This book gives coaches, and all leaders, the wider perspective and the practical tools to help those they work with to achieve deep and lasting change that generates long-term performance.
Who we are, and how we relate to others, is a major factor in the sustainable development of organizations and communities today. The helping relationship―whether as coach, manager, trainer, teacher or leader―is central to developing this capacity to relate―not only to others but also to ourselves.
This book provides a series of innovative concepts and practical tools for those involved in helping relationships, as they help others develop and transform. It provides five operational strategies that answers the questions “What should I do?” and “How should I do it?”. It then offers four strategies to help a person build their own identity. Finally, it describes a “crystallization” strategy that encompasses all the others, and enables a person to crystalize what has been occurring during the helping relationship.
It also provides a unique perspective on the place of coaching in the context of the evolution of our species towards an empathetic civilization, of our society to and beyond the third industrial revolution, and of our companies as they reinvent the way they organize in the 21st century to give greater autonomy to those who work in them and harness the power of participative democracy in the workplace.
A central theme of the book is freedom and responsibility. Having found, then fully accepted our freedom, we go beyond freedom, and take the path towards responsibility. Both client and coach chart their path on this journey through the alliance they create, and through which deep meaning is born for both.
Vincent Lenhardt has been a Senior Advisor to Bain and Company since 2012, and previously to that spent 3 years as Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. During his time at Bain he has trained over 100 Partners in the basics of coaching, both in the US, in Australia and in Europe. He has also worked alongside the Bain’s Results Delivery team with 15 of their major clients in in the USA and in Asia.
As a coach he accompanied a member of Rhone Poulenc’s Executive Committee, Alain Goddard in its international expansion, and co-authored the book “Commitments, Hopes and Dreams” (in French) with him, based on their experience. He is the author of two other books in English, published by Palgrave: “Transformational Leadership” and “Coaching for Meaning”.
Vincent Lenhardt introduced coaching into France in the late 1980s. He is the founder of TransformancePro, which today has seven schools of coaching in France, Belgium and North Africa. During the course of histeaching over 25 years, he has constantly matured and enriched its fundamental principles, as well as refining and enhancing his own coaching practice.
A key ingredient in Vincent’s style of coaching is his approach to the development of the whole person, which is rooted in his long experience as a therapist. In the 1980s, he was president of the European Association of Transactional Analysis and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the International Transactional Analysis Association in San Francisco. Among his many other activities, he has an ongoing therapeutic practice, in particular mind-body therapy based on the work of John Pierrakos and Paul Bindrim. He has also worked with Taibi Kahler, Richard Erskine, Graham Barnes, Muriel James and George Kohlrieser.
This book is the fruit of his 25 years of teaching and practice in coaching, as well as 40 years’ experience as a therapist. In it, he not only shares the result of decades of professional experie
nce, but also structures the lessons learned into ten clear and powerful strategies.
