Book

The Tao of Coaching

Boost Your Effectiveness at Work by Inspiring and Developing Those Around You

Max Landsberg

Profile Books, 2015
First Edition: 1997

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Drawing on 30 years of experience, coaching expert Max Landsberg updated and expanded this third edition of his bestseller. He organizes his model – which shows how to conduct Socratic coaching by asking strategic questions – into concise chapters, each articulating a main concept. Chapters begin with a relevant cartoon and a pithy motto, and close with charts showing the problems that Landsberg addressed and the solutions he suggested. Multiple appendices give managers specific evaluation tools and exercises. Landsberg teaches the real, heavy lifting of building up people’s achievements in the workplace. Happily, his book is not burdensome; it’s highly readable and sliced into easily digested bites. He helps you exercise a psychological skill, one on one, without drifting into therapeutic counseling. getAbstract recommends Landsberg’s enlightened, easy-to-use “toolkit” to anyone seeking to become a great coach and to those who are being coached.

Summary

How to Be a Great Coach

You can learn the crucial skill of coaching employees and you can improve with practice. Proper coaching benefits coaches as well as the employees they coach, and it teaches them a variety of skills, from improved communication to more effective team building. To become a good coach, heed these 20 lessons:

1. “You Can’t Be a Leader Without a Following”

Your effectiveness as a manager derives from your ability to nurture, develop and retain talent. Most large organizations are removing levels from their hierarchy – “delayering” – and are competing to attract and nurture only the most promising workers.

Employees know that some companies have strong coaching cultures, and they prefer to work for these organizations. With the rapid changes in markets and technology, you cannot wait for an annual training seminar to keep your team members up-to-date. Nurturing their talent daily saves valuable time in the long run.

You can no longer simply tell someone how to do a job. You must coach and mentor staff members. Managers who are determined to excel also seek coaching for themselves. Team members should teach and learn new, ...

About the Author

Executive coach Max Landsberg also wrote The Tao of Motivation, The Tools of Leadership and The Call of the Mountains.

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