5 Differences Between an Executive Coach and a Career Coach

Hiring a coach can be a game-changer for your career.

Honestly, for some people, it can feel like magic because they experience a level of clarity and motivation they may not have felt for a while.

However, it’s not always obvious what type of coach to hire.

I run an association that trains career coaches, and I also work as a career coach and executive coach. I’ve trained hundreds of coaches and worked with thousands of clients. So I have a good sense of the different coaching options and who would benefit from each.

And in this article, I want to help you get crystal clear on what the difference is between executive coaching and career coaching, and if you might benefit from either of them.

Here’s a quick summary before we dive into more detail:

	Executive Coaches	Career Coaches
What they'll help you with	—Becoming a more effective leader —Making better decisions	—Strategically advancing your career
Why you'd reach out to them	—You're facing leadership challenges —You want to grow as a leader	—You're feeling stagnant —You're seeking more career fulfillment
Nature of relationship	—Helping you grow as a leader —Ongoing support, often for years	—Working toward a specific career outcome —Often 3-6 months
What's a session like	—You come in with a leadership problem, leave with actionable insights	—You develop a strategic career plan and build skills to achieve your dream role
Who pays for the coach	—Typically your company pays; but, sometimes the individual pays	—Typically, the individual pays; but, sometimes the company pays

1. Area of Focus: Leadership Development vs Career Advancement

	Executive Coaches	Career Coaches
What they'll help you with	—Becoming a more effective leader —Making better decisions	—Strategically advancing your career

Executive coaches help execs become better leaders and make better decisions. 

For some execs, becoming a better leader means clarifying their leadership philosophy, for others it means cultivating their executive presence, and for others, it means having someone show them their blind spots.

Executive coaches can also act as a sounding board to talk through big business decisions and even offer emotional support for the ups and downs of your journey. It can be lonely on top, and it certainly takes resilience.  

An executive coach is kind of like a sports coach. In the NBA, Phil Jackson coached Michael Jordan into becoming the best player he could be, just like an executive coach can help you become the best leader you can be.

Career coaches help executives create a fulfilling career. That often starts with helping you imagine what a dream job would look like at this stage of your career. That could mean working less, changing industries, or starting your own company.

A career coach will help you get crystal clear on what career success and fulfillment mean, and then help you create that for yourself.

Following the basketball metaphor, career coaches are more like sports agents. Lebron James worked with super agent Rich Paul to make smart career moves that earned him more money, gave him more flexibility, and allowed him to play for the teams he wanted to play for. To really stretch the metaphor, if Lebron realized he wanted to become a football player, then Paul would help him with the transition. 

2. Reason for Coaching: Leadership Performance vs Career Frustration

	Executive Coaches	Career Coaches
Why you'd reach out to them	—You're facing leadership challenges —You want to grow as a leader	—You're feeling stagnant —You're seeking more career fulfillment

If you were to work with an executive coach, it’d likely be because of one of these reasons:

• You’re facing a leadership challenge and need to develop your skills. For example, you might struggle to effectively communicate with stakeholders, or perhaps you can’t inspire your team toward a vision.
  

• You need support navigating complex, high-stakes decisions. Should you acquire your struggling competitor or invest in new product development? An executive coach gives an outside perspective and can give you more clarity and confidence with tricky decisions.
  

• You want to amplify your strengths and grow as a leader. Even when nothing is wrong, coaching can help you beef up your leadership skills.

People will usually hire a career coach, on the other hand, because they feel stagnant in their professional lives, trapped in a job that no longer feels fulfilling, or like their heart just isn’t in their work anymore.  

In these cases, a career coach can help you take a step back and figure out what you really want at this stage in your career, and then help you get there. Sometimes this means a career pivot, other times it means finding a healthy work-life balance.

There are also plenty of C-suite leaders who seek out career coaches not because anything is wrong, but just because they want support strategically climbing the ladder even higher or finding the next challenge to take on.

