- ISBN13: 9780891061984
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A newly revised edition of the book that helped define the coaching profession, Co-Active Coaching captures the essence of what it takes to design and maintain successful, collaborative, and empowering coaching relationships. The authors describe in detail their flexible and adaptive model-placing the client’s agenda at the heart of the coaching partnership, define the skills required for success, provide dozens of sample coaching conversations, and a power-packed … More >>
Co-Active Coaching, 2nd Edition: New Skills for Coaching People Toward Success in Work and, Life
Tags: adaptive model, coaching, CoActive, conversations, dozens, Edition, education, heart, Life, Partnership, People, Profession, Relationships, Skills, Success, toward, Work
#1 by Anonymous on January 30, 2010 - 4:48 am
This book is great for anyone who wants to learn better communication skills.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Michael Akbar on January 30, 2010 - 6:26 am
I purchased this book and the CD that came with the book is missing the pdf files. Any suggestion who I need to contact?
Rating: 3 / 5
#3 by Z. Shepherd on January 30, 2010 - 9:25 am
This book may be okay for some, but the authors take to much time getting to the point. To much “fluff”. They wrote the book as if they totally created the concept of ‘Life Coaching’ themselves. To spend a whole chapter on ‘Intuition’…Please! The authors feel as if they have to explain the same skill over and over, and twenty different ways. I totally lost interest, and couldn’t even finish the book. And I think the “Gremlin idea” is stupid. I’m not telling my client a Gremlin took their motivation! That being said, this book is going back.
Rating: 1 / 5
#4 by Stephen P. Drake on January 30, 2010 - 11:15 am
To their credit, the authors of this text do address the larger issues of the values that are behind the client’s agenda, and they attempt to justify their approach by seeking those as the larger goal underneath the particular task(s) for which they may be engaged. Despite their efforts, this book reflects all of the philosophical objections one can raise when value neutral counseling or coaching is promoted.
No one can offer an unbiased worldview when approaching the issues, choices, and problems of life (my own preconceptions are admittedly Christian). The coach will inevitably bring his own presuppositions to the process of coaching. The authors are no exception. Beginning with their discussion of Balance in Chapter 1, they attempt to justify human wisdom about what is important in life, defining it as what is truly important to the client. They make their own value judgment that balance is, of itself, a worthy goal, without questioning exactly what is weighed. It is my view that if Christian values are not the basis of coaching, then the blind are leading the blind to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic (to combine metaphors).
This is aptly illustrated by the ostensibly unbiased view the coach is to take about the client’s methods in achieving his goals (see “Spaciousness” p.17). The coach is completely detached from any judgments about means or ends “so long as the client continues to move toward the results the client wants. This `end justifies the means’ argument is bad enough, but apparently not even the end is open to question. Where conscience might operate, the authors position might be construed as labeling it a “gremlin”.
The importance of good listening skills led to a discussion of something presented as “Level 3 Listening”. There are several problems with this technique as presented. It seems to be a synthesis of the coach and client’s mental process – a rather mystical concept – that is not very well defined. It seems to offer rather fertile ground for the injection of the coach’s bias. It is later presented under the category of direct observation, which raises the question of who is really being observed, the coach or the client?
Values are directly addressed in Chapter 8 “Client Fulfillment”. Space does not permit a complete dissection of the authors’ views here, but several points are worthy of note. Statements like “values are not morals…. are not principles” (p.119) are at the heart of the problem with their approach. Their view that “what is to be admired is not the value itself, but your client’s ability to live that value fully in his life” is, quite simply, shocking. By that logic the client’s fulfillment of his value of personal power would lead to a sense of “rightness” when he betrays his co-worker.
I’ll end my response to this book by noting that the description of Process Coaching (pp.143-156) strongly resembles gestalt psychotherapy. This is a particularly new age approach that was probably to be expected in this book. As the authors pronounced “it’s the process that counts”, I was hearing in my mind “Life is a journey, Grasshopper!”
While there was valuable content to be found in this book, I found it to be morally and spiritually blind.
Rating: 2 / 5
#5 by D. Nott on January 30, 2010 - 12:31 pm
Having graduate education and years of professional experience in personnel & organizational management & development, I found this book to be very slow and elementary. The book reads like a social column in a local paper, illustrating a laymen’s perspective of coaching and development without ever hitting directly on the underlying concepts and reasons behind the advised courses of action. Perhaps the book could be summed up in the course of a few bullets:
* Work-life balance is important
* Help clients identify their personal and profesional goals
* Help clients develop action plans for achieving those goals
* Emotionally support clients during their course of pursuit
* Charge clients by the hour for your pseudo-psychological counseling
Perhaps the authors were aspiring counselors that had enough business savvy to prefer charging organizational leaders consultant rates for basic goal-setting and motivational strategies? Hey, they could have doubled their profits by writing a book about their conquests as well…. oh wait…. they did…
Rating: 2 / 5