Coaching Understood: A Pragmatic Inquiry into the Coaching Process

Citation

Cox, E. (2013), "Coaching Understood: A Pragmatic Inquiry into the Coaching Process", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 21 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2013.04421daa.001

Coaching Understood: A Pragmatic Inquiry into the Coaching Process

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 21, Issue 4

Elaine CoxSage,2013,ISBN: 9780857028266

If you want to learn the ropes of coaching, read this book. If you want to be equipped with tools and techniques about coaching, read this book. If you want an international authoritative resource on coaching, read this book. If you want to add value to your organization and excel as a leader, read this book.

Elaine Cox’s Coaching Understood: a Pragmatic Inquiry into the Coaching Process contains 192 pages with 11 chapters.

The book provides a new, holistic and practical model that gives clients an understanding of the coaching process and furnishes coaches with a framework to guide their practice and to underpin their own learning and development. The model begins with unarticulated experience and moves through various stages of cognitive exploration towards the integration of reformulated understanding that informs future experience.

Chapter 1 – “Introduction” introduces the model, the functions of its different parts and the important transition points.

Chapter 2 – “Touching Experience”’ details the nature of experience and how difficult it can be for clients to articulate their experiences. It discusses concepts such as focusing as ways of getting closer to experience.

Chapter 3 – “Articulating Experience” discusses how clients need to construct stories that are congruent with their current conceptions of themselves.

Chapter 4 – “Listening” draws on theories of listening, together with client-centered theories to look at why listening is important. It examines the theories of levels of listening and types of listening and their implications for the client.

Chapter 5 – “Clarifying” examines clarification techniques as they apply to coaching, and differentiates between the techniques of mirroring and reflecting back. It unpacks the role of clean language in helping the client to think, but also looks at the “dirty language” functions of paraphrasing and summarizing as aspects of clarifying.

Chapter 6 – “Reflecting” examines the concept of phenomenological reflecting in some detail and explores its use in coaching. It discusses reflective-practice models that may be useful for promoting phenomenological description.

Chapter 7 – “Becoming Critical” focuses initially on how critical thinking is treated in the literature. It then looks at strategies for encouraging criticality and how the coach can begin to challenge the client to think differently.

Chapter 8 – “Questioning” explores where questions come from and the different types of questioning, including the effectiveness of Socratic questioning and the significance of the “why” question, which is often held to be out of bounds for the coach.

Chapter 9 – “Being Present” examines the nature of mindfulness and presence and their role in coaching. It presents a model that illuminates the interplay between these two important concepts and their role in the state of “being present”.

The penultimate Chapter 10 – “Integrating Experience’”examines the theory of the transfer of learning. It discusses the nature of what is being transferred back into the workplace following a coaching intervention. It looks at ways of effecting this transfer through extrapolation techniques, such as role-play and scenario planning.

The final Chapter 11 – “Conclusion’” draws together main findings from previous chapters and highlights areas for research.

The author works from a pragmatic perspective, drawing extensively on research in order to provide a comprehensive evidence-based understanding of coaching that will begin to explain its unique power and appeal. The model of coaching presented is necessarily pragmatic.

The author identifies that there is a huge potential for research in the area of coaching as many things have not been examined empirically. Therefore, the book prepares the ground for evidence-based practitioners and researchers.

This is a well-researched book with effective takeaways on coaching. Elaine Cox bridges the gap between theory and practice, which is indeed a Herculean task for any author.

This is a good resource to help learners to excel as leaders, and for anyone who wants to learn about the length and breadth of coaching. If you want to debunk several myths on coaching, read this book. If you are passionate about coaching, read this book more than once. It will change the way you think about coaching.

Reviewed by Professor M.S. Rao, founder of MSR Leadership Consultants, India, and an experienced leadership author, educator, speaker, consultant and practitioner. He can be contacted at: e-mail: profmsr7@gmail.com; blogs: http://profmsr.blogspot.com; http://professormsrao.blogspot.com; http://professormsraoguru.blogspot.com; speaker wiki: http://speakermix.com/professor-m-s-rao

A longer version of this review was originally published in Training & Management Development Methods, Vol. 27 No. 3, 2013.