A comprehensive, authoritative, and well-organized manual for boosting productivity through coaching.
A Fortune 500 executive–turned-consultant looks at how to implement coaching programs inside professional organizations.
In this debut, Robertson draws on her own successful corporate coaching career to explain what coaching is, why organizations need it, how it serves a variety of human resource and talent development needs, and how it can lead to organizational change and improve results. The author discovered coaching while working in sales for MCI Communications in the mid-1990s. At the time, “life coaching” was popular, but professional coaching in corporations rarely extended beyond senior executives. She spearheaded a coaching program for MCI sales managers, who were dealing with rapid growth and technological change. Her program expanded to other departments and diversified in scope; meanwhile, MCI was acquired by WorldCom in 1998, which declared bankruptcy in 2002, emerged from bankruptcy in 2004, and was acquired by Verizon in 2006. Her coaching, she says, helped retain employees during the various crises and combine different cultures during mergers, which garnered her two consecutive International Coach Federation Prism Awards. This book’s content and workbook format appear to be aimed specifically at human resources administrators. Robertson uses her experience to offer instructions that are never dry or vague; instead, she moves seamlessly back and forth between her coaching principles and real-life anecdotes. She displays an encyclopedic knowledge throughout as she provides a step-by-step blueprint for launching an internal coaching program. Along the way, she also discusses how to use external coaches when time frames, budgets, or required skill sets warrant. The book looks at how to evaluate a company’s readiness for coaching and where it should reside in the organization and gives advice on how to write job descriptions, hire qualified coaches, develop talent, and measure results. Robertson continuously asks helpful questions in clear, if not always succinct, prose (“What level of impact do any pre-existing conditions have on the sales process and the ability to sell services into the account?”). There’s some business jargon, but it’s appropriate for the book’s audience; professional coaches, she notes, should be conversant in the language their clients use. She also offers document templates, training tools, and websites for further reference.
A comprehensive, authoritative, and well-organized manual for boosting productivity through coaching.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9909380-4-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Secant Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
