Stern's Management Review
"Clear, to-the-point, and very rich in highly useful and insightful content."


Book Description
A new edition of the book that took the art of coaching to new heights, this is the definitive guide to mastering the skills needed to help people unlock their potential and maximize their performance.


Book Info
A definitive guide to mastering the skills needed to help people unlock their potential and maximize their performance. A must-read. Softcover.


From the Publisher
Packed with powerful hands-on tools, this new edition brings up-to-date John Whitmore's popular GROW model and adds three new chapters on making work and goal-setting meaningful, a spiritual approach to coaching, and coaching the organization's culture. Whitmore explores the dynamics of team development, positioning coaching as the essential team leadership skill, and provides extensive examples of effective questions that can help ensure full participation in the performance improvement process. Whether used as a self-study guide, by corporate trainers, by managers with direct reports, or by the growing legions of professional coaches and management consultants, this classic coaching guide—written in Whitmore's classic coaching style—clearly demonstrates the power of coaching as both a tool and the essence of corporate culture change.


About the Author
John Whitmore, internationally recognized for his pioneering work in developing new approaches to sports and business training, consults and lectures widely on coaching and human resource management as a principal partner in Performance Consultants.


Excerpted from Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Context for Coaching (excerpt from page 147) We have examined the rationale for coaching, the aim of the coach, the skills that coaches need, the methodology of coaching and it applications, but where is coaching leading us? If management behaviour is evolving from hierarchy to democracy, from imposition to involvement, from authority to authenticity, from instruct to coach, from push to pull, from tell to ask, what is the message? What comes next? Is the popularity of coaching not just another swing of the pendulum, the reaction against past excesses of authoritarianism, command and control and the performance limiting fear that such behaviour generates? Is this not mildly reminiscent of the touchy feely California culture of the sixties with an overdose of political correctness to justify it? If so, in another decade or two, militaristic management will remerge to save our warm and cosy but failing businesses and experts will again appear to provide us with the answer, the truth, the panacea. That unpleasant prediction would only occur if we went so far with accommodation that we lost sight of performance. It cannot happen if we recognise and remember that coaching is performance driven, and not merely a nicer way of doing business. It is hard to envisage the day on which human beings choose a different management style for the sole purpose of being nice. However, in the present competitive climate, if we find that being nice to people induces them perform better, we will not hesitate to try it. This is why coaching is being ever more widely adopted in business not only as a tool in specific performance related situations, but as their prevailing management style. Well, not quite! One day the application will be as good as the intention, and then performance will really happen! In the meantime a tantalising amount of our potential performance is destined to remain dormant, unrecognised and untapped by ourselves or by our employers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER