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Unlocking Potential: 7 Coaching Skills That Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations

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REVISED, UPDATED, AND EXPANDED: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP FROM A TEAM OF EXPERT EXECUTIVE COACHES.

Over the past six years, Michael K. Simpson's 'UNLOCKING POTENTIAL' has helped leaders motivate, inspire, and fully engage their teams. This revised edition, written with Maria Sullivan and Kari Saddler, builds on that powerful foundation for a new generation of leaders. The key is not just managing but "coaching" - developing the talents of your organization's most important asset: the employees. In any successful organization, that begins with the basic skills developed by Simpson: building trust, recognizing potential, challenging paradigms, clarifying individual personal goals, executing flawlessly, giving effective feedback, and tapping into talent. Now Simpson expands on his knowledge and experience as a senior consultant with the management assessment firm FranklinCovey. This revised and updated edition also features insights from Sullivan and Saddler and additional real-life lessons learned in the field by managers who have put Simpson's invaluable coaching skills into play.

Transform your business relationships (and your business) with this comprehensive tool for optimizing productivity, profitability, loyalty, and customer focus.




RUNNING TIME ⇨ 4hrs.

©2014, 2020 FranklinCovey, (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

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First published August 12, 2014

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Michael K. Simpson

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5 stars
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews
Profile Image for Annie.
1,032 reviews856 followers
March 31, 2018
I give this 3.5 stars. The 4 principles of coaching are:
- Trust: trust others and be trustworthy
- Potential: find out what the individuals need and help them grow
- Commitment: help individuals develop a sense of purpose
- Execution: help individuals discover their desired destination to execute worthwhile goals

The section for the 7 coaching skills provide actions for implementing the above principles (like how to develop trust, how to give feedback, how to seek strategic clarity, and how to execute flawlessly). The advice in this book isn't much different from a management book. Becoming an effective manager is about understanding each individual in the team, managing/developing those individuals based on their unique needs, and leading the team to accomplish a shared goal. The only new insight is helping individuals in the middle improve their performance to have a larger impact on long-term success. If a manager focus on top performers and they leave the company, it will create a huge talent gap. If a manager focuses on weak performers to bring them up to a minimum quality level, then the other team members who could be adding more value are not receiving the guidance and attention to make that happen.
Profile Image for Joseph McGarry.
Author 4 books71 followers
December 1, 2014
I received a free copy of this book from 12 Books Group in exchange for this revies.

This book is about coaching. When most people think of coaching, they think of sports. This can be a useful analogy to what business coaching does. In sports, the coach draws up the plays, analyzes strengths and weaknesses of the other teams, and calls the plays from the sideline or bench. The coach also supervises workout drills, and helps players improve their strengths and fix their weaknesses. The coach can't actually do the workout, or run the plays; the coach has to rely on the players to do that.

The business coach does many of the same things. The coach can provide guidance, analyze strengths and weaknesses, and draw up a general plan for improvement. The business coach can't actually do what's on the plan, that's up to the individual or business being coached. The author says that the current generation of workers doesn't want to be micromanaged; I know I don't. They want to be given a project, given a deadline, and left alone to finish the job. This is similar to their experience in college. The professor gives the assignment, or schedules the exam, and leaves it to the student to figure out how to get it done. They can either plan it out over several weeks, or cram and finish it the night before. As long as the work is done on time, the professor doesn't care.

The author provides what he sees as the 4 principles of coaching: Trust, Potential, Commitment, and Execution. His 7 Coaching Skills, as mentioned in the subtitle, are these: Build Trust, Challenge Paradigms, Seek Strategic Clarity, Execute Flawlessly, Give Effective Feedback, Tap Into Talent, and Move the Middle. He goes into detail about what questions to ask, and uses examples from his own experience to illustrate them.

I've read other books like this, and they tend to devolve into what I call "corporatespeak", with all kinds of buzzwords that don't mean anything. Sometimes they're accompanied by diagrams, many of which don't make any sense. They also give a lot of ideals that are supposed to turn things around, but the procedures are almost impossible to implement. The author avoids this for the most part. He keeps the diagrams to a minimum, and explains things in real world terms. He makes it clear that it's up to the employees to make the change.

