• Save
• Invest what you've saved
• Do this over a long period of time so you get the benefit of compound interest

Well!  There's some breakthrough thinking if ever!
It's just an unfortunate co-incidence, I guess, that during the lifetime of this book share brices in the UK (and elsewhere) have tumbled precipitously, whilst interest rates have been at a record low.

Bottom line, there are already plenty of coaching books just as good as, or better than, this one on the market which don't take forever to make their point, so why waste your time?
Recommendation: Definitely one to avoid.

The Reflecting Glass
Lucy West & Mike Milan
Palgrave  0-333-94529-8 (Hb)
This is the most paradoxical book I have yet come across in regard to business coaching.  It opens cans of worms left right and centre, though in many cases the "worms" are never actually addressed.
It advocates that all coaches should have some degree of training in psychology/counselling, yet the main authors clearly have a somewhat garbled understanding of the main schools of psychology (they confuse "behaviourism" with CBT (Cognitive-behavioural therapy) for example, and have Watson as a disciple of Skinner).
They recognise that coaching has only limited overlap with consultancy, yet their model of "professional coaching" is almost entirely based on the kind of practices that have earned consultants such a bad name in many quarters, such as committing the client to a contract of 6-12 months - thereby unleashing the full power of Parkinson's Law: "Work will expand to fill the time available".

On the plus side - and in my opinion the pluses FAR outweight the minuses - the authors not only endow the book with the benefit of their own considerable experience, they also feature six chapters (out of 14) by other participants in the field such as Myles Downey (whose own book Effective Coaching is included in these reviews); Tony Ryan (Head of Executive Development at the BBC), and Glenn Whitney (the managing partner of ECD Insight - a UK management and communications development consultancy).

The quality of these one-off contributions is fairly mixed.  Glenn Whitney's chapter on Evaluating development Coaching is to my mind the most honest in terms of admitting just how vague the whole process of evaluating training and coaching is - and probably always will be.  This was my personal candidate for best chapter in the book.
The chapter by Tony Ryan, on how coaching came to the BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation), despite its limited canvas, provides a fascinating and useful insight into the the mindset of senior managers, with little gems like: "Many [senior managers] had avoided formal management development activity during their careers, and indeed were suspicious of it."
Beverly Brooks' contribution, on the other hand, was mainly distinguished by confusions such as:

"A coach is a strange animal.  Neither a trainer ... nor a counsellor, whose main domain is the personal and interpersonal ..."   (page 95)
 
"While development coaches are not offering therapy, they are working in the domain of interpersonal relationships."   (page 99)
(Italics added in both quotations)

This is as nothing, however, compared with what strikes me as total vapour ware* in Chapter 14 Development Coaching in a Consulting Context, where the founder and principal of a US-based consultancy manages to use the word "authentic" in its various forms (authenticity, authentically, etc.) no less than 5 times in the space of half a page, and a further 6 times over a further 3 pages, without ever explaining what he means by "authenticity" or why it is a valuable quality.
Compare this with West and Milan's own comment:

"... the coach needs to be prepared to trust in the client's process of becoming, which involves noticing the client as he or she becomes him or herself and prizing that."   (page 80)

Well, yes, quite ...!

So, to use one of my favourite phrases, a definite "curate's egg".  Yet possibly even more valuable for its unevenness than any neatly segmented, internal consistent, text book-like approach.
For a genuinely thought-provoking, warts-and-all view of the coaching scene as it is today I make this a Strong Recommendation   *   *   *   *   *   *

*   "vapour ware" - a computing term for software that is being talked up even though it doesn't actually exist,: all hype and no substance.

How the Way We Talk can Change the Way We Work
Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey
Jossey-Bass  0-7879-5535-3 (Hb)
First of all, despite the highly suggestive title, this is not a book on NLP.  Indeed, it isn't even a book on coaching, as such, yet it overlaps so far into both of those fields of study that it seemed to be the kind of book many visitors to this site - especially those involved in business (as distinct from therapy, for example) - might find very useful.
So here it is.

In my opinion there is both good news and bad news as far as this book is concerned.  So let's get the bad news out of the way first and then look at the very good reasons for recommending the book.

The two authors are a professor of Adult Learning and Professional Development (Kegan) and research director of the Change Leadership Project (Lahey) at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.  Moreover the finished manuscript was presumably screened by a professional editor before it was published.  Yet despite all these pluses, the flow of the text is regularly disrupted by tortuously constructed sentences, made up words, bad grammar and simple spelling mistakes such as:

"But how exactly might we further creating and practicing this language in real work life (as opposed to merely illustrating it)?"
(page 196)

and in the very next paragraph:

"Whatever salable product they have produced, ..."

