coachbook: A Guide to Organizational Coaching Strategies and Practices

This book addresses itself to the executive corporate Coaches who support leaders on their journey of achievement. Coachbook provides the most comprehensive survey for the practicing organizational coach and those who coordinate coaching programs within organizations. It updates and contextualizes the thinking of the experienced coach, and provides a well-researched foundation for the newer coach. The field called organizational coaching emerged at the same time (during the 1990s) as many organizational analysts began identifying and describing a postmodern world of complexity, unpredictability and turbulence. In this world, leaders (and their coaches) find the edges of their personal and professional abilities constantly challenged by flatter, networked, global workforces and vertiginously changing business landscapes. Equipped with personal leadership and business experience as well as scholarly backgrounds in organizational psychology, philosophy, linguistics and executive development, Bergquist and Mura have 50 combined years of working as coaches throughout the world. Interweaving theory and practice, they have constructed a framework of masterful organizational coaching strategies that address the most frequent and delicate coaching scenarios. In Chapter One, the authors describe multiple ways in which an appreciative approach may be applied as a powerful coaching strategy that not only doesn’t dull the results-focus of the coaching but actually maximizes its chances of success. They then turn in Chapter Two to the sophisticated interpersonal communication tools needed by anyone who wishes to provide effective organizational coaching. In Chapter Three, Bergquist and Mura differentiate between three clusters of coaching models and offer a comprehensive taxonomy of organizational coaching that provides an invaluable map for the professional coach. The authors focus in detail on each of these three coaching clusters in the following three chapters of Coachbook: Specifically, in Chapter Four they describe Behavioral coaching, the processes by which coaches help leaders refine or transform their one-on-one as well as team interactions. Decisional coaching focuses on dealing with the choices and dilemmas facing leaders in modern working life; it is described in Chapter Five. Chapter Six concerns the cluster of models that relate to Aspirational Coaching as it addresses more values and purpose based coaching issues. The last section of the book includes over 30 ready-to-use Coaching Resources - tools that have been carefully selected and have repeatedly proven useful and appropriate in a vast variety of challenging coaching engagements. The authors expect to interact with their readers in order to improve and expand this collection in the future.

William Bergquist, Ph.D., has served for many years in a variety of roles—as president of a graduate school of psychology, as author of more than 40 books, as teacher in more than a dozen universities and graduate schools, and as consultant, trainer and coach in more than 1,000 organizations across four continents. Bill’s accomplishments as a writer are noteworthy. He has received two national awards for research and scholarship and has been identified as a founder of the so-called “postmodern” school of organizational psychology. He is co-founder of the International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations and co-founder and long-term co-owner of the International Journal of Coaching in Organizations. He was a co-founder of the Professional and Organization Development Network in American higher education and served as chief consultant for many years to two major higher education associations in Washington D. C. Best known for his ability to interweave contemporary theory and research with practical advice and steps toward action, Bill is currently involved in a diverse set of action-research projects ranging from the role of senior (sage) leaders in community development to engagement with an emerging, world-wide phenomenon that has been labeled “the organizational underground”. Agnes Mura, MA MCC, forged her approach to people and organizations in different political systems, European universities and a dramatic life of geographic and professional migrations. Her careers as an academic, senior international banker and then executive coach reflects her relentless curiosity for the ways individuals add value in the world, while staying true to their ever-expanding sense of self. Inspired by her studies in philosophy and linguistics, steeped in the human potential movement as much as in the world of global business, she is among the Master Certified Coaches (MCC) of longest-standing experience in the US. Fluent in six languages, she coaches C-suite executives and their teams in Global 1000 companies, and delivers systemic Leadership programs worldwide. Her deep understanding of how people develop through professional (and life) changes, and her proven cultural acumen allows her to also galvanize and empower large audiences to take on new creative action. For fifteen years, in addition to holding leadership positions in several national coaching organizations, she has been an Assessor, certifying coaches and accrediting training programs for the ICF.