope that arrived early — which is a legitimate use and worth naming as the objective rather than dressing as development.
Common questions
Can we see the coach's notes?
No. Session content is not reported to the sponsor; progress against the agreed objective is. That boundary is what makes the sessions useful.
What if the participant does not want this?
Then say so before it starts. A participant who has been told to attend will attend, and nothing else will happen. Row 3 of the diagnostic exists for this.
How many sessions?
Fixed at the start, with an end date and a review point, rather than open-ended. What the right number is depends on the objective and is part of the design conversation.
Can you coach several of our executives?
Yes, and where several have the same gap a cohort is usually the better instrument: leadership development for organizations.
Do you provide a report?
Against the agreed engagement objectives, yes. Against what was said in a session, no.
What if you find something we should know?
Anything structural that the organization needs in order to act is raised — with the participant's knowledge, not behind them. That sequencing is agreed at the start.
Can this run alongside a performance process?
Rarely well. A participant cannot use coaching honestly while it is entangled with a process that may end their employment, and combining the two damages both.
Start with one sentence
Before you commission anything, write the change you want in one sentence without the word "leadership" in it. If you cannot, that is the first conversation — and it is free.
A useful next step, matched to this topic
If you want support applying what you just read, start with the option closest to the problem in front of you.
Working on this for a team or organization?
Use the corporate route for leadership, manager development, succession, transition and organization-wide coaching needs.
Saad Al-Wuqayan
Career & Executive Coach — ICF ACC, MBA
Saad Al-Wuqayan coaches professionals and executives in Riyadh. Nearly two decades across engineering, business development, financial leadership as a CFO and government transformation sit behind every session.
More about Saad- Last reviewed
Work on this with a coach
If the decision in front of you is specific, a session is usually faster than another month of reading. Bring the situation as it actually is.