I personally found this book to be such a great resource for coaches looking to take their coaching to the next level, and to an extent - even for leaders hoping to manage using a coaching style - and I felt it remained true to the ICF competencies, which I guess makes sense since the author is an MCC.
The author not only explains the concepts, as well as different strategies and techniques, but also gives many practical examples of how to use these concepts within a coaching context, which I personally found extremely useful.
It is challenging to sum up all my takeaways, as it is a book I feel I will refer to often as I work on improving my coaching, however, some key highlights for me which I hope to immediately put to practice, include the following:
- The power of ‘what’ questions (rather than ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions) and discerning ‘facts’ from perceptions and underlying beliefs when coaching the person (the author gives a lot of practical examples)
- The importance, as a coach, of thinking to yourself ‘why is the client telling me this, now? what makes it a problem for this person?’ and how this can help you as a coach take a helicopter view, and explore comments which at first may seem off-hand but can often be related to the topic at hand.
- The 25 ‘themes’ which typically show up, with self-esteem being at the root of most of these themes. I love how the author discusses how to recognize them in order to keep coaching the person rather than the story. (I found this chapter to be so very useful, that I am literally planning on creating an infographic of those themes to help my learning ‘stick’)
-Coaching without an agenda, being comfortable with not knowing, and that there is no formula. It’s about trusting yourself and the process (and trusting the client of course).
The book also reinforces a lot of key coaching concepts aligned with the ICF competencies, including the coaching agreement, coaching presence, active listening, use of silence, being empathetic, creating a safe and trusting space, creating shifts, re-framing, and is filled with so many strategies and coaching techniques with practical examples, and so much more…
I also enjoyed the quotes throughout the book. Things like ‘vision without action is a dream, action without vision is chaos’, or ‘it’s not what we don’t know that hurts us, it’s what we believe is true that isn’t, which does the damage’.
I found the book to be a really good resource, and would not hesitate to recommend it to anyone interested in coaching.