Introduction

Abstract

What exactly happens during executive coaching? This question is as pressing now as it was when Kilburg wrote, “For all of the work that has been done to illuminate the subject of coaching in the past 15 or 20 years … I have been concerned about the lack of detailed case studies that describe what practitioners actually do with their clients.”¹ Equally pressing is a question about what coached leaders themselves value most from coaching, and the implications of such information for research and sound practice in the realm of executive coaching.