Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others (2nd edition)

Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others (2nd edition)

Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others (2nd edition)

James Flaherty,Elsevier (Butterworth-Heinemann), Oxford, 2005

The question with any book on a currently very popular topic, such as coaching, is what does this book add to the literature – what is its special contribution to the readers understanding of the subject?

James Flaherty’s introduction outlines the challenge:

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  How to say something distinct enough to foster change and yet familiar enough to be understood.

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  How to say something linearly (as a book) that can only be fully understood holistically or systematically.

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  How to show something meant to evoke a paradigm shift in a way efficient (cogent) enough to maintain interest.

This text succeeds in meeting all these challenges. The book, like most books on coaching, is designed primarily to be read as an instruction manual for coaches. A secondary readership would be for people undergoing coaching, or wanting to understand what coaching might have to offer others. Like other authors of books on coaching, James Flaherty appears to be in the business of executive coaching. That is to say he is an outsider to the organisation employing the coachee. That is certainly the basis of the case study he uses to illustrate matters throughout the text. The extent to which books written by executive coaches are useful to managers coaching their staff on a day-to-day basis is an interesting question, but one which I do not think this book answers. This text is for professional coaches and is therefore not as immediately useful to people doing coaching as part of another role.

Each chapter of the book takes the reader one stage further into the case study of Bob – a character the author has coached, who starts off seeking advancement in his organisation, and who ends up understanding himself. That probably sums up the approach.

Chapter titles include “The foundation for coaching”, “Basic principles”, “the Flow of coaching” and “The coaching relationship”, which might lead you to conclude that this is just like any other book on coaching. Chapter titles that might lead you to see that this book has something a bit different to offer have titles such as “The body” and “Stuck”. “The body” contains pictures of male and female body types described as “endo”, “ecto” or “meso”, to illustrate the “centrality of the body” (one of this chapter’s subtitles). Flaherty’s contention is that the body is often ignored in coaching but “plays a huge role in how we act, what we feel is possible, and how we relate to others”. We need to observe and assess distinctive body types (endo, ecto or meso) to help people achieve balance. In fact, it is Flaherty’s chapter subtitles that best communicate the different approach he brings to coaching. The subtitles of his chapter on “Basic principles” include “What is a human being?”, “The truth”, “Language and time” and “Death”. Unlike other authors of books on coaching who come from a counselling or training and development background, Flaherty is, to judge from his sources, a philosopher and a student of the human condition within a broader context of medicine and psychology. He looks at the same things as other authors on coaching but from a significantly different perspective – one that succeeds in making his book a stimulating and challenging read.

As the book progresses it becomes clear that the problem Flaherty is interested in is not the coachee, but the internal dynamics of the coach, that coaching will not be successful unless and until the coach is in really good shape. The coach, too, needs to be honest about the relationship that is built with the coachee.

For Flaherty this is a functional, pragmatic relationship. The coach does not have to like the coachee, but does have to be effective in facilitating change in the coachee. Flaherty is refreshingly honest in openly acknowledging that the coach needs to assess the coachee. Some authors are reluctant to talk of assessment for fear that it equates to being judgmental. Flaherty has a whole chapter on assessment models – a chapter which starts with a quote from Hsia Po-Yan, a Chinese philosopher:

I think I have seen the Western mistake. You are very able to distinguish things, but you are unable to put all things together.

The inference of what follows is that Flaherty can show you models that will enable you to both analyse and reassemble the coachee – but first use the models to analyse and reassemble yourself as coach.

Two things I would strongly recommend to the potential reader of this book: one is the list of suggested reading which accompanies each chapter. Not only is there a varied selection of texts, but also a brief explanation of what is interesting about them, and why they have been included. The second thing to recommend is the overall conceptual framework behind Flaherty’s approach. It is, as has already been suggested and hopefully illustrated, very different from the usual approach taken by trainers and developers. The one disappointment: the case study did not really work for me. In many texts it is the case studies that make the content come alive for the reader and give it a practical context. I did not find that in this book. I am not sure I liked Bob – but perhaps that is part of the underpinning message about coaching that Flaherty intended. In fact I got less interested in Bob as the text progressed, but became, instead, a lot more interested in Flaherty and what he had to say.

This review, by Pete Sayers, was published in Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 38 Number 5, 2006.