Simon Cavicchia and Maria Gilbert
Routledge
ISBN: 978 04156 4325 2
5 out of 5 stars
This book is an antidote to technique-based manuals on coaching. It calls on the practitioner to cultivate awareness and empathic attunement and describes an approach grounded in the insight that all experience is socially constructed.
Relational coaching works with the reality that organisational life is fluid – and that includes the coaching process itself. All that can be guaranteed in coaching is that, if both participants turn up, they’ll engage in some interaction, together with the intent of shedding light on some aspect of the client’s experience. But this will be influenced by myriad factors such as the mood in which both arrive, the environment they’re in, and the intuitions that arise in each of them.
The authors bring into the conversation the dynamics of power and politics that shape working life, challenging the notion that these can be bracketed out in the name of neutrality. Their book helps coaches navigate the tricky path between serving the organisation that pays the bill and the needs of an individual client who may be subject to unreasonable or unrealistic work expectations.
- Martin Vogel is founder director of Vogel Wakefield, the counter-consultancy. He blogs at: https://vogelwakefield.com