Here is a challenging coaching reading list you may find useful in developing your coaching skills. We are continually adding new resources and discussing these with readers of the book via the Challenging Coaching & The Trusted Executive LinkedIn Group.
Recommended reading list for improving challenging coaching skills
SORRY
You have landed on a page segment that should be part of a larger page
please click here to go to the parent page.
- Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Bruce Patton – build the contract, honour the contract
- Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success in Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott – speak your truth face the FACTS
- Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Diana Wright & Donella Meadows – great introduction to a systems thinking perspective
- The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization: Second edition by Peter M Senge – a systems thinking classic from the nineties
- Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins – introduced the concept of the BHAG aka courageous goal setting
- Need, Greed or Freedom: Business Changes and Personal Choices by Sir John Whitmore – John Whitmore’s hidden treasure on the deeper FACTS
- Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness in a Fragmented World by Bill Plotkin – the deeper FACTS exploration of freedom and responsibility
- Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart: A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges by Mary Beth A. O’Neill – invertebrates not allowed!
- Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives by Henry Kimsey-House – don’t forget the basics
- Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie – dependence to independence to inter-dependence
- Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose – the Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership (4th Edition) (People Skills for Professionals) by John Whitmore – the elder of the tribe!
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell – courageous goal setting via the hero’s journey
- Tao Te Ching: A New Translation and Commentary by Lao Tzu – timeless wisdom from Lao Tzu
Recommended links for improving challenging coaching skills
SORRY
You have landed on a page segment that should be part of a larger page
please click here to go to the parent page.
- Thomas J. Leonard : From Wimpy to Edgy
- Thomas Leonard was a coaching pioneer who co-founded the International Coach Federation in 1994 aswell as spawning many other coaching initiatives. This article captures the essence of the coaching skills that Thomas referred to as ‘The Edge’. A quality that is at the core of the challenging coaching skill-set. Thomas Leonard Article – From Wimpy to Edgy.
- Heron’s six categories questionnaire (blog post)
- Use the questionnaire below based on John Heron’s six categories of intervention to self-assess the current degree of challenge in your own coaching style. Heron’s confronting style (key : ‘CO’) maps well onto the skills required in the FACTS coaching model.
To understand the six styles in more detail please refer to our blog post on this topic, where you can also…
Download the Heron Six Styles of Intervention Self-Assessment Questionnaire [PDF].
Academic reading on challenging coaching skills
SORRY
You have landed on a page segment that should be part of a larger page
please click here to go to the parent page.
- for those who want to develop systems thinking coaching skills – Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Donella Meadows & Diana Wright (ed)
- for those who wish to understand better the research regarding tension and performance – Classics in the History of Psychology (Research Paper – full text)
- for those who wish to understand the original work by Daloz on the support / challenge matrix – Medical College of Wisconsin Research Paper [no longer online – alternative source being sought]
- for those who wish to understand the original work by Cliff Bowman on the ZOUD – Journal of Managerial Psychology Article (Abstract) (Dec 1995, Vol. 10 No. 8, pp. 4-12; full text requires login/content rental)
- for those who want to access research on the impact of SMART goals vs courageous goals – Are SMART goals dumb
- for those who want tips on applying the concept of the ZOUD in a team settings – Working through the ZOUD
- for those who wish to explore the topic of contracting for challenging coaching in more detail – Creating a mandate to challenge
- for those who wish to understand what their personal values are and the priority of these – Values Elicitation Exercise
Our Coaching Book
In 2012, we published ‘Challenging Coaching’ which was hailed as a ‘game-changing’ book in the coaching world.
This book details our FACTS coaching model which is a real-world, timely and pragmatic coaching approach focussing on Feedback, Accountability, Courageous Goals, Tension, and Systems Thinking.
Watch our book review, or visit the Challenging Coaching Book page to find out more and download a free chapter.
Free Chapter Offer
To be sent the first chapter of the book including the foreword by Sir John Whitmore enter your email in the box:
Latest blogs
- Facebook has recently renamed as Meta, as the internet moves towards the ‘Metaverse’. But what is the Metaverse and what are implications for coaching? There’s been a lot in the median about the metaverse since Facebook rebranded in October 2021, with tech blogs, podcasts and TV programmes getting very excited about this next evolution of…
- Something New to Consider… Divergent and Convergent Thinking Let’s think about the purpose of coaching more broadly and more holistically, by exploring the field of creative problem-solving. A coaching client does not always have a ‘problem’ to solve, the ‘problem’ may be that they don’t know what to do in a specific situation. The situation…
- Coaches, are you getting the hard sell, offering the miracle solution in these hard times? I decided to follow up on one of theses and see what would happen and what they were offering. I’ve noticed more and more social media posts offering top secrets for generating business, courses which guarantee success, or people willing to…
- Beautiful blue sky, blossom on the trees, roads quiet. Pandemic, lockdown, 759 deaths yesterday in the UK. Stark reality. Out of this tragedy, good things can come, there is hope for the other side of lockdown. The pandemic has caused tragic deaths and terrible suffering, but out of this enforced lockdown change has come. On…
- I’m feeling lost, scared, uncertain. I can’t visit my elderly relatives and I’m worried about them. I’ve had to close my business and I don’t know what the future will be? Will I have a job? These are some of the comments that I’ve heard recently. In a matter of a few weeks everything that…