Business Coaching

Coaching for Performance - John Whitmore
A classic book, by former racing car champion Sir John Whitmore. With Timothy Gallwey (see below) he formed Inner Game Ltd, which introduced principles from their sports coaching into the business arena. Whitmore emphasizes the facilitative nature of coaching in this definition: ‘Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them’. He goes on to show how the real value of coaching skills such as listening, asking questions and giving nonjudgmental feedback is in enabling coachees to develop their awareness and responsibility through decisions and action. The book also introduces the GROW model, which is now a widely adopted framework for coaching in business.
Solution-Focused Coaching: Managing People in a Complex World - Jane Greene and Anthony M. Grant
An excellent introduction to coaching, and one of the few coaching books that acknowledges the influence of Solution-Focused Brief Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson on coaching. Another distinctive feature of the book is the way it highlights the importance of coaching in a knowledge economy - ‘a world where ideas and power lie in ideas, imagination, knowledge and the information you control’. The breadth and depth of the authors’ knowledge is impressive, but they wear their learning lightly - the book is clearly written, with lots of practical advice and concrete examples. The design is quite funky too. All of which makes this one of my favourite coaching books, one I can keep returning to for inspiration.
The Inner Game of Tennis - Timothy Gallwey
Another coaching classic, and another book written by a sportsman-turned-business-coach. Tim Gallwey writes that he has been obsessed with the ‘inner game’ of sports performance ever since he missed an easy chance to win a high-stakes competitive tennis match. This book offers a fascinating account of his experience of coaching tennis players to overcome the mental obstacles to success. He describes human beings as divided into ‘Self 1′ (rational, controlling, judging) and Self 2 (spontaneous, present, instinctive). Left to its own devices, Self 2 can learn easily and reach peak performance - but Self 1 typically interferes, making the player tense up by trying too hard and judging his/her own performance instead of focusing on the ball.
What has this got to do with creative work? Well Gallwey wrote the book for tennis pros, not creative pros - but anyone who has experienced difficulty with an over-active Inner Critic or the ‘almost automatic, effortless’ state of creative flow should have no problem relating to Gallwey’s Self 1 and Self 2, and adopting some of the principles of the Inner Game approach. In Gallwey’s recent book The Inner Game of Work he explains how the Inner Game principles apply to the world of business and management. This is another very good book, which I also recommend, but for me Gallwey’s approach to tennis resonates as a powerful analogy for all kinds of work. Maybe it’s because in sport the goals, rules and outcomes are so sharply defined that it makes the issues crystal clear and memorable. So I recommend you read The Inner Game of Tennis first.