BOOK
Coaching for Innovation: Tools and Techniques for Encouraging New Ideas in the Workplace
Cristina Bianchi and Maureen Steele
Palgrave Macmillan
978 11373 5325 2
4/5 stars
This book is a comprehensive resource for managers who want to incorporate coaching techniques in order to encourage new ideas and bigger thinking in the workplace, and for coaches who want to help leaders and managers do so.
The first part provides detailed coaching models to spark an innovation mind-set and culture. It includes practical exercises on feedback, powerful questioning as well as mindful listening and coaching models. These include: 6 steps to feedback, 7 days to mindful listening, a model for generating multiple options and the Create8.s model for running a creative team session – all well-suited for managers keen to use coaching in innovation.
The second part focuses on how to orchestrate these to create bigger thinking and new ideas in teams, through 10 building blocks. This can be useful for group coaches and facilitators, too.
Coaching for managing change and conflict are briefly explored, but a great opportunity is missed to tackle the problem of innovation delivery and getting value from ideas. This is where a coaching approach can be most valuable.
Prof. dr. Vali Lalioti helps corporations maximise their innovation potential and deliver value and impact from ideas, through coaching, consulting and hands-on innovation programmes www.valilalioti.com
BOOK
Coaching with Values: How to Put Values at the Heart of Your Coaching to Make a Lasting Difference
Lindsay West
AuthorHouseUK
978 15049 3918 8
5/5 stars
At last a book that explains values clearly. I deeply appreciated re-visiting what values are, where they come from and why they are important in our lives and coaching. Lindsay West skilfully takes apart values, explaining them step by step with lightness and clarity, taking what can sometimes feel like a woolly subject to a whole new level.
West focuses on how the words we use to describe values change over time. She states that family, health and money, for example, are not values at all, pointing out that it is what we get from those words that describe their core values.
West’s assertion that values are not emotions caused me to stop and reflect – always a good sign in a book.
Coaching with Values is not about accepting the norms, and West reminds us of the need both for the right levels of support and of challenge in the coaching relationship.
One statement stopped me dead in my tracks: “All too often people see poor behaviour in others and assume they are bad people. This is a big misconception.”
It gave me a lightbulb moment. You’ll have to read the book yourself to discover what comes next.
Jackee Holder is an executive and leadership coach and coach trainer and author of four books www.jackeeholder.com