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Coaching for Breakthrough Success: Proven Techniques for Making Impossible Dreams Possible

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A powerful new coaching method from Chicken Soup for the Soul co-creator Jack Canfield! ""At the heart of a great coach is a firm belief that each player is a uniquely valuable individual with distinct giftedness and potential for greatness.""

That's the premise behind this brilliant empowering guide from Jack Canfield, coauthor of the 125 million-copy-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and legendary global leadership development guru and CEO Dr. Peter Chee.

Combining time-tested principles of exemplary coaches with the latest disruptive techniques used by the world's top performing leaders, this step-by-step playbook shows you how to nurture--in yourself and others--the three essential requirements of coaching

1. "The Coaching Principles (TCP)" unveils the secret to life impacting values, beliefs, and philosophies that permeate all aspects of great coaching.
2. "The Situational Coaching Model (SCM)" unleashes the genius of a coach to apply the right combination of crucial paradigms in any given coaching challenge.
3. "The Achievers Coaching Techniques (ACT)" equips you with proven methods that enable you to deliver breakthrough results in coaching.

"Coaching for Breakthrough Success" is packed with stirring personal stories, life changing case studies, crucial coaching conversations, exemplary coaching questions, and ready-touse tools that equip you to achieve professional mastery in coaching.

This practical manual guides you through the top 30 principles every coach needs to succeed. You'll learn the six paradigms of Situational Coaching, the ultimate power of Achievers Coaching Techniques, and the tried-and-true secret to making impossible dreams possible.

All you need to lead your team to victory is heart, mind, energy--and "Coaching for Breakthrough Success."

Praise for "Coaching for Breakthrough Success"

""Canfield and Chee have crafted the standard for anyone wanting to be an effective coach. Their actionable and timeless wisdom shows up through principles, questions, quotes, cases, and tools that will enable any aspiring coach to achieve their aspirations. Anyone being coached should make sure that their coach knows and follows these standards."" -- Dave Ulrich, Professor, Ross School of Management, University of Michigan, Author of Leadership Sustainability

""After years of working as an executive coach, I slowly came to the realization that knowing the answers to the tough questions wasn't as important as knowing the right questions to ask in the first place. This book provides just such resources. Read it and enter the pantheon of great coaches!"" -- Kerry Patterson, four-time New York Times bestselling author of Crucial Conversations

""Coaching for Breakthrough Success masterfully shares extremely powerful questions, the heart of professional coaching approaches. The Situational Coaching Model combined with the wonderfully long, and comprehensive list in many chapters will dramatically inform your coaching and empower your clients. This is a 'must have' for any professional coach who wants to take their clients to new heights of understanding and transform their effectiveness. Extremely well done!"" -- Thomas G. Crane, author of The heart of Coaching-Using Transformational Coaching to Create a High Performance Coaching Culture

""Coaching for Breakthrough Success is the most exciting and innovative book on the art of coaching to come along in years. Using their Six Paradigms of Situational Coaching, Canfield and Chee show step by step how anyone, anywhere can assist others in improving performance, and achieving personal satisfaction in life."" -- Robert B. Tucker, innovation expert and author of Innovation is Everybody's Business

""This powerful, practical book gives you the tools and strategies you need to be an excellent business and executive coach, to help your clients in every area, and to build your coaching business profitably."" -- Brian Tracy, author of over 58 books in 38 languages

""The ability to coach is the very essence of effective leaders. Engaging the heart and inspiring the mind will unlock the utmost potential of people in any organisation. This book puts it all together and provides proven techniques to achieve breakthrough performance. I believe it will have a profound impact on you as it has done for me and my organisation."" -- Thomas Soo, General Manager, Intel Technology

""Coaching is one of those terms that is thrown around on nearly a daily basis in modern management circles. But what does coaching mean? What should people do to make coaching effective? Why is coaching so valuable? These otherwise vague questions are insightfully answered in this outstanding book."" -- William J. Rothwell, Ph.D., SPHR, Professor, The Pennsylvania State University and Author of over 80 books

""Coaching for Breakthrough Success contains practical techniques to help you engage the hearts and mi...

