There’s a plethora of books covering literally every aspect of executive and leadership coaching. In fact, this popular topic has been written about by eminent authors for decades. With so many books to choose from it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when selecting the best books to read for advancing your skills and coaching career.
To help you, I’ve compiled a list of 10 books I think are particularly valuable for growing your coaching knowledge and skills. All titles are available through major booksellers. They are not in a specific order. Start with any one that resonates with you.
1) The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
by Michael Bungay Stainer.
A highly readable book that’s short on theory but long on practical tools and techniques at the heart of good coaching. If you want to enhance your management and leadership style with a coaching approach, this is a good place to start. At the end of each chapter there’s a section on creating a new “habit” based around a question’s core purpose.
2) Coaching for Performance (5th edition) The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership
by Sir John Whitmore
This classic on the subject, now in its fifth edition, is an excellent book summarizing the art of coaching in an organizational context. The book explains the GROW model, one of the most established and successful coaching models that Whitmore co-created. It also explains the important difference between coaching and mentoring. New to the latest edition is information about emotional intelligence and high-performance leadership.
3) Self as Coach, Self as Leader Developing the Best in You so that You can Develop the Best in Others
by Pamela McLean
This useful book guides you along a path that interweaves six broad dimensions of your internal landscape into the fabric of great coaching. The author’s approach shows you how to develop leadership skills using the internal resources that you already possess and how to achieve real coaching improvements with long-lasting benefits.
4) The HeART of Laser-Focused Coaching A Revolutionary Approach to Masterful Coaching
by Marion Franklin
An excellent guide to becoming a better and more effective coach. Filled with useful concepts, this is a book that you’ll want to read with a pen and notebook handy to write down your responses to the ideas expressed. There are also lots of great examples illustrating the capabilities of the author’s Laser Coaching method.
5) The Discomfort Zone How Leaders Turn Difficult Conversations into Breakthroughs
by Dr. Marcia Reynolds
The author shares her examples, tips, and techniques that take coaches beyond purely results-focused coaching to breakthrough coaching. This book is not intended for use in every coaching situation. Rather it’s about finding and utilizing “Discomfort Zone” opportunities to help your clients grow.
6) Leadership Coaching: From Personal Insights to Organizational Performance
by Graham Lee
This book is one of the best introductions into the relationship at work between personal and psychological issues, as well as practical ones. You’ll go on a deep dive into different leadership styles while gaining an excellent framework for leadership development coaching.
7 ) Effective Coaching (3rd Edition) Lessons from the Coach’s Coach
by Myles Downey
Written by coaching pioneer Myles Downey, this is an outstanding first book to read about coaching. It’s like a mini-handbook of coaching covering all the essentials: how career coaching evolved, why it works, what it is, how to manage a session, key coaching skills, and more.
For a short book it packs a lot of punch.
8) The Portable Coach 28 Surefire Strategies for Business and Personal Success
by Thomas J. Leonard
This entertaining book has lots of ideas and things to do with your clients – and it’s great for coaches to use personally too. The book is broken up into 28 easy-to-read chapters – each based on a coaching principle. If you’re a fan of positive thinking this is a book for you.
9) Effective Group Coaching Tried and Tested Tools and Resources for Optimum Group Coaching Results
by Jennifer J. Britton
Jennifer Britton is a leader in both team and group coaching and more recently virtual coaching and remote-working. If you’re planning on working with groups in any way (including webinars, workshops, team or group coaching), this book is essential reading.
by Bill Eckstrom and Sarah Wirth
Anyone leading a team is also a de facto coach. In this book, authors Bill Eckstrom and Sarah Wirth use their research to show how specific coaching strategies can lead to positive outcomes for your team as a whole.
So, there you have it, 10 great books to get your mind thinking and to fill your bookshelf with valuable resources and tools that you’ll refer to repeatedly. I’m sure you’ll enjoy and benefit from each of them as a professional executive and leadership coach.
A valuable aspect of coaching is to evoke awareness in your client that helps them to learn more about themselves and change for the long term. Learn about coaching the person and not the problem.
If you really want to advance your coaching skills to a new level, then seriously consider getting trained. We have trained thousands of coaches through our Distance Learning and Virtual Seminars. You will increase your skillset as a coach and increase the impact you have on the people you coach.
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