Co-Active Coaching: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and Life [Hardcover]

Laura Whitworth (Author), Henry Kinsey-House (Author), Phil Sandahl (Author), John Whitmore (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 1998

For professional coaches who want to increase their proficiency as well as those interested in integrating coaching skills into their consulting practice.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Davies-Black Publishing; 1st edition (November 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891061231
• ISBN-13: 978-0891061236
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A book coaches will find worth having on their bookshelf as a reference and place to go to find ideas. -- Peer Resources Top Coaching Books, July 2004

Techniques for achieving one's goals from pioneers in the booming field of career coaching. -- New Age Journal, November/December 1998

The Co-Active Coaching model can (and does) provide interesting tools and tips to assist with coaching in a professional capacity. -- Personnel Psychology, Spring 2000

This book proposes a new kind of coaching, which involves the active participation of both the coach and the client. -- HR Magazine, February 1999

Whether you're training coaches, instituting a mentoring program, or evaluating a coach for your own use, the authors' model will come in handy. -- Training & Development, May 1999

From the Publisher

A selection of the Doubleday Executive Program book club. Foreword by John Whitmore, author of Coaching for Performance.

Discover the technqiues needed to transform your consulting skills into those required for professional and personal coaching--the hottest new profession in organizational consulting!

"Capture the wisdom of co-active coaching with this fine book...a must-read if you want your practice to thrive into the next century."--Richard J. Leider, Founder of The Inventure Group; author of The Power of Purpose and Repacking Your Bags

"Co-Active Coaching changes who people are at work. This book describes the pragmatic skills needed to create value alignment and high performance around workplace satisfaction and personalized customer service."--Don Semmler, Market General Manager, Marriott International, Inc.

"Co-Active Coaching breaks new and important ground in the field of coaching. It penetrates to the heart of the coaching process, enabling readers to discover how they can tap into the true power of coaching."--David B. Peterson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Individual Coaching Services, Personnel Decisions International; coauthor of Leader as Coach

"I am a better manager, a more powerful leader, and a more understanding person as a result of co-active coaching. This book is a desperately needed prescription for those who want to play a bigger game."--David Balser, Ph.D., Director, Corporate Environment, British Columbia Hydro

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Davies-Black Publishing; 1st edition (November 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0891061231
• ISBN-13: 978-0891061236
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

287 of 290 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Model for Coaching Success in Others November 13, 2000

By Les Lauber

Format:Hardcover

"Co-Active Coaching" is written for the coach or prospective coach. The authors, Laura Whitworth, Henry Kimsey-House, and Phil Sandahl, share their model and ideas for coaching others in three parts. They then provide a toolkit for coaches.

Part I is "Coaching Fundamentals." Here they outline the model which places the client squarely in the center. The model focuses on the coach using his or her skills to focus on the client's fulfillment, balance, and process. The intake session is discussed here sufficiently to create the context of the later coaching sessions.

Part II is "Co-Active Coaching Skills." The authors detail in this section five skills key to the coach's success: listening, use of intuition, exploration of curiosity, action and learning, and self-management. There are activities to practice each skill at the end of each chapter--anyone wanting to coach should not skip these exercises, which are carefully designed to get to the heart of the skill described.

Part III is "Co-Active Coaching Processes." This section explains "the three core principles of coaching:" fulfillment, balance, and process. Especially helpful here is Chapter 11, "Tips and Traps," a valuable addition that warns and prepares the coach for things that may not go quite right....

The last section is "The Coach's Toolkit," and this alone is worth the price of the book. It includes Action Plans, Client Activities and Worksheets, Intake Checklists--everything a coach needs to begin a successful coaching program. A wise coach will undertake the exercises and worksheets for himself or herself, and thus will better understand what the client is asked to do.

126 of 130 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Whole-person coaching...a powerful approach. February 28, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Co-coaching is distinctive in that it involves both the coach and the client; it is also referred to as personal/professional coaching because it addresses the whole person (the whole of their life).

Many books we have reviewed on this subject, while of value within the workplace, do not strive to address the multidimensional nature of the individual. In contrast, the approach presented here is distinctly holistic.

The authors' offer a model plus a set of skills and techniques. The book is filled with specifics and excellent insights, and gives extensive guidance about how to be highly effective in coaching. About 75 pages are devoted to "The Coach's Toolkit," consisting of forms, checklists, exercises, resources and a glossary. This book offers a potentially powerful approach to coaching. It is, in our view, requisite reading for anyone involved in, or considering, coaching. Highly recommended.

87 of 92 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent resource! March 25, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

As a professor of Organizational Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology, I've seen a lot of interest expressed by psychologists in the process of personal and executive coaching. Conventional training in psychology is not necessarily a very good preparation for this work. Rather, what is needed is the sort of empathetic and careful relationship building, informed by but not restricted to psychological approaches, that comes through in this book. I heartily recommend it to all who are interested in developing a greater sensitivity to the coaching process!

66 of 72 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Model + Skills + Techniques = Success September 3, 2001

By Susan G. Dunn

Format:Hardcover

While I am already coaching, this book was very helpful to me. There are as many ways of coaching as there are coaches, and this delineates one succinct method to follow in a relatively new, unregulated, and confusing field. The numerous pages of "tools" are worth the money alone. Wish I hadn't spent what I spent on a CD to get other versions. The skills and techniques affirm what I've been doing already, but push me onward with conviction, adding layers to my understanding of how to be most effective. It's the clearest description of coaching I've come across and I recommend it highly. It's well written, authoritative and highly useable.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful! October 3, 2001

By Rolf Dobelli HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The theory of co-active coaching that provides the title for this book makes sense: By making the interaction between coach and coachee a relationship of equals, both parties will feel less constrained by pre-assigned roles, and thereby freed to learn from another. Unfortunately, the rest of the book fails to live up to the promise of the initial intriguing, yet common-sense idea. Specifically, the coaching methods and tools described by the authors never progress beyond generalities that basically amount to this: The client already has the answers, the coach just has to bring them out by being curious and creating a safe place where the client can be honest and take risks. However, we [...] do recommend this book on the basis of a few features, like the excellent sample dialogues and illustrative hypothetical examples, which provide simple but valuable lessons to managers, consultants, teachers and all manner of would-be coaches.

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A supplement, not a substitute for live coaching training. November 19, 2003

By Michael Chiodi

Format:Hardcover

This book is a good summary of the "Co-Active Coaching Training" program conducted by the Coaching Training Institute. Unfortunately, it doesn't (or can't possibly) act as a substitute for the program. The training itself is based heavily on experiential learning that can't be delivered in a book. The book is useful as a reference, especially for those fortunate enough to have gone through the CTI program, and also for those thinking about signing up for the program. It might be difficult to use the model or some of the tools without the patience to figure out the jargon, but none the less, there is valuable information. One example is the "powerful questions" reference section that will benefit anyone trying to coach effectively.