TOBY SINCLAIR
Top 100 List
Coaching Books
Learn how to become a better leader, manager and coach. A curated list of the best coaching books I've ever read.
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Michael Bungay-Stanier
Kim Morgan
Edgar Schein
Nancy Kline
James Clear
INCLUDING BOOKS BY:
GUIDE OVERVIEW
Becoming a better coach
I've led teams for over 10 years. But it was only later in my career that I came to this realisation: coaching is not about fixing people. I had spent most of my career amassing technical knowledge and I was valued for this expertise. However, over time it became more important to develop other people. To be the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage.
I learned that coaching is in essence about telling less and asking more. It's about helping someone find their own answers rather than advising them. There are three skills that can help you do this well. Listening, Asking and Sensing. The third you might be curious about. Sensing is the ability to know what's going on for you, the other person and the system at large. You might also know it as emotional intelligence.
These books are not about turning you into a coach. They are about helping you become a little more coach-like in how you lead and manage teams. Learning how to listen and show empathy. Learning how to ask open, curious questions that lead to better thinking. Becoming more self-aware and managing your desire to give advice to everyone.
Levels Explained 💡
Foundations: The first level ensures that you learn the basics, including some of the foundational texts. All books at this level are accessible and interesting to read, no matter your current coaching knowledge.
Skills: Next level explores the specific skills of coaching. Namely listening, asking and sensing. These coaching books will help you pursue mastery of these coaching skills.
Context: The third level focuses on the application of coaching in specific contexts. If you know the foundations and skills, jump to this section. Contexts include who you might be coaching with e.g. teams and the challenges you might face e.g conflict.
Expand: Finally, this level goes deep and wide into the related fields and applications. These books are more niche and specialized (e.g. related to neuroscience and therapy)
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Choose Your Level 📊
LEVEL 1
Learn The Foundations 😎
Let's begin by ensuring that you learn the basics. The following 25 coaching books are all accessible and interesting to read, no matter your current coaching knowledge level.
The Coaching Habit
Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
By Michael Bungay-Stanier
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2016 ⌛ 251 pages 😎 Leaders
What I Found Most Useful 💡
What I like best about the Coaching Habit is that it's super practical. It provides busy managers with the 7 coaching habit questions. These help managers coach in 10 minutes or less. With a focus on simplicity and habit formation, the coaching habit book is a great way to start.
Given the simplicity, this book focuses on coaching skills rather than professional coaching. Michael Bungay Stanier highlights that this is not a book about becoming a coach. Instead, it's focused on giving managers simple coaching skills.
Coaching for Performance
The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership
By Sir John Whitmore
⭐️ 4.6 📅 2021 ⌛ 289 pages 😎 Managers
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What I Found Most Useful 💡
This book popularised the famous GROW Model. Now used in nearly every coach training program. A super practical coaching book with many tools and techniques. Managers in particular will love this book. You'll discover how you can use coaching with your teams.
GROW Model:
- Goal: What do you want?
- Reality: Where are you now?
- Options: What could you do?
- Will: What will you do?
Coaches Casebook
Mastering The Twelve traits That trap Us
By Geoff Watts, Kim Morgan
⭐️ 4.7 📅 2015 ⌛ 381 pages 😎 Coaches
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What I Found Most Useful 💡
This is the perfect introduction to Professional Coaching. Each chapter tells the story of a skilled coach working with a client who is struggling with one of the twelve traits. These include people-pleasing, imposter syndrome, perfectionism and procrastination.
Throughout the book are detailed exercises you can use in coaching conversations. Readers will leave with practical tools and specific examples where they can use coaching.
You Coach You
How to Overcome Challenges and Take Control of Your Career
By Helen Tupper, Sarah Ellis
⭐️ 4.7 📅 2022 ⌛ 288 pages 😎 Everyone
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Coaching is a confusing word. Many people associate it with "fixing people" and telling people what to do. The dictionary doesn't help with this. You Coach You by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis does a great job at democratizing coaching. Simple and practical, it gives you the tools of coaching so that you can find a breakthrough.
Whilst writing the You Coach You summary I reflected upon the central premise of the "You Coach You" book. Whilst I agree, there is great value in self-coaching it has limitations. It's easy to get stuck in thinking patterns that make problems worse. Confirming your own biases and not being aware of your blind spots. I've also heard countless times "speaking my thoughts out loud to someone has helped make things clearer". This is where a skilled coach brings huge value. Listening deeply to what is said and what isn't. Asking provocative questions to bring awareness to blind spots. Encouraging you to build upon your strengths.
The Inner Game of Tennis
The Ultimate Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
By Timothy Gallwey
⭐️ 4.5 📅 1974 ⌛ 161 pages 😎 Coaches
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What I Found Most Useful 💡
Coaching is often assumed to be about telling someone what to do and "fixing" people. The Inner Game of Tennis is the best book to debunk these myths. It shows that coaching can be most effective when you help people self-discover their own answers.
There are many bad definitions of coaching, even in the dictionary.
The Inner Game of Tennis has my favourite definition:
"Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them."