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2012

76 people are currently reading
212 people want to read

About the author

Jack Canfield

1,290 books1,752 followers
Jack Canfield is an American motivational speaker and author. He is best known as the co-creator of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book series, which currently has over 124 titles and 100 million copies in print in over 47 languages. According to USA Today, Canfield and his writing partner, Mark Victor Hansen, were the top-selling authors in the United States in 1997.

Canfield received a BA in Chinese History from Harvard University and a Masters from University of Massachusetts. He has worked as a teacher, a workshop facilitator, and a psychotherapist.

Canfield is the founder of "Self Esteem Seminars" in Santa Barbara, and "The Foundation for Self Esteem" in Culver City, California. The stated mission of Self Esteem Seminars is to train entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders and employees to achieve their personal and professional goals. The focus of The Foundation for Self Esteem is to train social workers, welfare recipients and human resource professionals.

In 1990,he shared with author Mark Victor Hansen his idea for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. After three years, the two had compiled sixty-eight stories.

Canfield has appeared on numerous television shows, including Good Morning America, 20/20, Eye to Eye, CNN's Talk Back Live, PBS, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Montel Williams Show, Larry King Live and the BBC.

Canfield's most recent book, The Success Principles (2005), shares 64 principles that he claims can make people more successful. In 2006, he appeared in the DVD, "The Secret," and shared his insights on the Law of Attraction and tips for achieving success in personal and professional life.

Jack Canfield was born on August 19, 1944, in Fort Worth, TX. He is the son of Elmer and Ellen (a homemaker; maiden name, Taylor). He attended high school at Linsly Military Institute, Wheeling, WV, 1962. He went to college at Harvard University, B.A., 1966; University of Massachusetts at Amherst, M.Ed., 1973. Canfield married Judith Ohlbaum in 1971 (divorced, November 1976); he married Georgia Lee Noble on September 9, 1978 (divorced, December 1999); he married Inga Marie Mahoney on July 4, 2001; children: (first marriage) Oran, David, Kyle, Dania; (second marriage) Christopher Noble. He is a Democrat and a Christian, and his hobbies include tennis, travel, skiing, running, billiards, reading, and guitar.

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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Tony Rogers Jr..
Author 2 books118 followers
April 4, 2020
Absolutely fantastic book. Tons of practical advice, real-world examples and tips for implementing the key principles. I listened to the audiobook and very quickly realized I needed to get the paperback version as well for easy review. There’s a ton of useful information in this book for coaches in any capacity. I highly recommend it.
Profile Image for Holly .
335 reviews12 followers
January 23, 2022
Super helpful for anyone considering going into coaching or even wanting to do some self-coaching. The six paradigms are practical as are the coaching techniques at the end.

My only complaint is that the paradigms put pretty much all of the onus of solving the problem onto the coachee. In real life coaching roles, we often must intervene a bit more with strategies and suggestions. And there is little guidance in the Releasing paradigm if the coachee is reacting from trauma as many people are today. I do appreciate that the paradigm sequence is goal-focused and can be adapted to wherever the coachee is in their process. I would use this model in combination with other empathetic listening strategies, not wholly on its own.
156 reviews
September 9, 2023
If you are a manager, people leader, or coach I would say that this book is a must have manual for your book shelf.

Every person accepts coaching in a different way and I feel that the three techniques shared in this book cover almost all of the use cases I have encountered in my working life.

A good blend of DIY with enough prescribed questions to get you started.

My only dislike was the number of quotes used at the beginning and during chapters. I don’t feel that they added value to the points being made.
Profile Image for Parthiban Vijayaraghavan.
27 reviews1 follower
December 8, 2018
Fantastic book, it’s so simple and easy to understand, highly practical and tons of examples and questions provided to aid a coach , manager or a leader
182 reviews1 follower
August 5, 2023
Absolutely loved this book the situational models and the 6 paradigms are so valuable.

It has totally added to the foundational coaching skills that I have built. This will only enhance it.
Profile Image for Ben Dunay.
21 reviews
December 25, 2014
I read this book to learn more about coaching as a career. And while I got *a lot* out of it, I think maybe I'd rate it higher if I was already a coach, or if I knew about the profession already. This was my first look at coaching from the practitioner's side, and the first book I've read on the subject, and so I think that maybe someone more seasoned than I might rate it a bit higher. I'm not sure.

