What do you think?
Rate this book
Coaching on the Axis: Working with Complexity in Business and Executive Coaching
This book offers an approach to business and executive coaching that properly aligns the practice in the culture of business through the use of a relational "coaching axis" that helps to manage the complexity of the organisation and the individual as dual clients. Business and executive coaching occurs within an organisational context with the goal of promoting success at all levels of the organisation by affecting the actions of those being coached (Worldwide Association of Business Coaches, 2007). This form of coaching is distinct from other types in two ways, firstly it is focused on achieving business outcomes, and secondly, both the individual being coached and the sponsoring organization are simultaneously the client. This book explains how a coach manages the complexity of helping these two clients by acting as a narrative bridge between their stories. It offers a relational approach which resists remedial or curative notions born from coaching's human science roots and instead aligns to workplace realities.
222 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
7 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 12, 2014
This text provides a foundation for a practice of coaching that is rigorously informed by research and theory, holistically engaged with the wider organisational system which includes the coachee(s), and generatively alert for the personal and business opportunities that emerge.
The very first chapter hits the nail on the head by calling for a sophisticated balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the organisation, demanding that business coaches accept and engage with what he calls "the duality of client." This book lays down a firm theoretical and practical base for business coaching that benefits the entire organisation through engagement primarily with one individual. He also opens the door to systems-based team coaching.
As an experienced business leadership coach, I felt both supported and well-challenged by Kahn's rigorous critique of those who allow business coaching to stray into a world informed by individual-centric therapeutic models. At first I wanted to protest that I'm not a psychologist and I don't make the mistakes he warns against. But as I continue to work with my clients, informed by Kahn's thinking, I notice how easy it is to let an "us against them" mentality slip in, where coach and coachee start to operate in a kind of bubble that can easily allocate blame to the organisational environment.
Kahn includes an excellent summary of systems thinking and acknowledges its "framework that allows ... parts of a system (organisation) to be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation."(p10) I welcome his "call to business coaches ... to approach their work with systemic eyes and see past the simplistic lens of linear causality" (p12) and see clear links with the work of David Snowden on complexity. My clients find their greatest challenges around leading in situations of great complexity - helped by developing their own "systemic eyes" and keeping their ears tuned to the voice of the system.
Sometimes reading a bit like a textbook, his theoretical chapters nonetheless make several vital contributions. Best of all for me is his clear appreciation that business culture welcomes experimentation and opportunity, not relying purely on unambiguous scientific proof. This is so important in real business life: we have to take risks, follow hunches, and not wait till a certain outcome has been proven before we take the leap. The value coaching sets on what is emerging (rather than what is known) is crucial here.
I sometimes wonder if Kahn sets up a bit of a "straw man" by over-associating coaching with personal counselling. While he accurately documents links between clinical psychology and coaching, there is also an established coaching practice in which not just systems thinking but systems inspired leadership and action are central, and in which an entrepreneurial culture of opportunity is valued well above orthodoxy and theoretical pedigrees.
This slim volume goes beyond theoretical discussion to advance the useful "coaching on the axis" model. Using the image of a tree, he focuses coaching attention on the coachee's business role as the trunk that links the personal roots of the individual to the organisational branches to be served by his/her role.
What is wonderful about the second half of the book is the rich experience Kahn shares through acutely-observed coaching stories linked to key pointers for first-class systems-oriented business coaching. A lot of Kahn's personal sparkle comes through in the process - and he constantly points us into more authentic relationship with the big issues.
I was particularly pleased to see him extensively acknowledging Valerie Batts' work on race, privilege, rank and power (p87-95). Her perspective is so important in understanding how unconscious privilege in dominant groups, as well as the corrosive power of internalised oppression, continue to bedevil our efforts to embrace diversity.
