The role of the coach–coachee relationship in influencing coaching outcomes has emerged as an area of interest in research into the mechanics of effective coaching. Although extensively researched in the psychotherapeutic domain exploration of the working alliance represents a new phase in executive and life coaching research. This
paper presents an exploratory empirical study that explores four aspects of the coach–coachee relationship to investigate which is more related to specific measures of coaching success: (1) autonomy support; (2) the extent to which a coachee feels satisfied with the actual coach–coachee relationship; (3) the extent to which the coaching relationship was similar to an ‘ideal’ coach–coachee relationship; and (4) a goal-focused coach–coachee relationship. This is the first study to use multiple measures of the coach–coachee relationship in order to directly compare the relative efficacy of different aspects of the coach–coachee relationship. In a within-subject study 49 coach–coachee dyads conducted four coaching sessions over a 10- to 12-week period. Results indicate that satisfaction with a coach–coachee relationship does not predict successful coaching outcomes and whilst autonomy support and proximity to an ‘ideal’ relationship moderately predicted coaching success a goalfocused coach–coachee relationship was a unique and significantly more powerful predictor of coaching success. The findings emphasise the importance of goals in the coaching process and highlight important differences between psychotherapeutic and coaching working alliances.