3. Coaching Relationship: Long-Term Partnership vs Goal-Oriented Guidance

	Executive Coaches	Career Coaches
Nature of relationship	—Focus on growing as a leader —Ongoing support, often for years	—Working toward a specific career outcome —Often 3-6 months

If you work with an executive coach, the arrangement will last 9 months on average but sometimes for multiple years. You are enlisting this person as your ally, soundboard, and confidante. Someone to help you navigate business problems, make better decisions, and constantly seek out your growth edge.

A relationship with a career coach will usually last 3-6 months, but can also go on longer. While executive coaching is more open-ended and can go in many directions as long as it relates to your development, working with a career coach is more targeted. 

The career coach will help you envision what it is you are really wanting out of your career right now, and then help you achieve those professional goals.

4. What Happens in a Session: Solving Leadership Problems vs Working Toward Dream Job

	Executive Coaches	Career Coaches
What's a session like	—You come in with a leadership problem, leave with actionable insights	—You develop a strategic career plan and build skills to achieve your dream role

Usually, an executive coaching session will start with a problem you’re facing. As an exec, you probably have no shortage of them! 

Maybe you’re struggling to get buy-in from a key stakeholder on a strategic initiative, or perhaps a direct report’s performance has become lackluster.

The executive coach will help you talk through the problem and find the best solution.

They’ll also help you see the ways you could grow to become a better business leader. 

You’ll leave most sessions with clarity and insights. And every so often with a breakthrough where you see things differently.

Career coaching arrangements will start by helping you look within to get an honest assessment of how you feel about your career. After feeling into what’s missing, the career coach will help you clarify what exactly you want out of your career right now.

Once you find that north star, much of the support becomes tactical, helping you create that ideal role for yourself. 

Let’s say, for example, that you’re a CHRO and your career coach helps you realize you want to transition into a CPO at a high-growth startup; the coach will then help you make a plan, properly position yourself, and make the moves to get that job. That might involve revamping your LinkedIn, writing your résumé, and practicing interviews to get the role.

Career coaching also involves accountability—having someone to report to to ensure that you’re taking strides forward in your career growth. 

5. Who Pays: Company Investment vs Self-Funded

	Executive Coaches	Career Coaches
Who pays for the coach	—Typically your company pays; sometimes the individual pays	—Typically the individual pays; sometimes the company pays

If you hire an executive coach, it’s typical for your company to fund it. After all, studies indicate that executive coaching gives nearly an 800% return on investment, so it’s usually in companies’ best interest to fund executive coaching.

If you want an executive coach, but it’s not within your contract, you could still ask your company to pay. Especially if you’re a coveted employee who's hard to replace, they may be happy to fund your professional development.

But in some cases, companies won’t pay and execs choose to pay for executive coaching out of their own pocket. 

Plus, some executives pay for their own executive coaching because their organization might see it as a sign of underperformance, so they prefer to keep it under wraps.

For career coaching, it’s almost always the client who pays. While executive coaching will benefit both you and your company, career coaching is really for the benefit of your career goals only. And some companies do not want to pay for the outcome if you were to leave their company.

However, this is changing. More and more large companies are paying for career coaches because that coach could help the executive find another role within the company.

Making the Right Choice for Your Career

If you decide you want to give coaching a shot, the next step is deciding what type of professional coach you want.

Executive coaching tends to be a good match if you’re asking questions like:

• What are my leadership blind spots, and how can I address them?
  

• How can I grow to become a more effective leader?
  

• How can I get better at inspiring and motivating my team?
  

• How can I make decisions more strategically and more efficiently?
  

Whereas career coaching tends to be a better match if you’re wondering:

• Am I feeling truly fulfilled in my current role, or am I just going through the motions?

• How can I break out of my career plateau?
  

• How can I align my career more with my personal values?
  

• My heart isn’t in my work anymore. What should I do?
  

If you are an exec and want to try working with a career coach, you could try a session here at Ready Reset Go, where one of our certified coaches will meet with you for 60 minutes to help you clarify what you really want for your career.

You can also find month-to-month executive coaching at Ready Reset Go in our Tiers 3 and 4.  It can help if you’ve gotten a new role and need a bit of help getting started, or have fallen into a funk and need to get out, or you’re ready to get the next rung on the ladder.