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The Handbook of Coaching

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The Handbook of Coaching

A Comprehensive Resource Guide for Managers, Executives, Consultants, and Human Resource Professionals

Jossey-Bass,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

To be a coach, you need to see people clearly, including yourself. The rest is skill, knowledge and preparation.

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Frederic M. Hudson wrote this exhaustive reference manual and survey of the field of coaching primarily for coaches and aspiring coaches. He focuses on teaching the best practices in coaching and conveying knowledge, extensive resources, thorough book lists and professional programs. The real message underneath all this data is that a good coach is the ultimate human resource. If you’re a coach, you’ll benefit from the book’s thoroughness. If you’re unfamiliar with the field, it’s a textbook for understanding many facets of professional coaching and its impact on people and organizations. getAbstract recommends Hudson’s book particularly to coaches, and also to those who want to learn more about coaching, human resource managers, business libraries, and executives who are recruiting coaches or team leaders. Just forget the idea that all you need to know you learned in kindergarten; to thrive, you need to keep learning continuously. Just ask a coach.

Summary

What Professional Coaches Do

The conventional wisdom used to be that if you worked steadily and strived to do your best, gradually everything in your life would improve. Your journey would lead to a happy, secure destination. By adhering to cultural norms, you would have a sense of belonging.

Most adults believe learning is for kids. Once out of school, they think, life is less about learning and more about working. But the lives of modern professionals resemble chapters more than long books. Adult development runs in cycles: as you finish one, you begin the next. In today’s business world, you are likely to have a number of jobs or even switch career paths. To adjust to such ongoing change, you need to know how to renew yourself. Continuous learning a crucial part of that process, but you are responsible for devising your own curriculum. That individual, personal challenge is also a challenge for teams and organizations.

That is where coaches come in. A coach is a teacher, but coach’s relationship with the client - whether the client is an individual, a team or a company - goes deeper than that. A coach’s function is to relate particular successes to a whole...

About the Author

Frederic M. Hudson, Ph.D., is an expert on adult development. He has worked for more than 25 years as a career and life-planning consultant and has developed adult learning programs. His corporate experience includes working with a number of Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of numerous books including The Adult Years.

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