Product Description

The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work is a timely and important book for people looking to step into the dynamic and progressive area of coaching. This comprehensive, unique reference explains the basic principle and key concepts behind this increasingly well recognized, effective method of achieving change and development in organizations. Coaching follows a well-defined, systematic logic which produces results that can be powerful.

This book provides a concise, step-by-step blueprint of successful coaching methods, models and tools, using case studies and an accessible format to make it easy to use and informative. It contains useful insights on how to permanently enhance personal and organizational effectiveness, performance and growth in the workplace.

The authors have combined their wealth of research, professional knowledge and experience as successful Master Coaches to write this book and make a valuable and substantial contribution to current literature on coaching.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112500 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 184 pages

About the Author
Suzanne Skiffington is the director of Skiffington and Associates. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and has conducted hundreds of lectures, coaching seminars, workshops, group and individual coaching sessions.

Perry Zeus has over 20 years' experience in designing and overseeing organizational restructuring, and has spent the last decade developing human performance programs. Perry also founded the Coaching Resource Centre, a training institute for Master Coaches.

Customer Reviews

A thorough, lucid and practical 'how-to' text on coaching.
This book, written in non-academic prose and strewn with practical examples, is the most comprehensive book yet authored on the contemporary involvement of coaches in the business and executive development world. The book can serve as both a reference text for experienced coaches and a 'how-to' book for coaches seeking instruction. The book is also appropriate for those who want to make decisions about using coaches or establishing a coaching culture or academics or trainers seeking a primary text on coaching for use in an educational setting. Throughout the book, the authors underscore the importance of coaching as a learning opportunity. In tackling these issues the authors provide a blueprint for coaches on how to become more effective and increase their ability to work with a variety of clients. As coaching continues to grow as an applied profession, dominated by practitioners, its credibility is strongly enhanced when solid ideas are presented in a clear, articulate, and succinct fashion. This book easily achieves all those criteria and will add considerably to the wealth of knowledge and professional skills associated with coaching.

I Use This As a Master-Level Coaching Text Book
This book is written as university-level textbook on the coaching profession. It covers what coaching is and how it is used in business today, particularly in Australia the Author's setting. The authors provide coaching models and do a thorough job of describing the core issues and skills of which coaches must be aware.

Part one of the book defines coaching as "a conversation, a dialogue, whereby a coach and coachee interact in a dynamic exchange to achieve goals, enhance performance and move the coachee forward to greater success" (page xiii). They write of what coaching is, and is not, and what are the qualities of a successful coach.

Part two describes business coaching, executive coaching, the manager as coach and team coaching. Each is addressed in a separate chapter with helpful information, tools, and tips on the "how-tos" of coaching that particular client. These chapters are rich in advise on what to watch out for and pay attention to when working with a certain type of client.

Part three speaks to coaching skills and issues. One chapter starts out as goal setting and then backs up to the client purpose, vision and values as a base for establishing goals. The coach can surface greater perspective and awareness in the client by using helpful tools to assess these three areas of client's life. I believe this is one of the most valuable aspects of coaching, only recently acknowledged by professional coaches (Life Coaches knew this all along) as the key to improving client performance. Other chapters deal with, by now, standard coaching skills such as listening, questioning, non-verbal communication, learning styles, resistance to coaching, and self-limiting beliefs.

This book is an excellent source for the nature and practice of coaching. The authors have incorporated many other coaches' techniques into their text. Coaching books will always have the limitation of being written word and not live dialogue. It is impossible to gain the skills of coaching through any book. However, for the beginner or intermediate coach, the coaching issues, tips and advice in this book are well worth the price.

Not impressed
I`ve read widely on the subject of coaching and was very disappointed by this effort by Skiffington and Zeus. Having enjoyed reading the likes of Tim Gallwey, Bruce Peltier, James Flaherty and others expressing their views on coaching; learning something new, making slight adjustments to my own approach, I had high hopes but The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work didn`t impress me at all.

This is one of the those books that appears, at first glance to be a sustantial piece of work, yet by the time you get to the end you wonder if the authors know anything about their subject. I suspect they do, so must conclude they just wrote a poor book.

Best to look elsewhere I guess.