Book Review, Excellence in Coaching: The Industry Guide, www.corporatetraining.ie

Saturday, 04-02-2012

YOU ARE HERE: Home > Training > Book Reviews > Excellence In Coaching

Posted on 2009-03-25 in Training

Excellence in Coaching

This book aspires to be a comprehensive guide to the principal issues that affect coaches and coaching. Though, at 222 pages, it is probably a little slim to become the industry bible for best practice, it breaks new ground in the sector, in that it builds a body of coaching knowledge, drawn from a wide range of leading thinkers in the industry.

The contributors include Sir John Whitmore, founder of Performance Consultants and author of the bestselling “Coaching for Perfor-mance”; Professor Cary Cooper CBE and ‘super coach’ Graham Alexander, who has been attributed with introducing business coaching to the UK and Ireland. Clearly, offerings from such a breadth of perspectives and insights into coaching are worth careful consideration from those interested in the area.

Coaching is one of the fastest growing profess-ions. It emerged from the world of sport in the sixties. However its increasing use in the business world, over the last twenty years, has spawned a bewildering variety of models and professional bodies claiming to regulate it. The claims of ‘coaches’ are many and its successes sometimes difficult to assess. In this context, it is useful to see that the book explains – in fact, most of the book is dedicat-ed to explaining – the major coaching models. Each chapter outlining these models has a very useful, if sometimes a little too concise, list of reference books, for further reading.

It is disappointing that only some 20-odd pages cover the important professional issues, including Ethics and Supervision. However, two excellent articles, by Allard de Jong and Peter Hawkins, form an excellent basis for development of this section of the book in future issues. Incidentally, in the brief article on ‘Setting up and running your coaching practice’ there is some good sales and marketing advice but only passing reference to ethics, supervision and ongoing training.

Overall, the book provides a balanced overview of the world of coaching with some concise, well-written articles, carefully selected and edited by Johnathan Passmore, head of coaching training at OPM Consultants.

One thing: surely there is a more elegant phrase available than ‘coachee’, which is used throughout the book and is becoming increasingly used in the sector. If a footballer is called ‘a footballer’ when he or she is being coached, can we not call a manager, who is receiving coaching, ‘a manager’?

Finally, and irritatingly, the website described in the book as supporting it and described as the location where we “can find out more about the themes in the book” doesn’t exist, or hasn’t yet been uploaded, which is a pity. In brief, a valuable addition to the bookshelves of coaches, students of coaching and those seeking to understand the industry.

Excellence in Coaching: The Industry Guide. Edited by Jonathon Passmore. Published by Kogan Page, 2006, 222pp