I’ve never really been a coach in any formal sense, but in my profession as a Project Manager I lead a team of people who work at achieving goals. I also have a family, in which I play a role where I actively foster the growth of young, impressionable lives. As such, I was intrigued when I came across Mastering Coaching, by Max Landsberg book on the stand of new releases at my local public library. I hadn’t considered that the practice of coaching would be something useful until the moment that I picked up the book, but it seemed plausible. The pitch on the back of the book states the following

Mastering Coaching will help you become a more effective leader, manager or coach – by broadening your knowledge of the vital skills of coaching, and deepening your mastery of them.

Sounds good to me! I whipped out my library card and checked it out. I figured since I could benefit from being a more effective leader, manager, and coach, I’d take the challenge and invest the hours necessary to see what I could learn. This book review consists of may own personal impressions reading the book as any layperson would read it. Since I’m not really a book reviewer or coach in any formal way, you may take this all with a grain-or-two of salt.

General Impressions

When I consider mastering anything, I think about becoming among the best in whatever field is to be mastered. Being a master involves years of dedication, experimentation, and experience doing stuff such that the practice approaches instinctual action. In fact, part of this book discusses mastery in similar terms. So will one become a master at coaching after reading this book? Mmmmm, no. Landsberg does a great job at covering a wide range of practices involved in coaching, but the depth and detail required for mastery is lacking. They say not to judge a book by it’s cover, and since the title of the book is on the cover, I suppose that a book should not be judged by it’s title either. So, I’ll pass on being too critical about the title. Even though I think that Mastering Coaching is a misnomer, the content between the covers is actually quite useful. And to be fair, the introductory comments do mention “broadening your repertoire of coaching skills and extending your mastery of them”, so I’m sure Landsberg is not trying to mislead the reader. When it comes down to it, an author needs to sell books, and I suppose Mastering Coaching is a more catchy title than “A General Survey of Coaching”.

Ideas That I Liked

Landsberg divides the book into three different sections, “Sciences”, “Strategies”, and “Situations”. Each consists of a few chapters covering a broad array of different aspects of coaching. What follows are some of the ideas from each of these sections that I find most practically useful in my own personal way.

Sciences

The Sciences section is the part that was most interesting to me. I think Landsberg found it most interesting too, because this is where half of the content of the entire book resides. He opens up the book looking at the current research and knowledge in the field of Neuroscience. It makes sense too. If coaching is about helping people to become more effective in their practice of whatever they do, knowing how the brain functions seems vitally relevant.

The section about the principles of how the brain works was eye-opening to me. There are 5 rules that affect brain activity, and with these rules in mind, any coaching practice can be used to exploit how the brain functions to become more effective. So much follows from these rules.

1. “…brain circuitry prioritises our survival”
2. The brain is designed to conserve energy, and is quite efficient. This is especially true of developing habits. Habits make the brain more efficient
3. “The more we use our brain in a particular way, the stronger and faster the relevant circuits become.” Or as I like to say, practice makes perfect!
4. “…we cannot genuinely multi-task or conduct server tasks simultaneously.”
5. The more parts of the brain that are used collectively, the more effective it is. “We thrive when we use the logical, linear, analytical left hemisphere in conjunction with the intuitive, mercurial, heuristic right hemisphere…”

A few additional ideas intrigued me. One is the notion of creating schemas of thought to organize our experience and frame it in a way that is effective. T.S. Kuhn describes something similar in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. These schemas describe the foundation of scientific paradigms. It turns out that schemas are also useful in organizing thought. When applying schemas to model the reality of experience in the practice of coaching, they help the brain to function in an efficient way. By making an ideal model that can be quickly applied, Landsberg describes how the brain only then needs to work at detecting the deviations from the ideal model. I think this is a pretty cool, and powerful idea. If individuals work to become maximally effective in their field, creating an idealized picture of what that is makes the brain more successful.

An idea related to the increased brain efficiency of using schemas to model reality is that of using habits to develop good practice. Habits quite simply make the brain function better. Landsberg states that generating an inventory of habits, and discovering which habits are useful or harmful, can assist those being coached to achieve their goals.

The chapter about sports psychology contained information, which I frankly thought was going to be what the entire book was about. Who doesn’t think about sports when discussing the topic of coaching? While there are a few good ideas here (I was expecting more), the most useful idea expressed in this chapter was about visualization, and the positive effects of it. Landsberg cites the  “PETTLEP” framework for visualization, established and promoted by Holmes and Collins. This framework breaks down like this:

• P: Physical – visualize the physical setting of performance in as much detail as possible
• E: Environment – If possible, perform the visualization in the actual place where the performance will occur (I found this idea most peculiar, but I can see it being effective)
• T: Task – Be complete in visualizing the performance
• T: Timing – Think in real-time, not fast forward or slow motion
• L: Learning – Evolve the visualization after performances are done – keep using the same tool and refine it
• E: Emotion – Don’t leave emotion out of the picture! We’re people who react in an emotional way after all (see rule 5 above about using as many parts of the brain as possible – neat huh?)
• P: Perspective – Try visualizing from the perspective of different people, not just the first-person

The kinds of goals that are mentioned in the chapter about sports psychology offered a fantastic means of discerning how performance should be measured. Landsberg points out that there is a difference between goals that involve process, performance, and outcomes. I loved this idea and it is immediately useful. Until I read this, I had exclusively grouped goals into the “outcome” category, thinking that everything else was not a real goal. How untrue. This was a great idea.

