The short version: Whether to coach or replace a VP comes down to three questions: is the person unable or unwilling, has the job changed underneath them, and does the cost of replacing exceed the cost of fixing. Replacing a VP can run up to three times the person’s salary. Coaching works when the leader has both the ability and the willingness to improve. It does not work as a soft exit.
Most CEOs who call me about a struggling VP have already decided. They want permission.
So the VP is gone by summer. The search takes nine months. The replacement takes another year to ramp. By the following spring, the same problem is sitting in the same chair wearing a different face.
That is not a talent problem. It is a diagnosis problem.
Should you coach or replace a VP who is struggling?
Coach when the leader has both the ability and the willingness to improve. Replace when either one is missing and cannot be restored.
That sounds simple. It is not, because most CEOs make the call on impressions rather than evidence, and by the time they call anyone, they are looking for agreement instead of a diagnosis. Three questions turn an impression into evidence. Most leaders cannot get past the first one.
When is it too late to coach a struggling VP?
The question arrives about two years late in most companies.
The time to ask is the moment you sense your VP may be struggling. Wait too long and there is only one answer left, because the team has already adjusted around the problem, the peers have already written the person off, and the leader has already stopped expecting anything to change.
How much does it cost to replace a VP?
Replacing a VP can cost up to three times the person’s salary once you account for recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and transition time.
Cost always matters when a CEO is deciding whether to coach or replace a struggling VP. Too often, executive coaching gets treated as an expense instead of an investment. That view misses the larger financial risk. Weigh all three options before you decide:
Keeping the wrong person in the role. The business keeps losing momentum, absorbing poor decisions, and paying for weakened team performance.
Replacing the VP. Recruiting, onboarding, lost productivity, and transition time add up fast, and the ramp is measured in quarters, not weeks.
Coaching the VP. When the leader has the ability and the willingness to improve, coaching is faster, less disruptive, and considerably cheaper.
The real question is not whether coaching costs money. It is whether coaching returns more than starting over.
Is my VP unable to do the job, or unwilling?
Skill gaps are coachable and close fast. Willingness is the harder read, and it is where most leaders get it wrong.
A VP who has never been responsible for a P&L can learn to run one in two quarters. A VP who has quietly checked out cannot be coached into caring.
At some point this person was doing the job well. If that was never true, you had a hiring mistake and you knew it in week three. But if the performance was there and then it wasn’t, remember that people do not unlearn. Something changed.
Find out what it was. Then sit down with your VP and see whether the two of you can resolve it together.
What if the job changed and the job description did not?
This is the most common cause of executive underperformance, and the easiest one to fix.
Sixty-five percent of workers say the job they took turned out to be meaningfully different from the one described, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. workers by MyPerfectResume, a career research and resume platform. At the executive level the number is probably higher, and the cause is different.
Nobody lied in the interview. The company changed. The scope tripled. AI cut the function by half. Nobody went back and redesigned the role.
Now you are measuring a leader against a job description that expired eighteen months ago.
The unrevised job is a simple fix. Sit down with your VP and build a new job description together, based on where the company is going and not where it has been. While you are there, take inventory of the skills this person has gained since joining. You may be holding someone more valuable than you think.
What should a CEO do before deciding to coach or replace a VP?
Have the conversation you have been avoiding, and put it on the calendar this week.
Write measurable objectives you both agree to. Set the follow-up dates before you leave the room. Give the person a real chance to respond to the truth, because most struggling executives have never been told it plainly.
If the person across the table has no interest in that conversation, you have your answer. Build the separation package and make it effective immediately.
But if you cannot answer all three questions, you do not have enough information to replace anyone. Go get it. It is the cheapest thing you will do all year.
Nearly every one of these decisions turns on a single conversation nobody wants to have. That is the subject of my book, Can We Talk? Seven Principles for Managing Difficult Conversations at Work.
Have a VP you are not sure about? Talk to me before you decide, not after. Book a call here.
Roberta Matuson, The Talent Maximizer®
