The Tao of Coaching: Boost Your Effectiveness at Work by Inspiring and Developing Those Around You by Max Landsberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This little book is written in a narrative style, and is about a guy called Alex who learns how to successfully apply the principles of coaching as a business manager and departmental leader. At first Alex is a people-eater, a caricature of a driving high-D manager who rolls over people to get results. Thanks to some good advice from some surprisingly gracious and lovely colleagues, Alex is slowly transformed into a much more sophisticated manager and leader of people, and at the end of the book we wait atop tenterhooks to find out if he’s made it to the company top table (I won’t spoil this review by revealing that he does make it).
It focuses on how to flex a coaching style (more of a management style that includes coaching) based on the skill/will matrix. This is the same structure used in the One Minute Manager book I just reviewed – both use the same model, albeit with different labels, and both argue the same point about the importance of mixing directing and supporting styles depending on the needs of the coachee (or managee).
It’s an easy book to read and I found it a little basic and throwaway, but as a brief high-level and accessible introduction to the principles of this type of managerial coaching, it’s well worth a read.
Filed under: Coaching, Management
