This book provides a very good exposition of how a range of personal development models and theories can be used to support the work of those engaged in management or executive coaching. It is not, as its main title might suggest, a book for those who coach coaches. However, as a title, the Coach's Coach is a bit catchier than the more accurate subtitle.
The book takes the reader through the process of coaching, from first principles – what coaching is for – through to techniques and different styles of coaching – how to do it effectively. It will be of great value to anyone who is approaching the topic of coaching from a background in personal development work and who wants to see how that work, well‐established in the field of training and development, applies to the current interest in coaching.
Alison Hardingham draws on her own experience as an executive coach, with additional insights from the world of sports coaching. The book starts with a chapter on the coachee – what is likely to persuade a manager to undergo coaching, together with the kinds of hopes and fears that will present themselves in a typical new coachee. The second chapter looks at the beliefs and values, motives, skills, habits and actions of the coach – the prerequisites for good coaching. These are particularly important in executive coaching where the coachee may have a lot at stake in agreeing to be coached, and the coach has to demonstrate the value of coaching (as a means of learning and as a business expense). The third chapter looks at the dynamics of the relationship as it is established and develops. Subsequent chapters examine the way that techniques and models familiar to the world of training and development are used to support and inform coaching. These both provide a toolkit for the coach and a learning process for the coachee. One‐to‐one development work is always unpredictable, and does not fit a neat formulaic approach. The examples provided, both from the work of management development and from sport, are case studies that illustrate stages in the coaching relationship and situations that the coach may encounter. Most of these are set in the typical one‐to‐one contracted coaching relationships that exist in executive coaching or in sport, where the coach and coachee agree to meet for a fixed amount of time at regular intervals.
The final chapter of the book explores four other possible coaching relationships – the “player coach”, where the coach is also part of the team (the case study is from rugby, but by analogy applies to work teams too), team coaching, “corridor coaching”, and building a coaching culture. This chapter will be of particular interest to readers who are developing the “manager as coach”, i.e. where coaching becomes a line management function. “Corridor coaching” is the term used to capture all those moments for a bit of coaching that occur in the day to day routine of work where a subordinate or team‐member talks about a problem they have encountered, and where a coaching approach will help the person discover something about themselves as well as their own solution to the problem. A coaching culture can be seen as a pre‐requisite to corridor coaching, and also an outcome of it. Where coaching is encouraged, a coaching approach will be used to problem solving. Using coaching for day‐to‐day problem solving will maintain and enhance a coaching culture.
There are generally three focuses for coaching textbooks:
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Formal coaching sessions at work. Anyone in the business of executive coaching will claim that coaching is best done outside the line management structure of the organisation. For training consultants who have got into coaching this is the most stimulating type of coaching and, of course for consultants, where the money is. For those responsible for training and development within organisations, one significant problem in developing a coaching culture based on executive culture is that it is can be expensive. In some organisations the internal training and development people are acting as coaches for managers. This retains the objectivity of the coach, and the formality of agreed coaching sessions, and can enhance organisational learning through the insights gained by the coach into problems encountered by the coachee. It reduces the confidentiality but increases the breadth of the learning. The final chapter broadens the context of coaching from the sort of contracted coaching that executive coaching represents to the more informal coaching that occurs as part of good day to day management, but to anyone who approaches coaching from an organisational development perspective, this might cause some disappointment. There is, in my opinion, at lot more to say about the development of a coaching culture, and how coaching can enhance the organisation, not just the individual. The role of in‐house trainers and developers as coaches hardly features in Alison Hardingham's approach.
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The second form of coaching is sports coaching. The extent to which analogies from sport are effective for those doing management coaching probably depends on the extent to which the reader is interested in sport. At this point I confess to having only a passing interest in competitive sport. The concepts of “inside out” learning that derive from Timothy Gallwey's definition of the “inner game”, are valuable and useful. Case studies based on the behaviour of sports coaches I tend to find a bit more problematic. There is an example in this book from Adrian Moorhouse who describes a swimming coach who refuses to put up with whingeing (e.g. about the temperature of the pool) by sending the swimmers home the minute any complaint is uttered. The intention is fine (to demand positive thinking – a necessity for the inner game) but the methodology jars a bit with those looking to introduce a coaching culture into business organisations. The parallels that exist between sports coaching and executive coaching can be less insightful for managers who wish to develop their staff through coaching. However, the idea that coaching is a “soft” skill is worth challenging, and the lesson from examples from the world of sport to those developing coaching skills in business organisations is that a good coach needs to be both tough and caring.
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The third approach to coaching is the manager as coach. The role of coaching in managing people is well established. Blanchard's “situational leadership” is probably the best‐known model. It gives coaching a central role in leading and developing staff. The issue for managers is twofold: when to coach, and how to coach. Although Alison Hardingham's book does not dwell on the role of manager‐as‐coach, the middle section of her book does address the “how to” issue. Coaching is not a set of techniques that can be applied in a neat sequential order. It is an approach to learning and development that requires the coach to be as much a part of the learning process as the coachee. It requires self‐awareness and an ability to see the world from others’ perspectives. The value of self‐knowledge is that it increases understanding of how other people's circumstances influence our own emotional states. In this sense, the development of coaching skills initially follows the same route as the development of counselling skills. Thereafter the path diverges as the coach's development focuses on the goal of coaching – to improve performance at work. The real challenge for the manager as coach is distinguishing what the coachee needs from what the coach wants to do. For line managers this can sometimes be a real conflict. Alison Hardingham has examples of where the coachee's problem is the line manager. A few examples of when good line management coaching produced good learning and performance outcomes would also have been helpful.
The personal development that this books takes the reader through draws on an eclectic range of sources. The bibliography contains a useful collection of key texts to follow up the links between coaching skills and other aspects of personal development that derive from NLP, TA and other therapeutic approaches.
The style of the book makes for an easy read. The case studies are thought provoking. In all, a good book to have as part of the trainer and developer's library.
