Coaching People: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges (Pocket Mentor)

This book came highly recommended by my chief nurse. I found the book a great tool to use not only at work but at home too.

Coaching employees is one of those things that is more easily said than done. And it's far too easy to mistake managing with coaching. I found Harvard Business School Press' Pocket Mentor series book Coaching People: Expert Solutions to Everyday Challenges an excellent concise guide for successfully coaching people with optimal results. Contents: What Is Coaching? How to Know When to Coach; How to Develop Coaching Skills; How to Manage a Coaching Session; How to Customize Your Coaching; Tools for Coaching People; Test Yourself; To Learn More; Sources for Coaching People; Notes In a mere 69 pages, the writers pack in more useful information than books three and four times the size. Everything is geared towards practicality and immediate application, so the book delivers value from the very first pages. The distinction between what is, and what isn't, coaching is a perfect beginning, and sets the stage for what follows. Coaching is not behavior correction or task assignment. It's a mutual sharing to help someone reach their goals and improve their effectiveness. The coach doesn't have to know all the answers, but they do need to be willing to listen, share, and work with the coachee to make changes and monitor the results. The book also contains a number of practical worksheets and checklists to gauge the effectiveness of both parties. This may take the form of a checklist to assess your listening skills, or an action plan to outline a plan and follow up on the outcomes. For the price and size, there's no reason this shouldn't be included as part of someone's package of materials when they are promoted to a position of management. And even if you're not officially management, you may still be an informal leader in your sphere of influence. Working on your personal coaching skills will only help to solidify that role and enhance your effectiveness with others. If you've never given any thought to how you can help others achieve their goals, start here...