Completion Matters: The Often-Overlooked Phase of Executive Coaching
While we often approach beginnings with optimism, momentum, and focus, I would argue that endings—or what we call completion in coaching—are an equally if not more critical phase of any engagement.
A bird leaving the nest mirrors completion in coaching.
Completion happens in the last few weeks of an engagement and is the point when clients step back and take a holistic view of the changes made over the duration of coaching. It is where we examine what has shifted, what has sharpened, what still feels incomplete and what needs systemizing once the support and accountability fall away. This phase is not about tying everything up perfectly; it is about ensuring that growth is maintained and ongoing.
Unlike many personal growth modalities, executive coaching is designed to be both intensive and time‑bound. It is a co‑created learning partnership focused on concrete outcomes such as: stepping into the next level of leadership, curbing potential derailing behaviors, strengthening a specific capability, re‑imagining how to lead differently in a more elevated, complex role, and/or rediscovering energy and purpose after years of sustained effort. The work is meant to be catalytic rather than indefinite.
As we move through early 2026, a few of my clients are entering this final phase of their coaching engagements. I admit that this period is bittersweet for me. It marks the moment when I am no longer embedded in a client’s professional life—no longer walking alongside them through the inevitable highs, lows, and inflection points as they unfold in their organizational lives.
While I often stay in touch with clients, and sometimes re‑engage with them at later chapters of their careers, the reality is that most coaching relationships are singular, deep experiences due to the level of investment required. At the same time that I feel some level of sadness, completion is also deeply satisfying; we get to step back and see the full arc of their effort and evolution over the last six to nine months with fresh perspective and pride.
What Completion Looks Like in Practice
At the end of a coaching engagement, clients engage in several structured reflections:
Assessing what percentage of their original goal portfolio they achieved
Identifying their most meaningful “aha” moments, along with the mindsets, skills, and habits they have developed
Designing ways to preserve intentional thinking and reflection time without the external accountability of a coach
Clarifying what is next in their leadership development and/or career trajectory
Insights from the Completion Phase
After years of working with senior leaders, a few consistent patterns emerge during this final stage:
1. Goals are rarely completed at 100 percent.
Most clients rate themselves between 70 and 90 percent on their stated goals. The goals leaders set in coaching are often expansive and ongoing by design, meant to stretch identity and capability rather than be fully “checked off.”
2. High achievers see growth as its own reward.
Many clients are surprisingly resistant to the idea of celebration at the end of an engagement. For them, the coaching process itself—the protected thinking space, the rigor, the perspective, the time—already feels like a luxury and a privilege. Growth, clarity, and confidence are reward enough.
3. Leaders value a coherent narrative of their learning.
Clients consistently appreciate the synthesis of themes, insights, and actions captured over time. This documentation serves as both a mirror and a record—one that allows us to step back and identify the major headlines of change, both external and internal. For me, it is also a discipline: a way to make meaning of the work and hold clients accountable to the aspirations they articulated at the outset.
4. Successful engagements create visible shifts in leadership presence.
In the strongest outcomes, clients emerge with renewed energy and confidence that is palpable to their teams and senior stakeholders and themselves. These leaders often become avid experimenters—absorbing articles, frameworks, and ideas, and applying them with creativity and discernment in real time.
5. Even misalignment can be a successful outcome.
Some engagements conclude with recognition that a role or organization is no longer the right fit. While these realizations can be difficult, they are often clarifying and consequential outcomes of coaching that expedite succession changes which would have likely unfolded eventually.
6. Sustained growth requires new containers.
The leaders who maintain the level of thinking and accountability developed in coaching typically do so by creating new structures: trusted peers, peer advisory groups, or intentionally scheduled reflection time. Growth continues by design and structures.
Completion, when done well, is not an ending on clients’ development as leaders. It is the moment where leaders take full ownership of their development, equipped with sharper self‑awareness, better habits, new tools and confidence to continue evolving long after the coaching engagement has formally concluded.
A special treat for me is when I get to re-engage with past clients six months to a year later and hear how seeds planted are taking root and what has unfolded in their professional stories since we worked together. If you are a past client or colleague reading to the end and we have not connected recently, drop me a line and catch me up!