The one thing I would have appreciated is a website. He gives examples of various forms in the book. Many of these books have a website to download the forms for use in the organization. I didn't see that here.

All in all, a good book on coaching. In sports, if the team doesn't perform well, the coach is fired. The same can happen in business coaching.
Profile Image for BJ Richardson.
Author 2 books91 followers
September 30, 2018
This is a pretty standard book on coaching. The book is broken into two parts.

Part one shares the four principles of coaching:
1) Trust
2) Potential
3) Commitment
4) Execution

Part two shares the seven coaching skills:
1) Build Trust
2) Challenge Paradigms
3) Seek Strategic Clarity
4) Execute Flawlessly
5) Give Effective Feedback
6) Tap Into Talent
7) Move the Middle

This last one is, I believe, the most unique and eye opening aspect of the book. Most leaders tend to focus their coaching time and effort on the most talented and/or those with the most potential. Simpson suggests that we would be more effective if we focused instead on "moving the middle". If we can increase the average this will do more long term good than investing in the best who are far more likely statistically to take our investment with them elsewhere.

Now that I have shared the 11 principles and focused on the best, there's no need for you to waste your time reading the book which offers nothing deeper to share. Just a lot of filler. In all, I was disappointed that this book is almost exclusively a business leadership book. There is little here beyond the core that is transferable to the wider world.
Profile Image for Jane.
Author 28 books92 followers
January 9, 2016
My imagination failed me. Could someone who didn't understand that coaching requires building trust, challenging paradigms, giving feedback, and facilitating clarity learn it from reading this short book? Plus, an amazing percentage of the book is poorly written. You can explain business concepts and delight your reader with your prose.
Profile Image for bookchace.
25 reviews
August 1, 2025
Read is for a leadership class. Pretty decent advice. Not my usual read though.
Profile Image for Louis Prosperi.
Author 21 books14 followers
November 27, 2014
A useful and insightful look at effective coaching.

This book is about how effective coaching can help leaders to better motivate and engage their teams. Following an introduction that serves to explain what coaching is and is not, the book comprises two main sections.

The first part of this book is focused on four key principles of coaching; building trust, tapping into potential, creating commitment, and executing goals. These are the foundations of good coaching, and form the basis for the seven skills described in part two. The second (and considerable longer) part of the book is dedicated to exploring seven coaching skills:

* Build Trust
* Challenge Paradigms
* Seek Strategic Clarity
* Execute Flawlessly
* Give Effective Feedback
* Tap Into Talent
* Move the Middle

There is some natural overlap between the four principles and seven skills, but I think that's to be expected, given the subject matter. For example, the importance of trust between a coach and the people he or she is coaching can't be overemphasized. All the best coaching skills in the world are next to useless without the foundation of trust.

The author of this book, Michael K. Simpson, has spent more than 25 years training executives to be more effective coaches, and draws on this considerable experience in providing examples of several of the principles covered in the book. The author was mentored by Dr. Steven R. Covey, author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," and readers will recognize several of the key themes from Dr. Covey's work in this book.

I generally enjoy books like this, and this one was certainly no exception. One of the things I especially liked about this book is that it provides lots of practical advice for leaders in the form of questions they can use to identify issues, resolve challenges, and bring out the best of the people whom they lead.

Of the seven skills outlined in this book, my favorite chapters were challenging paradigms and "moving the middle." We all get caught up in paradigms that no longer serve us, and I think that tools for identifying and breaking free of those are useful to everyone. The idea of "moving the middle" is one that caught my eye because it represents what I refer to as "common sense but not common practice." All too often emphasis is put on performance improvements of high level performers, but focusing on the middle can yield much more effective results.

That said, I do have some minor quibbles with this book. The first is that it's somewhat even in places. Some chapters are fairly short, high-level, and largely conceptual/theoretical, while others are more in-depth and offer more practical advice to readers. I think part of the reason for this is that some of the concepts discussed in this book are quite large in and of themselves (building trust and challenging paradigms for example) and could easily be the subject of their own books. The author had to draw a line at some point in terms of how in-depth he could go on each of the topics he addresses, and overall I agree with his choices, but there were times when I felt that the text wasn't going deep enough into some areas.

