There are so many books about business coaching, it can be hard to choose one which one to read.
The Financial Times Guide to Business Coaching
So what do you need to do to be a world-class business coach? Anne Scoular guides you through everything you need to know, from finding out if you have got what it takes, through the basic tools and models that really work, to the more advanced techniques that will help you get to the top of the coaching world.
The FT Guide to Business Coaching is a good introduction to successful business coaching. Based on a tried and trusted process developed specifically for senior business leaders, and used by many of Europe’s leading business coaches, CEOs, executives and consultants, this book will help you:
- Decide if you have got what it takes to be an effective business coach
- Develop a deeper understanding of what coaching is and what it does
- Build powerful listening skills
- Get to grips with a variety of useful coaching tools and techniques
- Assess the most appropriate questions to use with clients
- Determine if and how you can make a living as a business coach
- Decide if, how and when to apply for accreditation as a coach
In short, the book tells you how, giving you a step-by-step guide to the tools, the market knowledge and the crucial new techniques from psychology you need. Here is a list of the chapter headings and contents.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: The business of coaching
Today’s market: scale, rate of growth, the forces powering that growth. The players: typically who uses it in business, at what stages of their careers/companies’ growth. How and why it is used, and when it shouldn’t be.
Chapter 2: The coaches
The suppliers – the different types of coaches, first, within organisations: coach as leader/manager; coach as HR/L&D leader; ‘specialist’ coaches. Then the externals, from slick coaching businesses, through tight to loose associations, to associate relationships and the ‘lone wolf’. The trade-offs/pros and cons of working in/as each.
Chapter 3: Do you have what it takes?
So we have a large, growing, and lucrative market (Chapter 1), that delivers a product that works and is additively powerful (Chapter 2). So the obvious next question is “how do l get there?” And the more reflective, “Can l?”
The three core requirements and psychometric profiles of successful business coaches.
Chapter 4: Developing your coaching: first steps
Step 1, experience terrific coaching for yourself: but how to find a great coach? (Tips including ‘chemistry sessions’ and being a ‘practice client’ for those training at good schools). Ways to ‘dip your toe in the water’. Table of training courses available in the UK, mainland Europe, US: strengths, scope, costs (data from independent research). Supervision: purpose, sourcing, how to tell a good one. Accreditation: pros and cons, Table of accreditation providers.
Chapter 5: Building coaching skills: the basics
The heart of business coaching: the simple but not easy ‘Big Five’: contracting; the GROW model; listening; questioning; non-directive.
Chapter 6: Building coaching skills: the different approaches
Exploring the many tools and approaches out there in the market: goal setting; Inner Game; Prochaska; Klingborg/psychodynamic; behavioural; solution-focused; ‘NLP’ and why supporters/antagonists are often so impassioned. Positive Psychology, with example of Flow Techniques from high-performance sports.
Chapter 7: Deepening coaching skills: working with individual difference
Two reasons for exploring individual difference: because we as coaches need to know ourselves better, to use our strengths in coaching/get out of clients’ way, and because raising self-awareness is often part of the coaching brief. Full range of techniques from the simple and free through to the high-tech/costly; assessment (the many traps!); 360 (ditto!); non-psychometric profiling; psychometrics (including personality; ability motivation; values; strengths, etc).
Chapter 8: Advanced coaching: team coaching and group dynamics
Power of business coaching to overcome thinking errors at group level: Kahneman’s Nobel prize research. ‘Groupthink’; a famous War Cabinet’s solution. Team-relevant psychometrics: Firo-B, Thomas-Kilman, Practicalities of working with teams: tips and traps.
Chapter 9: Advanced coaching: coaching and career transitions
Based on new Meyler Campbell research. Includes: the new longevity (Cambridge neuroscience research) and the vast new market for coaching to deal with it; difference between career management (unforced) and career transition (someone/something’s making me do this) coaching; traditional v. new (Ibarra) approach. The new market: ‘third stage’ career coaching.
Chapter 10: Advanced coaching: motivation and change
They can do it but will they?! Motivation is a core skill for leaders and coaches: very briefly outline traditional research; new Ryan & Deci tool. The three core areas for coach/leader to focus. Actually making change: Prochaska tool.
Chapter 11: Why it works
Surprisingly not yet published, other than in obscure journals. The considerable body of research on why it works (it isn’t the tools!). Including evidence-based research from sources including 15 years of Positive Psychology (somewhat known); adult development, (the first book on this in coaching came out in 2011) sports psychology etc.
Chapter 12: Building your freelance coaching business
How people earn their living with coaching, from CEO to freelance, and how much one can earn. Setting up in business as a coach: how much you need to do; overcoming the challenges; the marketing check-list.
