Today’s leaders and the executive coaches who work with them face increasing levels of complexity, as well as a rapidly changing environment. This article explores the nature of executive coaching in this context and proposes formulation as a framework to enable coaches to navigate the complexities of their practice. Formulation is well-established in applied psychology and this article examines the benefits of underpinning executive coaching with a formulation-based approach. The concept of formulation is introduced and briefly described and some of the different ways in which this task can be undertaken are outlined. A case example is used to illustrate how formulation can support the effectiveness of executive coaches in their practice.