Another minor issue I had is related to editing. I spotted a number of spelling and grammatical errors that distracted me and pulled me out of the text. Normally I wouldn't point something like out, but in this case it was a bit more frequent that I would have expected. These were only a minor annoyance, but still something I couldn't ignore.

Overall I strongly recommend this book to managers and leaders looking to improve and sharpen their coaching skills. It offers lots of great insight and practical advice for effective coaching and deserves a spot in every coach's success library.

Note: I won a free copy of this book from the "12 Books" group as part of its monthly book discussion program.
193 reviews1 follower
January 19, 2015
Simpsons attempts to provide some useful coaching tips for his reader, and while there are some diamonds in the rough, the book is, for the most part, a repackaging of content already delivered by Stephen Covey and Jim Collins in their well-known works. The book contains very little original content, and the repurposed content it does contain is better read in the words of the original authors.
1 review
December 21, 2014
So so

This book was a bit disappointing. Lots of new terms, one being used to describe another. Not enough concrete examples to allow this information to stick. The chapters stemmed disconnected to the point that I was surprised that the book was finished (kindle)
107 reviews2 followers
November 22, 2022
Transformational!

So chocked full of hard hitting, no-nonsense information and practical steps and examples to transform yourself, individual employees (it did not say, but I believe even fellow employees among non-leadership role workers), all levels of management all the way to the top-most leadership of any company, large or small; from a sole proprietorship where its just you, to midsized companies to giants like Amazon or Google, or non-profit organizations, clubs and guilds, sports teams, churches and related ministries... parts could even be adapted to family life. So much to digest - am getting a hard copy, perhaps several to give away, to underscore and put sticky note tabs into, as I will be referring back to this text for the foreseeable future. Really a fantastic read for leaders, employees, parents, students... pretty much everyone!
Profile Image for Adwait.
16 reviews
January 18, 2019
For the one who knows Coaching, most of the stuff would not be new. But it is a good book to Sharpen your saw! What I liked is that this book comes as a concise package of skills & principles to be used for Individual or Executive Coaching. It draws a lot from Steven R. Covey's 7 Habits for Highly Effective People & his other books, The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, et al.

The most important part for an aspiring or a practicing coach is "Questions". For each topic or sub-topic the most relevant & powerful questions are provided. For that aspect one can keep going back to the book.
151 reviews1 follower
July 6, 2022
The End was Nearly Helpful

I really didn’t find anything helpful until the last two chapters. Even at that, the book rehashed every business/leadership model that I have read a thousand times.
Though I NEARLY understood the “why?” behind this type of structure, I’m still left uncertain. What good does it do to make all these statements when no one but the leader buys-in to it?

This book doesn’t answer that question, nor does it assist the reader in analyzing that question effectively.

The first chapters left no impression on me at all. As a matter of fact, I struggled to press on through the end of the book due to the lack of impactful material.
Profile Image for Ashley.
145 reviews4 followers
August 18, 2018
This is not a book that you pick up and casually read at an airport. Rather, it's one you read at your desk with a Steno pad. It first establishes why coaching is important to organizations and then walks through very practical steps on how to do it. It is filled with thought-provoking questions for both you and your teams.

