Coaching for Meaning is the translated version of Lenhardt's best selling book on coaching first published in France in 1992. Lenhardt's experience as a coach and consultant at top‐management level for various multinational companies has enabled him to compile an insightful review of the different roles involved in the practice of coaching in this book.
One may think that this book does not have anything more to offer than “heat up” pieces of advice available in any other book related to the area of management. However, to the contrary this book may well become the ideal companion of a wide range of managers, consultants, or any practitioners.
One may wonder who this book is addressed to; Coaching for Meaning can really address the needs of either freshly appointed managers having to face up to new responsibilities and the destabilising envious behaviour of colleagues, or indeed to experienced managers struggling to identify a particular issue within their organisation. The main differentiator in this book is the fact that the different psychological phases characterising the role of managers are pointed out. Lenhardt's understanding of human psychology allows him to probe deeper into the evolution of the mental process as well as the unexplored and indescribable feelings encountered by managers.
The progressiveness of this book is worth mentioning; Coaching for Meaning starts by explaining what coaching is really about and highlights the various paradoxes encountered by managers. Lenhardt then moves on towards addressing problematic issues and illustrates how companies can benefit from the help of a coach by a series of practical examples. This book is in many ways about demystifying the obscure role of coaches and about getting the readers to achieve a clearer idea of what the role of a coach actually is. Readers will be surprised by the extent to which Lenhardt's anecdotes will remind them of personal experiences in which they wished they had someone external to the organisation to analyse the situation with a “fresh pairs of eyes”.
The unexplored role of the coach is demystified in this book , however, one must be aware of the limitations of the role played by the coach/consultant. As stressed by the author, the role of the coach is the one of facilitator, advisor, guide whose mission is not to provide clients with full answers to complex managerial situations but to help clients identifying organisational issues by themselves and to help them to understand why the organisation now faces such a complex situation.
To conclude, Coaching for Meaning combines human beings' emotions and psychology with a wide range of practical models, anecdotes and real‐life examples. Throughout the 28 chapters composing this book, one may notice the extensive use of two psychoanalytic methods, namely Neuro‐Linguistic Programming (NLP) and the Transactional Analysis (TA). The combination of these two methods enables Lenhardt to explore the practice of coaching through different perspectives and therefore makes this book worth reading.
