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Coached to Lead
Book

Coached to Lead

How to Achieve Extraordinary Results with an Executive Coach

Susan Battley
Jossey-Bass, 2006
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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

If you ever considered hiring an executive coach, but wondered what to expect from the experience, wonder no more. Author Susan Battley has written a tightly focused book that will answer all your questions about this helpful executive perk. Her advice will enable you to determine whether you would benefit from coaching, how it might help you improve, what coaches do, how to select one and how much they charge. Battley writes clearly and provides useful examples from her own experience. However, the book would have gotten off to a faster start if she had begun by discussing what coaches do, rather than offering an overly detailed discussion of how to determine whether you can use coaching. getAbstract recommends this book to executives who want to learn how to take advantage of professional advice to develop their leadership capabilities quickly.

Summary

Coaching is for Winners

Although coaching is relatively new as a profession, coaches have worked with leaders throughout history. Aristotle coached Alexander the Great, Niels Bohr coached Werner Heisenberg and Warren Buffett coached Katharine Graham. More recently, executives at Charles Schwab, eBay, Pfizer, Ford, Maytag and Silicon Graphics have turned to executive coaches to improve their management skills.

Contrary to popular perception, executive coaching - also known as business or leadership coaching - is not a form of psychotherapy. It is a confidential "one-on-one partnership" between an experienced coach and a manager. In coaching sessions, you focus on your work and your career, not on personal relationships or past experiences. Coaching is about the person you are today. Its main purpose is to help you with job-related issues, such as performance, stress management or career goals. Professionals who are technically competent often lack the interpersonal skills that coaching can boost.

A manager who gets evaluations complaining about his or her poor management style may benefit from coaching. But such feedback is often limited to mid-level managers. ...

About the Author

Susan Battley has worked as an executive coach with Fortune 500 CEOs, Nobel laureates and university presidents. She has been featured as a leadership expert on television and radio, and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

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