Product Description

Over 500,000 copies sold. This major new edition is totally revised and updated with new material on coaching in a crisis and leadership for a difficult future. Coaching for Performance is the bible of the industry and very much the definitive work that all coaches stand on. This new edition explains clearly and in-depth how to unlock people s potential to maximise their performance Contains the eponymous GROW model (Goals, Reality, Options, Will), now established as the basis for coaching professionals Clear, concise, hands-on and reader-friendly, this is a coaching guide written in a coaching style. This new edition digs deep into the roots of coaching, particularly transpersonal psychology, a useful model for personal development and in-depth coaching. There are new coaching questions and fresh chapters on emotional intelligence and high-performance leadership. Whitmore also considers the future of coaching and its role in the transformation of learning and workplace relationships, as well as illustrating how coaching can help in a crisis.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5422 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

Review
A must read for any coach aspiring to do advanced work with their clients. Bringing together the simplicity of the coaching process and the larger scope of the coaching profession in a readable and provocative way, Coaching for Performance forecasts the necessary evolution that awaits the world of business and the world of coaching. --Laura Whitworth, co-founder of The Coaches Training Institute and author of Co-Active Coaching

Whitmore has ensured that the book will remain the leading text in its field. The layout makes reading the book pleasurable and greatly assists in appreciating its content. The book falls into four sections. The first introduces the principles of coaching and shows it as a way of managing, an attitude of mind rather than a tool to effect a one-off change. The second section and core of the book deals with the practices of coaching. The approach taken is wide-ranging and usefully includes team coaching. Ideas drawn from management development are interwoven with coaching methodologies drawn from the social sciences. The third section is devoted to leadership for high performance. Leadership in the world today calls for pride of place in a book on management coaching. Whitmore achieves in a few pages what full works on leadership often fail to reach - a understanding of the subject and sound advice on sowing the seeds to develop the skills to lead others. The final section looks at emotional intelligence (EI) and the tools of transformational psychology. Fortunately Whitmore, a qualified psychologist, is thoroughly grounded and relates the coaching process without peeling off into mysticism or spiritualism. If you read an earlier edition then little persuasion will be required to read this edition to bring you up to the cutting edge of coaching. --Professional Manager

Overall, the newly written sections on leadership for high performance and transformation through transpersonal coaching really stand out. They are up-to-date, relevant and make a significant challenge to the readers mindset. These pages offer interesting dimensions on models of psychosynthesis, emotional intelligence, spiritual intelligence and boundaries in coaching. --People Management

About the Author
John Whitmore is Executive Chairman of Performance Consultants (www.performanceconsultants.com). He is a pre-eminent thinker in leadership and organisational change and works globally with leading multinational corporations to establish coaching management cultures and leadership programmes. He has written five books on sports, leadership and coaching, of which Coaching for Performance is the best known having sold 500,000 copies and been translated in over 20 different languages.

Customer Reviews

Updated fourth edition of the coaching classic
This is the fourth edition of this seminal text on coaching (primarily) in the business environment, although it's the first that I, a coaching novice, have read. I have to rely on the author's explanation of the differences to the previous edition, which will be of interest to those many who have already read it - some 500,000 copies have already been sold, published in over 20 languages. He has added chapters on the relationship between coaching and leadership, explored the significance of emotional and spiritual intelligence and their relationship to coaching, and has added material on values in work, in particular their importance to Generation Y. The book is certainly up to date at the superficial level, with multiple references to the credit crunch and growing concerns for the environment. He concludes with a new chapter on the future of coaching; he thinks (unsurprisingly) it has a very significant one, with an expansion into new areas, for example, the use of coaching rather than purely instructional techniques when training, or perhaps that should be developing, people to become car drivers.

Whitmore, a racing car driver in the 1960s, was trained by Tim Gallwey, of "Inner Game" fame (see, e.g., The Inner Game of Tennis, published originally in 1975) and then set up Inner Game Ltd in the UK. He clearly regards Gallwey as one of his own great inspirations, and that brand of psychology, the transpersonal, which underlies the Inner Game, as being the most important for coaches. Whitmore is best known for the GROW model, standing for Goal, Reality, Options and What/Will. He spends some time explaining why setting goals should precede checking reality, and I do wonder, sometimes, whether the use of this sort of catchy acronyms hinders as much as it helps. Notwithstanding this slight caveat, Part 1 of the book, ten chapters, is devoted to the principles of coaching and a detailed explanation of the GROW model, and it is presented in a clear, simple and understandable way.

Part 2 of the book, a further nine chapters, covers the practice of coaching, and this sections does go a long way to explaining how to be a coach. I don't think that Sir John intends this book as a "teach yourself coaching", however, and it is probably better seen as a textbook for a coaching course or as additional material for already experienced coaches. In Part 3 Whitmore explores leadership in three chapters, and in the final three chapters of Part 4 he focuses on transpersonal coaching and the future of coaching.

I am sure that this is a must-have book for those involved in coaching, including, although it is not my interest, sports coaches. It is well written and easy to read, and I know, having read it through once, that it will bear much re-reading and further analysis. It is a well published and printed book, too, in a large paperback format with plenty of space for marginal notes. (I don't like it when publishers use glossy paper for textbooks, because it makes it harder to write marginal notes without them smudging. I do wonder, however, whether a slightly higher quality of paper might have been used for this one.) If I have any criticism of what Sir John has written, and as someone studying coaching for the first time it is rather presumptuous of me, I know, it is that he implies that coaching can and should entirely replace mere teaching or instruction. While I agree that taught classes, especially in business skill areas, often fail to effect much change, let alone improvement, when people return to the day job, there are nevertheless many areas in which "conventional" training still has a place. It is, where it works, for example with a class of eager and already motivated students, a much less expensive proposition, for a start. Perhaps I am simply betraying the limitations of my own background, and shall overcome these in due course!

Essential reading.
I bought this whilst in training to become a coach, and would describe it as essential reading. The GROW model is what many modern coaching models derive from, so it is good to gain an understanding of it from the man who invented it. There is an excellent section on questioning techniques, which I found most useful. Excellent price on Amazon too!

Do you coach or do you instruct?
Sir John Whitmore's book is an excellent introduction to the skill, or is it the art?, of coaching.

I highly recommend it.

Larry Girling Dip.DI, M.Inst.MTD