Product Description

"The Coaching Manual is the most current, comprehensive, practical, best-illustrated coaching source I have ever seen."

                    Dr Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This is the practical, readable guide to the skills, insights and perspectives of a highly effective personal coach!

Whether you’re new to coaching, or have been practicing for some time, The Manual is packed with information that will develop your coaching skills. The Manual provides expert guidance on both what to do and how to do it, right from the start. From simple routines for starting new coaching conversations and asking great questions, to how you can practice letting your mind go quiet. You’ll also find examples of potential coaching situations and sample dialogue so that you get a clear picture of what’s important during coaching conversations. Step by step exercises will help you practice and improve your skills – during coaching sessions or before you even start. It’s the definitive guide that no coach will want to be without.

We all have some coaching ability, maybe you’re a good listener, conversationalist, or perhaps you know instinctively when something isn’t ‘right’. So why not use knowledge you already have as a foundation to build on? By using practical guidelines, great examples and straightforward exercises, this book will support you to develop your coaching skills further. So whether you think of yourself as a coach or not, get reading and enjoy coaching!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #142339 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 247 pages

Review

"In a Knowledge Worker age, coaching is mainstreamed. The Coaching Manual is the most current, comprehensive, practical, best-illustrated coaching source I have ever seen. It compellingly teaches the mindset of keeping the responsibility on the coachee combined with a powerful, realistic skillset". Dr. Stephen R. Covey, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’

"I really value this book. I found it to be written with wisdom and integrity and full of practical sound advice and guidelines. There are many books on coaching and if you have to choose I would say go for this one. It is comprehensive but above all easy to read and use and written by someone who walks the talk." Sue Knight, Author of ‘NLP at Work’

"It’s unlikely that there’s a better book for coaches on the market. Julie Starr is so obviously a people person because her passions for your personal fulfilment shines through and you can’t help but want to become a better coach just to please her!" Anglo American Books, 03/03.

"It’s wonderfully supportive in tone. At times Starr’s advice becomes almost Zen-like. Overall, this is a powerfully written book by a self-confident author who is passionate not only about coaching, but also about providing a service with integrity. It is rare for the personality of a writer to come through so strongly in a non-fiction text" People Management, Dec 2002

It offers new insights and fresh ideas to the established coach and an easy to follow, step-by-step approach for the beginner." Overall Rating ***** (Max 5 stars each for categories of Useful, Well Written, Practical, Inspirational, Value for money), Personnel Today, Feb 2003

"A wealth of information and practical exercises to improve the skills of any coach" UK College of Life Coaching, Jan 2003

About the Author

Julie Starr is a highly respected coach and management consultant who works with both organisations and individuals. She has over 20 years experience within business and change management focusing on the opportunity presented by people. She combines many years of coaching experience with a constant study related to human success and fulfillment, to develop coaching practices and principles that really work.

 

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Customer Reviews

A first rate guide to personal coaching
Finding approachable, comprehensive and practical guidance on coaching, and it's application in a business environment, is pretty near to impossible. The Coaching Manual provides just that, and more.
Having benefitted myself from personal coaching, I was keen to use coaching as a means of improving the performance and productivity of those people who work for and with me.
This book is an invaluable reference, providing me with coaching tools, techniques and tips in a really easy to use format. It is no-nonsense, straightforward and easily read and understood. The main text is broken up by example conversations, regular challenging exercises, and coaching checklists. I particularly liked 'Coach's Corner', which are 'time out' boxes dotted throughout the book, where us coaches can get together and go through our coaching issues!
This practical book has delivered results for me. If you are considering coaching, I cannot imagine a better guide.

You can't learn experience from a book ... even a good book.
An intelligently laid out and accessible manual, designed to review and highlight the sorts of skills a professional coach should be able to display to do his/her job effectively. When it comes to an analysis of practical skills - such as establishing the context for coaching by using comfortable, conducive space, defining expectations, setting the ground rules for contact, etc. - Julie Starr offers excellent, coherent advice.

The weakness of this manual - and any such manual - is in the areas of philosophy and skills training. In the former case, coaching (or, indeed, therapy or counselling) must begin from a position of respect for the individual. More particularly in coaching, the objective is to help the client (or "coachee"), achieve change, achieve goals by internalising the objective and finding their own way there ... rather than being obviously directed by the coach. Teaching people respect for the individual, teaching them objectivity, teaching them that level of empathetic detachment, etc., is not easy, and I have my doubts it can be accomplished simply by using a manual.

Similarly, there are very real skills which come from experience and critical awareness of your own practice. You can tell people how to listen, how to ask open-ended questions, how to feedback objectively, but these skills (and many others) need to be practised and learned through interaction in the field. At very least, you need to role play the skills.

Starr's manual is excellent when it comes to the practicalities and the applied psychology of the professional relationship, but other aspects are decidedly weak. This is most obvious in her chapter on the fundamental skills of coaching: she identifies five core skills - building rapport or relationship, understanding the different levels of listening, using intuition, asking questions, and giving supportive feedback.

Now, I've worked in social work and research for a quarter of a century: I use the five skills identified above ... and I'd recognise their validity in any form of motivational interviewing or coaching. But I'll stake my pension on the fact that you can't learn intuition from a manual.

Julie Starr's "The Coaching Manual" is an excellent book, and good value. She communicates well, her writing is intelligent, accessible, and she makes some excellent points. However, to get the best from this book you should consider working with other would-be coaches or others interested in the subject - maybe role playing some of the themes to give yourself a chance to evaluate your attitudes and communication skills. Experience is an essential skill, one which is acquired, not learned. What the manual can't give you is a critical feedback on your own performance and the adequacy of your own experience and current range of skills. If you are going to be a good coach, a really good one, and not just delude yourself that you know what you're doing, you will need to supplement this manual with a deal of practical experience ... and some objective self-criticism.

An invaluable guide to coaching today
I really value this book. I found it to be written with wisdom and integrity and full of practical sound advice and guidelines. There are many books on coaching and if you have to choose I would say go for this one. It is comprehensive but above all easy to read and use and written by someone who walks the talk.

Sue Knight