Development Carnival!
For this month’s Carnival, I asked our community of
leadership development experts the following question:
if we could teach managers how to coach?
What one book, website, or other resource would you recommend to a busy
yet motivated manager who wants to learn how to be a better coach?”
The following is a collection of their responses. Bookmark
it, print it, and share it with others. Pick one resource that you didn’t know
about and review it yourself. We can all learn something new when it comes to
the art and science of coaching.
Thank-you to all that contributed to this list! Please take
a moment to visit their blogs, as they are all outstanding writers and should
be a part of your regular leadership development reading.
first to last:
of coaching is The Coaching Manager by Hunt and Weintraub”, writes Beth Armknecht Miller, CEO of Executive Velocity,
“This book provides a great process
for leaders who want to become effective coaches in their organizations with
real world examples and should be a “go to” guide for all leaders.”
2. S. Chris Edmonds, from Driving Results
Through Culture recommends his March ’12 blog post titled, “Coaching – Not Conversion,” because “holding others accountable requires a series of coaching conversations
to set the context for the desired behavior and gain commitment from that
player to change their behavior. One discussion typically won’t convert people
to desired ways – it takes coaching.”
mentoring over the years, the one that stands out for me is Chip Bell’s Managers asMentors: Building Partnerships for Learning. Dating back to 1996
when it was first published (with subsequent updates) Bell’s book, while
practical, also has a philosophical underpinning. Bell uses his SAGE
concept to explain the importance of learning how to effectively mentor. In
essence, the mentor is a sage, one who helps guide and teach another
individual. As Bell states in the opening section: “This book is about
power-free facilitation of learning.”
4. Tanmay Vora from QAspire recommends this interview with Marshall Goldsmith and Chip R. Bell on the art
of effective mentoring. “I
interviewed Marshall Goldsmith and Chip R. Bell on Topic: The Art of Effective
Mentoring. Their interview is a fantastic resource for leaders to clarify the
foundation of coaching and mentoring. Mentoring
means starting where the protégé is, not where the mentor wants him or her to
be.”
misconceptions about what it means to coach. In addition to teaching managers
“how to,” we can also help by clarifying “how not to”
coach.”
6. Michael VanDervort,
from The Human Race Horses Blog recommends the Spiritual Workout website.
“It’s an interesting website
with some creative workplace ideas, and well worth checking out.”
7. Jon Mertz, from Thin Difference,
recommends the book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters by Richard
Rumelt. “Strategy development and execution are key elements in
leadership and will inevitably arise in conversations with managers and other
leaders. This book highlights what makes a good strategy work and what dooms a
strategy.”
her own program: “Aspire Collaborative Services has taught
hundreds of individual and groups/teams of managers to coach others with a
hands-on, real-world program taught by seasoned executive coaches called Coaching for Breakthrough
Performance.
9. Tim Milburn,
from Lifelong Leaders,
recommends the book Coaching for Leadership, edited by Marshall Goldsmith,
Laurence Lyons, & Sarah McArthur (3rd Edition). “It is a fantastic
collection of articles by some of the best executive coaches out there. It
helped me understand different coaching styles and best practices within this
ever-expanding field of coaching.”
10. Randy Conley, from Leading with Trust,
recommends the website CoachWooden.com. “John Wooden, the legendary basketball
coach at UCLA, was more than just a basketball coach. His coaching, teaching,
and leadership principles can be applied to any leader, manager, or individual
contributor seeking to achieve their maximum potential.”
11. Jim
Concelman, from Development Dimensions International’s Talent Management intelligence just wrote an article on this topic titled, The Problem You May Not Know You Have: Your Experienced Leaders
Could Be Ineffective Coaches. In it he shares, “Experience can teach
many things, but experience alone cannot teach leaders how to be good coaches.
Learn what separates the “great” from the “mediocre.”
12. Robyn McLeod,
from The Thoughtful Leaders
Blog, recommends the book, Power
Questions, by Andrew Sobel and Jerold Panas. “This book offers insight
to how asking the right questions can strengthen relationships, shift
perspectives, and open the door to developing others. Questions are an essential part of any coach’s
toolkit and a manager who can developing great asking skills is well-positioned
to coach others.”
13. John Hunter from Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog suggests The Leader’s Handbook by Peter Scholtes , “not due to specific advice on coaching but in order to
gain insight into how to view the results of complex human systems without
leaping to false conclusions. Often I think coaching mistakes are made
because we do things like select those to coach based on what we call
“performance” but is really just random variation viewed through our
desire to find patterns (and assign specific causes where they don’t exist).
The book is what I would use to guide the coaching – using it as the
textbook to improve their management and leadership knowledge and practice.”
14. Jill Malleck
from Epiphany at Work
recommends the book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall
B. Rosenberg. “This book gives managers the tools to communicate more
authentically and with both gentleness and directness. I especially like the
pieces on observing without evaluation, identifying and expressing feelings
(with a list of feeling words) and making direct requests.”
15. Anna Farmery from
The Engaging Brand recommends the book Brief by Joe McCormack. “I read many books for The Engaging Brand podcast and
therefore to choose only one is extremely difficult. I have chosen Brief
because of the essence of the message – brevity can be so much more powerful
for leaders”.
16. Wally Bock from
Three Star Leadership
recommends the post Coaching and the 21st Century Leader. “Helping team members grow and develop
will become a more and more important part of your job. Whether you call that
mentoring or coaching, there are skills to learn and practice.”
17. Dan McCarthy,
from Great Leadership, recommends the book Effective Coaching by Myles Downey. “While I’ve read a lot of books on
coaching, this one is the one that I’ve used the most. It’s straightforward,
practical, and loaded with tips and tools”.
Do you have a favorite coaching resource that’s not on the list? Please add it as a comment.