Action Coaching: How to Leverage Individual Performance for Company Success [Paperback]

David L. Dotlich (Author), Peter C. Cairo (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0787944777 | ISBN-13: 978-0787944773 | Publication Date: September 10, 1999 | Edition: 2nd

Chances are, if you're a manager in most any organization today, coaching has become an integral part of your responsibilities. And there's no more effective approach to coaching than Action Coaching. Developed by the authors through their work with Levi Strauss, Colgate, Bank of America, Arthur Andersen and other leading companies, Action Coaching is the only coaching process that dramatically increases an individual's personal performance in direct correlation with established organizational goals. Here, Dotlich and Cairo share the same advice, techniques, and tools they've used to transform hundreds of managers and executives into first-rate coaches. Moreover, they clearly demonstrate how Action Coaching can be used as a strategy for achieving organizational goals by aligning personal improvement with a company's vision for the future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Dotlich and Cairo have developed an incredibly powerful, practical, and thought provoking way of helping leaders simplify complex issues and drive big improvements in themselves and their organizations." --Jeffrey M. Nugent, worldwide president, Neutrogena Corporation

"Every page of this book is filled with tips and techniques for making improved performance happen. Good coaching should result in action-and this book shows how it is done." --Stephen H. Rhinesmith, former chairman, American Society for Training and Development, and author, A Manager's Guide to Globalization

"The global Business Olympics will demand world-class players and coaches. Action Coaching is the manual we need to produce business Olympians for the future." --Gordon Shank, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Levi Strauss & Co.

From the Inside Flap

If you're a manager in most any organization today, you probably realize that your ability to coach others is fast becoming a key component of your job. Your ability to help others perform better on an individual basis is crucial to your career and theirs. Still, it's not enough; their personal improvement must be accomplished in ways that support company goals or, from an organizational perspective, that improvement has little value.In Action Coaching, authors Dotlich and Cairo teach people at the executive, managerial, and group level how to become extraordinary coaches. But what truly sets Action Coaching apart is its ability to strategically link the progress of individuals to specific organizational issues and, thereby, become a powerful tool for organizational change. With Action Coaching, goals for individuals are always determined in conjunction with the organization. The extraordinary benefits of that approach have been proven over the years through the authors' work with such leading companies as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Colgate, Levi Strauss, Bank of America, Merck, and Arthur Andersen, to name but a few. Among many other lessons, companies will learn how to pick the right coach for the job, how to coach the coach, and how to use coaching to solve business problems.Aside from the strategic advantages Action Coaching offers organizations, the potential it holds for individuals far surpasses ordinary coaching approaches as well. Here, the authors not only show readers how to move people from heightened self-awareness to improved performance, but how to go beyond that to affect a significant performance breakthrough and even a major behavioral and attitudinal change that opens doors to new career possibilities.Illustrated with case histories, anecdotes, and a variety of tools and techniques, Action Coaching gives readers everything they need to include effective coaching among their professional abilities. Moreover, it gives managers, top executiv

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 2nd edition (September 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787944777
• ISBN-13: 978-0787944773
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #352,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Effort!, February 16, 2001

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Action Coaching: How to Leverage Individual Performance for Company Success (Paperback)

David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo discuss how to use action coaching to improve individual effectiveness and boost your overall organization. Their approach begins with fostering self-awareness and then uses this awareness to motivate change that the organization needs. Action coaching involves a series of steps and some specific coaching tools. While this book provides a fairly well-organized and well-written introduction to the concept, it covers familiar training and development ground. If you are a beginner in this area, the repetition of steps and processes will come in handy. Experienced trainers will find the coaching tools quite familiar and the assessment questions fairly obvious. Thus, we at getAbstract.com recommend this book for those who are new to training and development, or for employees who are considering getting coached.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Coaching in Context, September 6, 2000

By 

Steven K Wolcott (Shepherdstown, WV United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Action Coaching: How to Leverage Individual Performance for Company Success (Paperback)

Dotlich and Cairo have put together a fine and practical book that really helps focus coaching skills towards results. They give a very specific approach to developing an action plan to produce results from coaching. In fact they address four kinds of results - self-awareness results, performance improvement results, performance breakthroughs and finally full-blown transformations. Maybe most important for modern organizations is the anal;ysis of coaching skills in the context of the organizational needs, not just individual developmental needs. We develop and support people because our organization needs their current compliment of skills enhanced with other skills or it needs to rehabilitate a counterproductive approach. Although much of their work is not necesarily new, I believe they have packaged it to be more usable and accesible. I would highly recommend this book for someone looking for a chance to evaluate their own coaching skills, develop an improvement action plan and maintain high levels of motivation to improve their performance. Who know, maybe even transform their performance!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent overview, January 26, 2006

By 

Louise McCauley (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Action Coaching: How to Leverage Individual Performance for Company Success (Paperback)

The need to cope with change, inside and outside of the organization, and the employee's need for personal development should be brought into alignment, say these founding partners of CDR International, a consulting firm that specializes in executive coaching. Action coaching is a process that fosters self-awareness, and guides personal development so that an employee's personal development goals are congruent with the goals of the organization.

Action coaching differs from traditional coaching in three ways:
1. The employee's relationship to the coach is a business relationship rather than a therapist-patient relationship.
2. Action coaches tailor their strategies to the individual and the strategies are geared towards performance breakthroughs, where traditional coaching tends to be unfocused and generalized.
3. Where traditional coaching focuses on personal insights, Action coaching translates insights into actions with organizational results.

There are eight steps to implementing Action coaching in your organization:
1. Determine what needs to happen and in what context.
2. Establish trust and mutual expectations. Make sure the employee understands the purpose of the coaching as well as the steps in the process.
3. Contract with the employee for results. There should be a formal written and oral agreement with the employee about the purpose of the coaching and specific goals to achieve.
4. Collect and communicate feedback.
5. Translate talk into action. Use your feedback to enact change. Review and revise goals when needed. Make sure the goals are still in alignment with the business needs of the organization. Set deadlines.
6. Support the employee in taking big steps.
7. Foster reflection about actions.
8. Evaluate both individual and organizational progress.