All Foundation Coaching Books
By Edgar Schein
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2013 ⌛ 176 pages 😎 Coaches
Humble Inquiry
LEVEL 2
Master The Skills 🧰
Let's continue and now explore the deeper principles and theories related to coaching. This level goes deeper into each of the core skills of coaching. Each of these coaching books will help you pursue mastery.
You’re Not Listening
What You’re Missing and Why It Matters
By Kate Murphy
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2020 ⌛ 285 pages 🧰 Listening
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Listening is hard. I often fall short of being a great listener. It's easy for the mind to drift or to assume you know what the other person is talking about. I also struggle to find people who can listen well. I'm sure you have this challenge too.
Kate Murphy uses the phrase "lost art of listening"which is a great description.
The You're Not Listening book helps you reconnect with the art of listening. There are many examples of the power of listening to transform. For example, the feeling of love that can be generated when someone actively listens to you.
I really enjoyed the scientific studies shared in the You're Not Listening book. In particular, when someone shares an opposing view to yours, your brain responds like it's being chased by a bear!
The Advice Trap
Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever
By Michael Bungay-Stanier
⭐️ 4.7 📅 2020 ⌛ 267 pages 🧰 Questions
What I Found Most Useful 💡
"Your advice is not as good as you think it is."
A harsh truth shared by Michael Bungay-Stanier in The Advice Trap. This is the follow up to his bestseller The Coaching Habit.
The biggest takeaway was the three beliefs that drive people to give advice:
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You must have the answer!
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You must be responsible for it all!
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You must stay in control!
I resonated with all of these. In particular, people often seek out my expertise as a thought leader. This means I have a strong urge to give people the answer. I continue to work hard on building awareness for when to tell vs ask.
Ego is the Enemy
The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent
By Ryan Holiday
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2016 ⌛ 211 pages 🧰 Self-Awareness
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Wow. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday is one of my all-time favourites. It addresses something we all need to grapple with and manage: our ego. Ryan Holiday has done an excellent job taking the ideas and principles of stoicism to the masses. He uses storytelling and real-life examples to demonstrate the importance of ego management. The section about money and ego was particularly helpful for me. This quote stopped me in my tracks:
"Managing your ego is especially important with money. If you don’t know how much you need, the default easily becomes: more."
Since reading this book 3 years ago I've really paid more attention to this. How much money do I need to lead the life I want?
Time To Think
Listening to Ignite the Human Mind
By Nancy Kline
⭐️ 4.6 📅 1999 ⌛ 256 pages 🧰 Listening
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Everything we do depends on the thinking we do first. Thinking for ourselves is still seen as quite a radical act. Traditionally, most of our societies have not created the conditions for us to think for ourselves. Many of us are therefore profoundly unsettled when confronted with the simple question: ‘What do you really think?’ The quality of actions depends first on the quality of the thinking behind them.
Cynefin
Weaving Sense-Making into the Fabric of Our World
By Dave Snowden et al.
⭐️ 4.4 📅 2020 ⌛ 376 pages 🧰 Sensing
What I Found Most Useful 💡
We cannot force another person or a system to change. We sow seeds, some fall on fertile ground, others on impenetrable soil, and yet others sprout but get overgrown by weeds. Our responsibility is to keep sowing the seeds, that is all we have control over.
Complex problems cannot be solved. Any attempt to create a solution changes the nature of the problem. The full landscape of the problem cannot be understood until provisional actions taken to work on the problem are taken. Yet, every one of these provisional actions creates intended and unintended consequences that change the nature of the problem; they change the context itself. Although not solvable in any traditional sense, complex problems can be approached by affecting the way the complex system – the context – around the problem evolves.
All Coaching Skills Books
Senior Leadership Teams
What It Takes to Make Them Great
By Ruth Wageman et al.
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2008 ⌛ 272 pages 🧭 Teams
What I Found Most Useful 💡
When developing your Senior Leadership Team ask these 6 Big Questions:
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Is a leadership “team” required?
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What is the unique, clear, compelling and challenging purpose of the team?
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Based upon the purpose, what team topology is needed?
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What skills, knowledge and experience are required on the team?
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What are the behavioural norms expected on the top team?
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What coaching is required and when?
Connect
Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues
By Carole Robin, David Bradford
⭐️ 4.4 📅 2021 ⌛ 294 pages 🧭 Relationships
What I Found Most Useful 💡
The authors share how self-disclosure is a crucial part of building exceptional relationships. Without it, most relationships will not deepen. Self-disclosure helps build trust and intimacy. I've often used the excuse of "lack of psychological safety" as a reason for not disclosing. This quote challenged this viewpoint:
What comes first, safety or disclosure? It can be easy to think, “Until I know I can trust that person and be accepted, I’m not going to take the risk of disclosing. I need to first know how they’re going to respond.” The causal direction has to be reversed—that risking a small disclosure is what builds safety. If each person waits for the other to take a risk, little progress is ever made.
Coaching the Team at Work
The definitive guide to team coaching
By David Clutterbuck
⭐️ 4.6 📅 2007 ⌛ 480 pages 🧭 Teams
What I Found Most Useful 💡
My biggest takeaway from coaching teams is the challenges many line managers face. To be an effective coach there are several barriers to overcome. Some of these relate to the positional power in organisations. Some of them relate to skills line managers need to master such as active listening and asking questions.
