Book Review - Coaching for Performance: GROWing People, Performance and Purpose, John Whitmore

Whitmore, a former professional racing driver turned business consultant and partner with Timothy Gallwey in his Inner Game business, writes about coaching in a management environment, using illustrations from the world of sport. For Whitmore, the key tasks of coaching are raising awareness and responsibility in the coachee. A manager's task is to get the job done AND to grow his staff, and this second task is achieved by coaching which increases the subordinate's responsibility and retention. In a time when change is the norm, a coaching culture increases involvement and responsibility and reduces stress which is caused by lack of personal control.

Awareness and responsibility are raised by good questions, illustrated by the tennis coach who asks “which way is the ball spinning” rather than “are you watching the ball.” This compels the coachee to watch the ball and to focus to a higher order. Whitmore introduced the GROW sequence of questions in coaching: Goals, Reality, Option, and What, When, Whom and the Will to do it. A chapter is dedicated to each of these headings with guidelines and examples. Whitmore goes on to discuss performance and its relationship with learning and enjoyment; purpose and meaning, feedback, coaching teams and overcoming barriers to coaching in corporations.

First published in 1992, according to Whitmore, Coaching for Performance is “widely accepted as the definitive book on coaching in the business context.” Whitmore is credited by other authors on the subject for developing the GROW model, a widely used framework.

What I learned from this book was the practical application of the GROW model, particularly in a management environment. Throughout the book, Whitmore gives examples of coaching dialogues that illustrate the principles he is explaining in the text. What I will do with this book is to go back to it repeatedly, not to memorize the questions, but to increase my familiarity with the kind of coaching conversations that increase awareness and responsibility in clients.

John Whitmore, Coaching for Performance: GROWing People, Performance and Purpose, 3^rd Edition, London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2002, 180 Pages.