Here's what I got out of it (and what you might get out of it, too), despite not being a coach myself:
1. The coaching skills and tactics described in the book are massively helpful for becoming a better communicator. You don't have to be a coach to apply and adopt many of the principles discussed herein. This is a huge bonus, and it's worth the price of admission.
2. I was reminded of what it takes to succeed in the first place: a belief in yourself that "you can do it." The book makes clear that it's the coach's first job to never lose faith in his client, and to believe in him no matter how down or how frustrated the client becomes with himself. This objective look at a coaching relationship was helpful for reminding me of what struggling looks like from the outside, and it was a really great and useful perspective. You *can* succeed, if you just step back and believe in yourself again when things get tough, and then keep going from there. To quote James Altucher, "The only key to success is persistence." Applicable here.

What I didn't love about the book?
Well, it felt to me like the last 25% of it was copied and pasted from Canfield's "The Success Principles," which I also read this year (and which I loved). So while it was nice to reread some of his principles here in this book, it felt a bit weak on the delivery of new content. However, to be fair, the content "reprinted" from his other book was specifically on-point and relevant to the current subject, so it was helpful. But still.

Over-all, I recommend this book. I trust Canfield, he walks his talk, and I'd buy from him again just based on the other media of his that I've consumed over the past few years. So if you are looking for a book on coaching, I'd say you would be very safe to start here. It's a good book.
Profile Image for David.
70 reviews3 followers
November 9, 2013
Jack Canfield is a ubiquitous writer and very engaging speaker who made his reputation with the Chicken Soup books which have sold millions over the years. He has teamed up with Dr. Peter Chee to write a book for coaches that is basically a primer for new coaches and a refresher for veteran coaches like myself. While nothing particularly new or earthshaking, it serves its purpose pretty well, especially for newbies in the field.

While not the most interesting book to come along, it reiterates what coaching is all about and what kind of techniques are most effective in moving clients along to accomplish their hopes and dreams. As with most books of this type, it is all a little too pat and glosses over a lot of coaching realities. The fact is, one size does not fit all and each and every coaching experience is different because each client is different. The trick is to understand the basics and then creatively go from there. Having been a coach for 14 years and having procrastinated about writing my own book, I realize how difficult it is to put into words how to be an effective coach AND an effective client.

While this book serves a useful purpose, it still lacks something I can't put my finger on exactly, which I suppose typifies life. What is missing? What is present that doesn't need to be there? Why are we bright one day and dull the next? The more I go along, the more I realize how complex it is to be an effective coach. Canfield and Chee have taken a safe route here, but they really only address a composite client that doesn't really exist. I have coached 16 year old high school students, 25 year-old blues singers, 30-year old MBA's with bright futures, 45 year old adults trapped in bad jobs and bad marriages, 60+ year old retirees and 75 year old Catholic priests.

While the principles of coaching are probably the same for all of these, how you coach them differs widely. The coach must improvise on the spot as well as over time and believe me, the simplicity of asking questions to get results, as the authors suggest, is simply not good enough. Really understanding the client and understanding yourself is the best start.
Profile Image for Ken.
38 reviews
March 1, 2015
What a refreshing book about possibility and hope as a coach

This book has great techniques to acknowledge the value and possibilities that come for a coaching relationship. The coaching questions and coaching techniques are well worth the price of the book. Watch for some tendencies to still push the client rather help them explore, but these are minor misses that naturally happen in any relationship. Enjoy the questions and techniques to help the person being coached more forward!
Profile Image for Rick Yvanovich.
776 reviews142 followers
November 13, 2013
Lots of resonance with other Jack Canfield books and others of that ilk. That being said I do like the way things are presented, and as I was looking for something to help me understand coaching better and give me ideas of the techniques and questions to use, this is just the recipe!
Profile Image for Juan Carlos.
Author 8 books13 followers
Want to read
March 14, 2021
Despite the formal composition of the book, is a very useful and well fundamented coaching book focused on success. The examples of real coaching conversations are convincent on how coacing can make a differences in people´s lifes and dreams.
Profile Image for Jeremy.
46 reviews2 followers
February 12, 2015
Read this book to help me improve as a coach / athletic trainer. These principles have worked really well when applying them with my clients.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews

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