Your Total Coach: 50 Ideas for Inspiring Personal and Professional Growth

Citation

Nelson, K. (2011), "Your Total Coach: 50 Ideas for Inspiring Personal and Professional Growth", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 19 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2011.04419daa.014

Your Total Coach: 50 Ideas for Inspiring Personal and Professional Growth

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 19, Issue 4

Keith NelsonInfinite Ideas2010,ISBN: 9781906821593

The popularity of coaching has increased dramatically over the last decade. Some 40 percent of UK firms are now estimated to offer coaching to at least some of their employees.

One reason is that change is happening at great speed in businesses around the world and firms see coaching as a good way to make employees more adaptable, motivated and productive. Says author Keith Nelson:

In these unsteady times, coaching is helping people to develop and adapt to change. Organizations are facing significant challenges and are recognizing the power of coaching as part of their management program.

Your Total Coach provides coaches with 50 ideas, divided into three tiers, to support and enhance their coaching.

Tier 1 focuses on the essentials that enable effective coaching to take place. They include creating the right environment for coaching, clarifying expectations, identifying goals, listening, providing feedback, developing rapport and solving problems. “Coaching at this level … means creating time and space, learning to hold back and not step in, and understanding and applying models to help the process,” Keith Nelson explains.

Tier 2, on advanced coaching, is when coaching becomes a strategic partnership between coach and client. At tier 2, the coach is: caring for the client; developing high-level skills in rapport and empathy; understanding the importance of values – both for the client and for self; managing the relationship with the client; taking on high levels of personal responsibility for the self; and extending personal comfort values.

Tier 3, transformational coaching, occurs “where the coach learns to work comfortably – and eventually seamlessly – within the psychological and emotional dimensions of coaching”. The author believes that, at this level of coaching, common ground exists between coaching and counseling, as coaching is based on psychological principles behind performance. Transformational coaching opens the door to real and sustained change.

The book takes a highly practical approach, with plenty of short checklists and examples. It is clearly set out and, with fewer than 150 pages of essentially journalistic prose, easy to read. It provides plenty to interest business coaches keen to release the potential of the leaders they coach, leaders keen to improve the performance of their teams, life coaches committed to enabling their clients to lead more rewarding lives, and aspiring coaches studying for professional qualifications.

Reviewed by David Pollitt

A version of this review was originally published in Training & Management Development Methods, Vol. 25 No. 1, 2011.