ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature and form of both mentoring and coaching as communication processes. In the first part of the new millennium, coaching research tended to privilege 'business impact' and target, in contrast to mentoring research, coaching practitioners or buyers of coaching services. The assumption made in relation to non-directiveness is that the mentee or coachee best develops autonomy (the main aim) by working their own issues out through discussion. B. Garvey and B. Williamson argue that a dominating discourse in organisations is managerialist and therefore, with much coaching and mentoring taking place within organisational settings, the managerial discourse is dominant. S. Western contends that whilst managerialism has brought gains, it has also created difficulties, the main one being the obsessive desire to measure. Western notes that the soul guide and the Psy expert discourses work with the 'inner self and outer self' whilst the managerial discourse is about the 'person-in-role' and is concerned with performance within that role.
