Coaching skills for leaders in the workplace, Jackie Arnold, reviewed

 By @SimonCocking. Book by Jackie Arnold available from Amazon here. See more about her work here.

As a leader, senior manager or executive, you are often required to act as a coach or mentor for your staff. This book will enable you to set up coaching programmes that can make a significant difference to staff retention and motivation. It will give you the knowledge and skills you need to encourage your staff to grow so that you can get on with your own essential leadership role. In this book you’ll discover how to: – become an effective leader and coach *distinguish between coaching and mentoring – establish the right coaching climate *develop effective communication skills – set up the first coaching session *present a business case for coaching .

First published in 2009 and revised and republished to cover new trends such as team coaching and mindfulness. In some ways it is a good illustration of how far things have moved on in less than a decade that this feels like a book written almost a decade ago. There are very few references to digital resources, or the author’s website or twitter handle in the author’s bio details at the beginning of the book which feels like a missed opportunity in a revised edition of the book.

Despite these limitations the book does offer some useful insights into the nuts and bolts of coaching, what is good coaching, and what isn’t appropriate for coaching, as compared to perhaps mentoring (or just bad coaching too). As a journalist you realise the value of asking open questions, so too with coaching Arnold illustrations of asking open, non leading questions, to help the coachee to actually look at and reflect on the challenges they are facing. Chapter 13 for example ‘Over coming barriers to coaching and mentoring’ attempts to share lessons learned and help inspire a new generation of people to successfully help others through their coaching efforts.

If you are someone who has had a terrible boss, someone like David Brent perhaps, then this book does give you the opportunity to help pay it forward to the next wave of people coming through. Arnold also points out that many coaches have also gained valuable insights from the time they spent coaching, as well as the knowledge that they had effectively helped others, which is never a bad thing to do.

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