Surely even a quick once over with a spell checker would be enough to root out such basic errors - so why didn't it happen, I wonder?

Now for the good news.

The heart of this book is the authors' imaginative solution to the problem of "secondary gains," though they don't actually use that term.
So often we have a primary objective (a "commitment") which seems absolutely rational and desirable - and attainable - yet we somehow manage to avoid ever achieving our goal.  So what's going on?
A psychologist might say that by failing to gain our primary objective we actually achieve some other, undeclared, purpose - a "secondary gain".  Kegan and Lahey call this our "competing commitment" and have devised a simple yet elegant process whereby we can identify the competing commitment in any situation.

The title of the book is based on the authors' further contention that we (Western culture) have developed a set of seven basic language forms that we use to perpetuate our "stuck", "competing commitment"-driven state.  And they offer an alternative to each form that will, in their view, allow us to move from "being controlled" to "being in control".

Whilst many of these ideas will be readily recognisable to NLPers, the book gives a fascinating view of the current (2001) state "conventional" business thinking - and the many opportunities for NLPers to speak to that situation.
For coaches the book presents some invaluable tools and in such detail that you can utilise them virtually straight off the page.

No surprise, then, that I give the book a rating of Highly Recommended:   *  *  *  *  *  *

The Inner Game of Work
Timothy Gallwey
Texere  1-58799-047-4
This is the first time I've read any of Gallwey's books, (which include the famed The Inner Game of Tennis), and I can virtually guarantee that it will also be the last.

Gallwey is undoubtedly a big name in coaching circles - both in regards to sports coaching, where he started out, and in business coaching, which has attracted a number of his students/disciples such as John Whitmore and Miles Downey.
Likewise the much quoted, and basically flawed GROW model for coaching sessions was based on Gallwey's ideas.
(Incidentally, the GROW model was actually originated by Graham Alexander, NOT by John Whitmore, though the appearance of a slightly revised version of the model in Whitmore's 1992 book Coaching for Performance, is probably the main reason for its widespread popularity.)

On that basis, I expected that Gallwey would have something pretty fundamental to say about the art of coaching, and that his latest book must have the most up-to-date synthesis of the author's ideas.
If it does, then I am at a total loss to understand what all the fuss is about.

After reading this book I am left with the impression that the whole "inner game" thing has been blown up out of all proportion since it seems to amount, in practise, to nothing more than three or four pretty basic ideas:

1. Self 1 and Self 2
   According to Gallwey, Self 2 is your "natural" self, who would do brilliantly in life but for being constantly tripped up by Self 1 - your conscious, judgemental, less able self.  Thus Gallwey's "Big Idea" boils down to nothing more than the highly simplistic notion that if only we'll put Self 1 to one side and trust in Self 2 everything else in life will just naturally fall into place.
    
2. The whole Self 1 / Self 2 business is summed up in the "equation":

   P (performance) = p (potential - Self 2) - i (interference - Self 1)

3. After stringing this painfully simple notion out for nearly three-quarters of the book, we get to STOP:

   Step back
   Think
   Organise your thoughts, and
   Proceed

   This, too, is pretty basic, but it is perfectly true that we often let ourselves get so wound up by events that we really need to go through some simple routine such as this to get everything back in perspective.  And if 25 pages seems rather a lot to explain such a simple idea, at least it's a lot less than the 137 pages devoted to "P=p-i"!
    
4. The last idea, which Gallway calls "thinking like a CEO", belongs in the same category as "discussing chakra's in the boardroom".  The author apparently wants us (the CEOs) to believe that we each metaphorically divide ourself (hereinafter known as "the corporation") into "shares" which we then trade off with just about anyone else that wanders through our lives.
   Most of us, if I understand the metaphor correctly, have traded our entire corporation away to our parents, boss, spouse, children, etc. and therefore can have no control over our life until we've bought a substantial part of those shares back again.  Indeed, there's even a sample "CEO Exercise Worksheet" for you to fill in with details like "What is your Mission Statement?", "What is your primary Product?" and ...
   No, this is too ridiculous for words.  Let's move on.

Even being generous it seems to me that almost all of the genuinely thought-provoking/useful material in the whole book is concentrated in Chapter 9 - Coaching.  Although it's a comparatively long chapter (37 pages), and whilst some of the ideas therein are pretty dodgy, it does at least raise various topics that are worth thinking about for anyone engaged in coaching or self-coaching.
Which leaves me asking why anyone would be bothered with a book of 226 pages (main text), just to get a few intellectual nudges in the last quarter of the book?

No doubt Gallwey fans will have rushed out to buy this book.  I can. think of very few reasons to recommend it to anyone else, so I rate it:   *   (and that purely on account of Chapter 9)