There is nothing new or surprising in this book, because frankly, this is meant to be common sense, practical, and accessible. This will be on a regular re-read circuit for me to bring these principles top of mind because of its brevity & clarity.
Profile Image for Sarah Holmes.
539 reviews1 follower
July 3, 2022
Being a topic I am very interested in learning about for my job, I thought this book was very interesting. Yes, it is required reading for one of my classes, but I also found it to be very helpful as someone who needs to coach and lead as part of my job. Especially in comparison to a few other books I have read, this one balanced the data with the examples fairly well. The reason I subtracted a star was because there were many pages full of just bulletted questions, which wasn’t easy to read at times.
Profile Image for Todd.
129 reviews
May 8, 2018
While this book of coaching advice for business leaders could be helpful to anyone who aspires to coach, this book assumes coaching skills for the most part and instead provides themes, models and empowering questions to move individuals and organizations through change. The book is valuable for the suggested questions alone, and I particularly recommend the book for executive and business coaches. The book is a bit dense for most busy managers but perfect for coaches.
Profile Image for Heidi.
404 reviews3 followers
November 12, 2018
I reviewed some of the reviews prior to posting mine...I was a little surprised to see such low ratings because I actually quite liked the book.
The reason I am interested in this book (and others) related to self-help in the area of leadership is primarily due to the lack of positive leadership at my job. Understanding what skills I can learn and then practice in order to become a better employee and prepare for potential leadership roles in the future are invaluable.
Profile Image for Brandy.
75 reviews16 followers
July 29, 2019
Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad book. Simpson gives good advice. It's just...this sounds like every other book on the subject. There was no unique angle, no unique voice, and a fair amount of quoting and referencing of the other books. I did not feel like I got anything conceptually new out of it other than some relevant anecdotes. The lists of questions throughout the book to use in your coaching, however, is quite useful. But overall, I'd say this is about 2.5 stars for me.
Profile Image for DAB.
16 reviews1 follower
October 24, 2017
Effective and clear

The book easily structures, defines and highlights the goals to gain the skill set of coaching and thoroughly explains it.
The examples are in depth and also provide good questions to partner with the topics.
This provided great insight into my company and perspective.
Profile Image for Attila.
35 reviews
May 16, 2019
A book covering lots of fundamental important facts and facets about developing talent to an amazingly shallow detail, not enough to convince those who don't know them about their truth, not giving any new insight to those who know them already.

Besides giving me a list of coaching questions that you can also google easily, I did not learn anything new or interesting.
Profile Image for Ed Barton.
1,303 reviews
July 2, 2022
Coaching Must Read

Whether you are a manager or a professional coach, this book gives useful insights into the 7 coaching skills that will turbocharge your impact and the subject’s performance. A good refresher for anyone responsible for mentoring and coaching in a professional setting.
10 reviews
February 10, 2024
This book has given the word coaching a beautiful meaning.It's like the self reflection journal for organisations.The principles of coaching were laid out well, though the real life examples given were less. Only after reading this book, I realised how much of hard work goes into running an organisation.
Profile Image for Charles Roberts.
38 reviews6 followers
June 8, 2017
Want results? Get this book.

Well crafted, highly organized, easy to apply. The seven skills outlined here are essential for any coaching practice or organizational self-assessment.
Profile Image for Scott.
263 reviews12 followers
January 30, 2018
This is a simple and easy read for helping you work with your team, and developing your own personal skills in coaching.

The focus of this book is 7 simple skills to learn and grow in managing your teams.
10 reviews
April 28, 2018
A mandatory tool for great leaders

I love the outline of the book and its detail. It’s a useful tool, step-by-step, that leads one to become a better leader by using critical thinking processes through practical surveys.
Profile Image for Vance King.
48 reviews
August 23, 2018
This book included some great questions to implement when coaching individuals, teams, and organizations. There was nothing really groundbreaking, but it was a good reminder for leaders and managers and I can see myself using it as a resource in the future.

Just OK.
Profile Image for Jonathan Johnson.
375 reviews1 follower
July 2, 2019
An okay book
I did not get anything timeless from it
The plus is that it is only 140 pages and short chapters so it is easy to get through
I would recommend this book to someone who is getting into corporate coaching and wants to know the process and questions to ask when in this space
Profile Image for Lewis Ngugi.
73 reviews11 followers
December 27, 2019
The guide to bettering your company

What I didn't expect is find some frameworks that I've been looking for! Love it! It seems we are coaches and we've not been knowing so! We need to embrace it and this book shows you how and why.
10 reviews
Read
February 11, 2020
For a beginner like me in Coaching, this book is a good starter.

It covered the basic stuffs which I needed to know.

It has some very insightful basic ways and also give some good thoughts on how to speak using questions.

It was worth my time.
Profile Image for Sharon Winter.
5 reviews
June 23, 2020
A must read!! Brilliant

Very informative, easy read with practical examples and thought provoking questions.
As someone with little coaching experience, this book offered some great insights into the benefits of coaching in the work environment.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 80 reviews

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