Also, I took a rather impish pleasure in his word of "caution on using psychometrics in business coaching" including the rhetorical question "how would Winston Churchill have fared on a set of psychometric profiles?" More constructively, I love the way he advocates using any such surveys including 360 degree assessments as the foundation for relationship dialogue, rather than either comparing an individual to a mythical ideal or engaging in guesswork about who said what in anonymous feedback forms.
Finally, thanks to Mr Kahn for providing an extensive and detailed bibliography. As Wilhelm Crous said at the launch of the South African edition of the book, this really is one of the most significant contributions to the South African literature of people at work in the last decade.
The very first chapter hits the nail on the head by calling for a sophisticated balance between the needs of the individual and the needs of the organisation, demanding that business coaches accept and engage with what he calls "the duality of client." This book lays down a firm theoretical and practical base for business coaching that benefits the entire organisation through engagement primarily with one individual. He also opens the door to systems-based team coaching.
As an experienced business leadership coach, I felt both supported and well-challenged by Kahn's rigorous critique of those who allow business coaching to stray into a world informed by individual-centric therapeutic models. At first I wanted to protest that I'm not a psychologist and I don't make the mistakes he warns against. But as I continue to work with my clients, informed by Kahn's thinking, I notice how easy it is to let an "us against them" mentality slip in, where coach and coachee start to operate in a kind of bubble that can easily allocate blame to the organisational environment.
Kahn includes an excellent summary of systems thinking and acknowledges its "framework that allows ... parts of a system (organisation) to be understood in the context of relationships with each other and with other systems, rather than in isolation."(p10) I welcome his "call to business coaches ... to approach their work with systemic eyes and see past the simplistic lens of linear causality" (p12) and see clear links with the work of David Snowden on complexity. My clients find their greatest challenges around leading in situations of great complexity - helped by developing their own "systemic eyes" and keeping their ears tuned to the voice of the system.
Sometimes reading a bit like a textbook, his theoretical chapters nonetheless make several vital contributions. Best of all for me is his clear appreciation that business culture welcomes experimentation and opportunity, not relying purely on unambiguous scientific proof. This is so important in real business life: we have to take risks, follow hunches, and not wait till a certain outcome has been proven before we take the leap. The value coaching sets on what is emerging (rather than what is known) is crucial here.
I sometimes wonder if Kahn sets up a bit of a "straw man" by over-associating coaching with personal counselling. While he accurately documents links between clinical psychology and coaching, there is also an established coaching practice in which not just systems thinking but systems inspired leadership and action are central, and in which an entrepreneurial culture of opportunity is valued well above orthodoxy and theoretical pedigrees.
This slim volume goes beyond theoretical discussion to advance the useful "coaching on the axis" model. Using the image of a tree, he focuses coaching attention on the coachee's business role as the trunk that links the personal roots of the individual to the organisational branches to be served by his/her role.
What is wonderful about the second half of the book is the rich experience Kahn shares through acutely-observed coaching stories linked to key pointers for first-class systems-oriented business coaching. A lot of Kahn's personal sparkle comes through in the process - and he constantly points us into more authentic relationship with the big issues.
I was particularly pleased to see him extensively acknowledging Valerie Batts' work on race, privilege, rank and power (p87-95). Her perspective is so important in understanding how unconscious privilege in dominant groups, as well as the corrosive power of internalised oppression, continue to bedevil our efforts to embrace diversity.
Also, I took a rather impish pleasure in his word of "caution on using psychometrics in business coaching" including the rhetorical question "how would Winston Churchill have fared on a set of psychometric profiles?" More constructively, I love the way he advocates using any such surveys including 360 degree assessments as the foundation for relationship dialogue, rather than either comparing an individual to a mythical ideal or engaging in guesswork about who said what in anonymous feedback forms.
Finally, thanks to Mr Kahn for providing an extensive and detailed bibliography. As Wilhelm Crous said at the launch of the South African edition of the book, this really is one of the most significant contributions to the South African literature of people at work in the last decade.
Displaying 1 of 1 review