Nearly a quarter of coaches interviewed by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) struggled to define coaching. The ILM’s research to gauge coaches’ understanding of what makes for successful coaching (compared to the literature) and to propose a robust method for selecting coaches, revealed widely varying definitions of coaching. In addition to a literature review, the researchers interviewed 49 coaches of varying experience and background. In both the literature and among respondents, there is a sense of the coach facilitating rather than directing, in a collaborative relationship,...