Coaching for Leadership.

Coaching for Leadership, by Marshall Goldsmith and Laurence S. Lyons, editors, Book, 2005, Pfeiffer & Company, $55.

When it was published in 2000, Coaching for Leadership: The Practice of Leadership Coaching from the World's Greatest Coaches became an instant classic in the field of executive coaching. The second edition updates and expands on the original, bringing together the best executive coaches who offer a basic understanding of how coaching works, why it works, and how leaders can make the best use of the coaching process.

In the 2005 edition, the authors provide winning strategies managers can use to assess people accurately, spot areas of untapped potential, and help employees release it. Tapping the expertise of the world's best coaches, the authors give managers tips on coaching subordinates, colleagues, and even bosses. Readers can reap rich rewards and realize a tremendous competitive advantage--and so can the organizations that employ them.

What's in the book?

This well-written and thoroughly revised edition reflects recent changes in coaching practices, includes well-researched best practices, and provides additional guidance and tools from the greatest leadership coaches from around the world. Each chapter addresses a proven application, offers principles of practice, and highlights learning points.

A key premise in the book is that the organization is the greatest single invention of mankind. We are born into organizations. Organizations invent technology and cure diseases; they've put people on the moon. Organizations educate us, build our homes, provide us food, and defend us against foreign enemies. Organizations do everything in life that we have come to count on.

Yet, most of them don't work very well, most bosses don't manage very well, and most people report tremendous dissatisfaction with their jobs. Most people report that their boss doesn't even seem to take their job very seriously. The authors ask, What can be done to improve this situation? They believe that when managers become manager-coaches, everyone wins.

According to the authors, a behavioral coaching approach is often most effective. They write, "The essence of coaching is helping leaders get unstuck from their dilemmas and assisting them in transferring their learning into results for the organization." Novice coaches often see their role as helping leaders find solutions to the shortcomings they exhibit or the issues they confront.

In contrast, the authors emphasize that the solution is the easy part. The coaching challenge is fourfold:

* To help leaders understand what the problem is

* To help them understand how it affects their organization

* To develop the capacity to move toward a solution

* To develop the capacity to encourage and coach other leaders to do the same

How good is it?

The authors advocate a standard, proven, and very effective coaching process. It generally consists of five phases: contracting, assessment, goal setting, development planning, and evaluation. With senior leaders, the authors recommend a multi-part approach to assessment that allows the coach to develop a full sense of the person, the job challenge, and how he or she is perceived in the organization. After a number of potential developmental opportunities have been identified, the coach aligns the development plan with measurable objectives based on the goals of the organization.

The authors recommend using a tool called a "Blueprint for Development," which describes the developmental opportunity, the current state, the desired future state, and the plan for action. The specific and final plan for action is actually an outline of commitments, activities, learning, resources, timelines, and measures that structures the coaching engagement.

Recommendation

I highly recommend Coaching for Leadership. If a generation of managers embraced these ideas, they would transform the business landscape. It would be phenomenal--a true paradigm shift. I am, however, hesitant to use the word "transformation" because it has become cheapened and is simply tossed around nowadays. Regardless, there would be that kind of shift--in effectiveness as well as efficiency--and both individuals and organizations would enjoy the benefits.

Coaching for Leadership

Marshall Goldsmit ...

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Review by George Hall 

Product Ratings

Coaching for Leadership

Holds user interest  ***
Value of Content     ****
Self-Study Value     ***
Instructional Value  ***
Value for the money  ****
Overall rating       *** 1/2