The opportunity is that if line managers overcome these challenges high performance can be achieved. Team coaching can transform teams and improve their outcomes. This book will guide your development and give new insights into how coaching teams work.
How to Begin
Start Doing Something That Matters
By Michael Bungay-Stanier
⭐️ 4.6 📅 2022 ⌛ 223 pages 🧭 Goals
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Set worthy goals in any area of your life. Measure worthiness by using the metrics of thrilling, important and daunting, and refine the goal until it is clear, simple and compelling.
Assess the goal carefully before you commit. Look at your previous false starts, what you are currently doing and not doing that is taking you away from your goal, and weigh up factors such as loss of comfort and how the journey would mould and cement your best qualities.
Cross the Threshold: Set yourself up for success when you begin by taking small steps, making sure you are operating at your peak, and choosing your travelling companions deliberately and carefully.
High Conflict
Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out
By Amanda Ripley
⭐️ 4.6 📅 2021 ⌛ 363 pages 🧭 Conflict
What I Found Most Useful 💡
High Conflict differs from regular conflict. In high conflict, people become certain of their own righteousness, make negative assumptions about those who have a different position and come to believe that the only acceptable solution is total victory. This conflict usually ends with no winners.
Every high conflict has an understory. The real reason the conflict has escalated. To mediate the conflict, uncover the understory.
Looping is an effective way of listening actively during high conflict situations. This is a form of paraphrasing that demonstrates to someone you have heard them. It also slows the conversation and often reduces emotion.
LEVEL 3
Apply In Your Context 🧭
Now, let's focus on the application of coaching in different contexts. This includes different environments such as teams and groups. It also includes various challenges you might encounter such as conflict and culture change.
All Context Coaching Books
LEVEL 4
Expand Your Knowledge 🧠
Finally, this level goes deep and wide into the related fields and applications. These coaching books are generally more niche and specialized, exploring everything from neuroscience to therapy.
The Body Keeps the Score
Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma
By Bessel van der Kolk
⭐️ 4.8 📅 2014 ⌛ 417 pages
What I Found Most Useful 💡
The Body Keeps The Score is a fascinating exploration of trauma. I particularly enjoyed the analysis of different approaches such as talk therapy. The Body Keeps The Score shares that talk therapy, although widely used, often does not lead to long term improvement. Instead, a range of other techniques has been proven to make a lasting change. These include mindfulness, relationships and human touch.
Highly recommended for people in helping professions such as coaches, mentors and therapists.
The Happiness Hypothesis
Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science
By Jonathan Haidt
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2015 ⌛ 322 pages
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Happiness Formula (H = S + C + V) - Happiness = Set Level + Conditions + Voluntary activities:
Set Level -The set-point theory of happiness suggests that our level of subjective well-being is determined primarily by heredity and by personality traits ingrained in us early in life, and as a result remains relatively constant throughout our lives
Conditions – Relationships(connection) is one of the most important conditional factors to happiness. You can never adapt if you lose connections.
Voluntary activities – Focus on activities that bring joy to others. Such as showing gratitude, kindness, favours.
Relentless Solution Focus
Train Your Mind to Conquer Stress, Pressure, and Underperformance
By Jason Selk
⭐️ 4.8 📅 2021 ⌛ 257 pages
What I Found Most Useful 💡
Our brains were biologically hardwired to interpret the world in certain ways. One of the most prevalent is what Drs. Selk & Reed define in Relentless Solution Focus as problem-centric thought – The biological tendency to focus on problems or the negative.
While evolutionarily sound, we’re no longer avoiding saber tooth tigers while scavenging for our next meal. Yet we continue viewing the world as a series of problems. Doing so causes adverse mental and physical repercussions. Problem-centred focus releases cortisol into our systems. This can cause increased stress levels, pressure and underperformance as a result. Relentless Solution Focus shares a framework to overcome these limitations.
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
A Counterintuitive Approach to a Good Life
By Mark Manson
⭐️ 4.5 📅 2016 ⌛ 212 pages
What I Found Most Useful 💡
We have so much fucking stuff that we don’t know what to give a fuck about anymore. You need to find what to give a fuck about. You must give a fuck about something.
Understanding your personal values the most important challenge we all face to lead a better, happier life. “Self-improvement” is really about: prioritising better values, choosing better things to give a fuck about.
Choosing to say no, to reduce options, and living with less, can lead to a happier life. This goes against our consumer, have it all, culture.
Influence
The Psychology of Persuasion
By Robert B. Cialdini
⭐️ 4.7 📅 1984 ⌛ 592 pages
What I Found Most Useful 💡
There are 6 weapons of influence:Reciprocity, Commitment, Social proof, Authority, Liking, Scarcity.
We respond automatically to the six types of influence. Understanding this allows us to manage how marketeers and other people t try to influence us without realising
Learning the principles of influence allow you to recognise when they are being used on you so that you can avoid doing something you’d later regret
