David Clutterbuck, mentoring and coaching: a commentary

David Clutterbuck has made tremendous contributions to both coaching and mentoring theory and practice over the past three decades. One of the pleasures of reading David Clutterbuck's work is that he communicates clearly without jargon, a tribute perhaps to his journalistic background. He captures what is known or believed about a topic at the time and is not afraid to say that things have changed or that his predictions have not yet come to pass. By articulating the conceptions of coaching and mentoring at a particular point in time, Clutterbuck allows us to recognise the changes that take place over time as well as the changes in different contexts, changes that can be almost imperceptible unless someone draws our attention to them. In this commentary, I will focus on the evolving definitions of mentoring that are explicit in Clutterbuck's work and consider the distinction between coaching and mentoring.