These days there are many books on coaching. Some of them are targeted for the professional life coach, some for the manager or leader who realizes the value of coaching to build relationships and develop team members, and others for the person who wants to build coaching skills as a part of relationship building. We have read and reviewed a number of books from each of these categories over the years. Another good coaching book that I would recommend is The COACH Model for Christian Leaders by Keith E. Webb. It has a subtitle of “Powerful leadership skills for solving problems, reaching goals, and developing others.” From the title and subtitle it’s clear that this is a book targeted at building coaching skills for the leader or manager. But it also presents some great tips for the individual that wants to build a coaching mindset for everyday life. Also, while the book is described as a resource for Christian leaders and is built upon some Scriptural wisdom, the concepts apply to anyone.

According to the author, most of us suffer from what he calls “know-it-all-ism”, the desire to give our opinion, solution, or knowledge. But coaching is quite the opposite. Coaching involves listening to others, asking questions to deepen thinking, allowing others to find their own solutions, and doing it in a way that makes people feel empowered and responsible enough to take action. To interact with another person in a coaching role requires a mindset, a skill set, and a tool set. The first three chapters of the book provide a nice description of the coaching mindset. While the book’s primary objective is to equip leaders for coaching team members, this description of coaching could be especially helpful to people who simply want to incorporate the coaching mindset into all of their relationships.

The central part of this book is a coaching process for leaders to use as they seek to develop people within their sphere of influence. The process is the COACH Model, which includes the following steps:

• Connect – the connect step has two components. First, engaging or re-engaging with the coachee and second, following up on action items and previous discussions.
• Outcome – the second step sets expectations for the outcome from the present conversation. This allows both the coach and coachee to know the path that the conversation is expected to follow and for them both to measure along the way to assure that they are on track.
• Awareness – this step is the heart of the conversation wherein together, with the coach asking questions and the coachee reflecting and discovering, they seek insights, connections, and perspectives surrounding the topic and desired outcome.
• Course – Having explored and reflected, the fourth step is the development of an action plan. Given what the coachee has discovered through the conversation, what are the steps for growth and development between today and the next discussion?
• Highlights – the final step is a summary, but it has a greater purpose than just documenting the coaching session. By effectively summarizing, the discussion is consolidated into learning that is more likely to be retained and have impact.

While this might seem like a script for a coaching meeting, throughout the five chapters on this process the author builds further on the coaching mindset and provides practical advice on using these various steps in different situations. He wraps up the book with advice on incorporating these coaching tools in every relationship and in every part of our life. In describing the benefit of using the coaching mindset in all of our relationships, the author says the following:

“In our fast-paced world we too often cut short conversations that require exploration. We’re looking for easy answers that don’t create more work. Instead, encourage exploration by asking questions that will cause the other person to reflect more deeply. Then you’ll find underlying issues, meaning, and new learning.”