Performance, Change and Strategy

Books

Coaching Plain and Simple 

Peter Szabó
Norton Professional Books 2009

Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions

Insoo Kim Berg / Peter Szabó
W.W.Norton 2005

Teamcoaching with the Solution Circle

Daniel Meier
Solutionsbooks 2005

Coaching Plain and Simple review

International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring Vol. 7, No. 2, August 2009 Page 104

Book Review

By Yossi Ives

Doctoral student, Business School, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Coaching Plain and Simple: Solution-Focused Brief Coaching Essentials ISBN: 9780393705935, 192 pages Szabo P., Meier D., & Dierolf K. (2009). United States: Ww Norton & Co.

Coaching Plain & Simple does what it says on the tin: gives a brief introduction to brief coaching.  As such, it achieved exactly what it set out to do.  For a coaching book, that is an encouraging sign.  This book is beautifully written, an elegant and articulate summation of solution-oriented coaching.  It provides an unpretentious and uncomplicated guide to the potential of brief coaching interventions, and in so doing it reminds us of the core purpose and feature of coaching: helping clients reach their goal most effectively.

This handy book covers the entire coaching cycle from a solution-focused point of view, providing useful tips about how to establish the coaching relationship and how to successfully bring it to a close.  It sets out its core belief that the solutions are within the client and illustrates how the coach can skilfully bring these to the fore.  In keeping with the growing awareness of the need for coach development, this book also provides ideas for awareness raising and skill enhancement of the coach.  All in all, a concise and tasteful book; a useful summary if not actually adding to existing knowledge.

However, what this book lacks is a firm theoretical underpinning, an issue that limits much of the coaching literature. To borrow a metaphor from the early pages of this book: The picture is excellent, but it would gain much from a substantial frame. Although the solution-focused approach believes that ‘it doesn’t matter why it works, as long as it does’, understanding the theoretical foundations affords the coaching practitioner the ability to more effectively deploy its techniques and to more successfully adapt this approach to various challenges.  I look forward to another work that sets out the psychological mechanisms that are triggered by solution-focused techniques.