I have to admit that was skeptical about the chapters on positive psychology and mindfulness before I started reading them. They sounded a little too contrived to be real. I am probably biased towards the scientific perspective of things, so the claim of long term effectiveness being driven by the “fluffy” thinking that I associated with these fields of knowledge didn’t seem very plausible. My expectations were low, so I was surprised when I found some of the tools mentioned to be useful. Landsberg offers some pretty good ideas about how to structure thinking in order to help the one being coached to become more effective. One section discussed “flow” as a desirable state, which I agree with. You know, “flow” in the sense of being so immersed in an activity so that it seems immune to the effects of time, concentration is intense, and performance seems effortless. Who doesn’t want to be in “the zone”? While this state of practice was promoted, it was not described very well how to obtain it – just a general process of having a clear goal, getting clear feedback, and working within the right range of skill – where the activity is not too easy or too hard. It turns our that this is one of many places in the book that describes the importance of a feedback loop – where there is a cycle of setting a goal, planning, acting, and analyzing results. As such, I found the discussion of flow to be intriguing, but void of any direct practical ability. It is just a state of activity when the activity and feedback loop are designed and working well. The chapter on mindfulness was marginally useful. Truly, thinking and being aware of how we think when we are in the process of being coached is pretty important, but going any deeper than that to me seemed distracting towards the end goal.

The chapter that I found to be the cornerstone of coaching and performance was the one about experiential learning. This chapter is all about feedback loops and how to design them. There is a typical pattern for feedback loops (Plan, Do, Check, Learn), but I really liked the citation of David Kolb’s cycle of the following

1. “Concrete Experience …leading to apprehension”
2. “Reflective Observation …leading to intention”
3. “Abstract Conceptualisation …leading to comprehension”
4. “Active Experimentation …leading to extension”
5. Repeat

What I like the most in Kolb’s feedback look is the notion of experimentation. There’s something about experimentation that involves growth in a very intentional way, more than mere planning. Planning doesn’t directly involve growth, but experimentation requires it. And growth is all central to coaching to increase performance.

Strategies

The section about strategies for coaching is described as a review of tools to use. Funny, I thought, since it seemed like most of the ideas in the first section were tools too. I’m sure if I spent enough time thinking about it, I’d be able to discern between the things here and the things in other sections. Regardless, this section is where the interesting and useful tools began to wane. The goodness that I found follows.

The chapter about expert performance describes how the best in their field function. The notion of schemata shows up here, as it did earlier in the chapter of neuroscience. It turns out the the greatest performers develop a system of analyzing and understanding their circumstances to perform better. As described earlier in the book, it is no surprise that schemata help to make rapid judgments about how to adjust action to perform better. I liked the ideas expressed in the chapter about Collin’s Hedgehog. This described the importance of focus, as established by Jim Collins. Truly, focus is at the center of increasing performance through coaching. But, this tool was more reaffirming than revolutionary.

I did find the chapter about three horizons to be interesting in the context of setting goals. In this chapter sustained growth is described. In a world where performance needs to continually improve, growth must be a constant. But how is that possible? The answers lie within this chapter! Landsberg describes a framework written in the book The Alchemy of Growth in which resources must be balanced between three sets of goals. The first set of goals nourishes the existing need for performance. The second horizon is about expanding skills using the existing platform of competency. The third horizon involves setting goals that involve pure exploration. By spending time and energy in each of these categories, growth becomes sustainable into the future, and the risk of reaching a plateau is reduced. My father-in-law has mentioned the importance of the second horizon, by advising “go from the known, to the relatively unknown”. Sound advice, methinks.

Situations

Mastering Coaching concludes with a section of chapters about situations in which tools and techniques for coaching can be applied. Certainly, there are more than the four situations to apply coaching than are mentioned in this book. The situations of “Role Transitions”, “360° Feedback”, “Board Effectiveness”, and “Generation Y” all apply in a corporate context more than any other. Since I have an interest in this application, I was hopeful to find more useful information here, but it was sparse. I think that this section could have been expanded greatly. It felt like the book was rushing to come to a conclusion. And that’s OK, because this is where the information became far less interesting to me. The chapter about role transitions was the one that I found most insightful, however, as brief as it was. Of particular interest was the emphasis on the importance of building relationships when making a career transition. Normally, people taking on a new role are intellectually equipped to take on new responsibilities, but fail to acknowledge the importance of preparing for the cultural and social challenges. Since there is a statistical low point at about 10 months of working in a new role, bolstering the social component of a job early in the process is important. Building relationships with the team and other colleagues is important, but it is vital to begin with the boss. Five questions need to be discussed to build mutual understanding with regard to the following:

• The situational context of the job
• Expectations of performance
• Management and communication style
• How to obtain the necessary resources to succeed at the job
• How to grow personally from the role

Lasting Impressions

I thought that Mastering Coaching was a worthy read. I definitely came away with some ideas to help me lead the people I’m responsible for leading. However, I have to admit quite candidly, that I found the ideas here most useful in coaching myself. But that’s just how I plan to use the information. Knowing what the human parameters and constraints are, and understanding the importance of having a set of systems that support a useful feedback loop provide the foundation for helping people to master just about anything – even coaching.