University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Master Coach
Book

The Master Coach

Leading with Character, Building Connections, and Engaging in Extraordinary Conversations

Gregg Thompson
SelectBooks, 2017
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Inspiring

Recommendation

Coaching expert Gregg Thompson offers an optimistic view of a world and workplace in which well-intentioned, selfless leaders put the careers and aspirations of others ahead of their own. This will leave you both hopeful and yearning. Yearning because you simply won’t find many of the people he describes, and hopeful because this remarkably open, honest description of great coaching will help you spot those with the potential to guide others – and realize their incredible power to improve people’s work and lives. When you find them, hold on to them, develop them and help them thrive. If you want to coach, the path is challenging, the journey long and the rewards incredible, but intrinsic. getAbstract suggests that if you already coach, you can use Thompson’s 3C “Master Coach Model” made up of “Character, Connection” and “Conversation,” to improve your coaching or, perhaps, to realize that maybe you shouldn’t be coaching after all. If you lead an organization, use it to identify and develop people with the ability to coach masterfully.

Summary

The “Talent”

If you’re a coach, think of your clients as Talent. This will put you in the right frame of mind to observe the golden rule of coaching: Place your client’s interests above your own. As a coach, your role is to see through your clients’ façades in order to understand them deeply and accept them, overlooking faults and reveling in their strengths and potential. Your clients need open and honest conversations. They also need to trust you so much that they welcome negative feedback because it spurs their growth.

If you’re the right coach, you are so passionate about your clients’ success – however you define it – that every conversation centers on them alone. You support your clients unconditionally in fulfilling their potential. That rare person – the “Master Coach” – will change clients’ lives. Your clients must want help and must invite you to guide and teach them, but they shouldn’t ask you to do anything for them. They alone have responsibility for their ability to change, their decisions and their actions. They need your guidance, but not your advice.

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About the Author

Gregg Thompson, president of Bluepoint Leadership Development, is a frequent speaker and facilitator. He has designed several leadership development workshops including The Coaching Essentials, Leader As Coach, Advanced Coaching Skills and Powerful Coaching Conversations.

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