Customer Reviews

Coaching for Leadership: How the World's Greatest Coaches Help Leaders Learn

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a "must have" in the library of all coaches. It reflects the best of the best in leadership coaching today. You can pick it up anywhere and find useful, useable strategies to put to work with your clients right away. Coaching for Leadership is not so much a step-by-step "how to coach" book, more of a `war stories from the trenches." This approach makes the book very readable, practical and indispensable. For either internal or external coaches, there are great coaching examples from change management to career development or coaching for staff development. As an external coach, I found the chapter on Starting Smart especially useful, particularly the author's pointers on contracting. And the chapter on coaching others to accept feedback was as helpful to me personally as it was my clients. This is a book that will quickly become dog -eared, highlighted with protruding colored `stickies' as you mark your favorite paragraphs. Or at least my has.

While attending Linkage's Knowledge Management Conference,I heard Marshall Goldsmith speak about some of the executives he has coached, and was intrigued by his money-back guarantee: if the coworkers of the executive being coached aren't satisfied with results, then Marshall doesn't get paid!

How many consultants can make that offer?

At any rate, Goldsmith has edited (and contributed chapters) to "Coaching for Leadership" along with Laurence Lyons and Alyssa Freas. Coaching high-impact, ambitious, hard-driving executives is not quite the same process as coaching under-performing employees, so this book probably has a smaller audience than say, "Coaching for Dummies". However, executive coaching is all about moving individuals into behaviors that sustain business, and there is lots of useful information for the coaches of non-leaders. There is also a very interesting (and very short) chapter on, "Coaching from Below" by Deepak (Dick) Sethi. Most of us could probably use that information!

I found Coaching for Leadership to be an important compilation of writings from some of the world's best executive coaches. Each author offers something valuable to this book that will help coaches, leaders, and executives alike understand what coaching is and what it can become.The book is divided into five parts that address different areas of coaching, such as the reasons coaching is becoming such a huge part of today's organizations, who a coach should be to clients, when coaching is necessary and when it will help the most, what the different styles and practices entail, and how coaching applies in different situations in businesses today.The most valuable part of the book to me was the identification and role section that defines who coaches are, who they should be, how to become a coach, and the goals of coaches. But what1s great about this book is that because it is so diverse and because it is a forum for so many different ideas, it has something for everyone. Someone who reads this book may find more value in a different section or with a different author than I did, but that is the beauty of this book. It will lead to much discussion about the value, processes, and role of coaching in the world today and in the future.I highly recommend this book to anyone within the realm of coaching, to those thinking of getting into the field of coaching, and to those thinking of hiring a coach for themselves or their organizations. There are many different directions in which coaching as a field can go. And, I found that the editors of this book have done an excellent job of putting forth the styles, theories, and practices of the top executive coaches. This is a book that will become more and more valuable in the years to come as coaching becomes another accepted and expected part of the business world.

I've looked through a lot of executive coaching titles at only half the cover price of Goldsmith's volume, but within this ONE I get the essence of wisdom from a score of the best names in the business. This is a great investment to find out which authors you need to explore in more depth.
It's helped me identify the authors that are most consistent with the coaching strategies and styles I am developing. A GREAT place for a beginner to study first!

I found the contributors to "Coaching For Leadership" to be among the best writers and thinkers in today's world of organizational and leadership development. While an easy and quick read it is not short on insight. The manner in which these authors (and long time coaches) come together to form a coherent whole yet allow their own individual styles to show through makes the reading that much more enjoyable and the book that much more beneficial. If only this book had been available when I became a CEO.

This is a comprehensive guide to leadership coaching. It's a review of many authors' previous work or ideas so it has appeal
for the seasoned coach although I did not find much new material. It is probably better for 'new to the field' coaches who want to know a lot of information in one source. The chapters are short and easy to read. For seasoned coaches it is helpful to pick and choose. I especially liked Nancy Adler's chapter on Coaching Global Executives: Women Succeeding in a World Beyond Here. She ended with a good reason for executives to chose coaching.

As a graduate student of Industrial / Organizational Psychology with an interest in Executive Caoching, I am pleased to find a book that defines so well the tools needed for success as a coach, as well as providing an informed and thoughtful understanding of my future "Career." I found it not only informational, but presented in a fashion whereby anyone, even a lay person, could access the information, and utilize the resources therein.

The world of coaching is growing in importance and impact. There is no one "best approach" to coaching, but there are some proven techniques and tools that the best coaches use. This book captures those ideas, techniques and methods. It works like a "coach for coaches". I can't imagine everyone not wanting to have a copy within easy reach. Get it, use it, and enjoy the benefits.

I found it very useful and enlightening.

I became curious about "Executive Coaching" after reading an article in Forbes Magazine last year. The article showed astounding salaries (some of these coaches make as much money in a day as many of us make in a year) and major companies (General Electric, Sony, Johnson & Johnson, Ernst & Hewlett-Packard) using "executive coaches".

Well this book tells you what these "executive coaches" do and I found it fascinating!