RELATIONAL COACHING
Journeys towards mastering one-to-one learning
Author: Erik de Haan
Price: £24.99
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN: 978 0 470 72428 6
Contact: www.wiley.com
Relational coaching concentrates on the quality of the coach-coachee relationship from the latter’s perspective.
To uncover that, de Haan’s masterful and impressive book gives a complete overview of the coaching profession, including its origins and the latest developments in coaching.
The second part of the book presents recent quantitative and qualitative research into the effects and experiences of coaching. Part three contains an introduction to the activities that make a good coach and the mechanisms used to verify coaches’ understanding of their profession. Other topics covered include training, accreditation, supervision and recommended literature.
De Haan is to be congratulated for his honesty and perspicacity in getting to the heart of the coaching relationship. He is so honest that he provides a verbatim transcript of a coaching session, supplemented by a running commentary of his own thoughts and feelings. I was both impressed and moved by this soul baring.
The book would be helpful for professional coaches who want to broaden their outlook and for buyers of coaching who want to tune into the latest thinking (de Haan is also programme director of the Ashridge Masters in Executive Coaching). It would also be a useful tool for buyers and sponsors of coaching who want to quiz or assess potential coaches at interview.
Reading Relational Coaching is an intense experience, but it seems only fair that it requires the same level of commitment as that shown by its author.
Useful? 4 stars (out of 5)
Well-written? 5 stars
Value for money? 4 stars
