[...]... Bell Managing Partner BABDI—Bell+Associates, Business Design for Innovation Alameda, California Preface to the Second Edition Since I originally wrote this book, the world of coaching has changed and stayed the same It changed in that more disciplines are being woven into coaching: it is now possible to do somatic work and send clients out with self-observation exercises in a business setting It stayed... we can begin to see that this role coaching will be especially relevant for the coming era This book is about building relationships among people who are continuously learning about the changing environments in which they live and work, intervening in and moving to set aside ineffective and counter-productive habits, and building new skills, practices, habits, and platforms for collaborating in this... proof of coaching is in action, not in argumentation Taking the book into action will give you a chance to assess its value to you much more than arguing with it will As a coach, you’ll find yourself taking the same tack, asking your client (the person you’re coaching) to take what you’re saying into action as a test, rather than arguing with you in an abstract way about the truth of what you’re saying Naturally... employ instead an alternate theory that makes it more likely that the products of coaching will occur (see Figure 1.3) This alternate theory must be respectful of people, flexible enough to include the vast differences among people, allow the coach to understand 8 Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others Figure 1.3 The Premise of Coaching the client and design and conduct coaching programs that result in. .. in your own capacity to be an effective coach is an essential ingredient for making a better team, business, service, and world As you read Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others and begin to practice what it offers, I predict you will find yourself experiencing expanding possibilities for yourself and those you interact with, along with growing ambition and confidence that you can take on and succeed... a constraint to our coaching of others Doesn’t it seem that the more books we study, the more we self-diagnose as having whatever the syndrome is that the author describes? For the same reason, reading medical textbooks is much more frightening than reading Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King xxv xxvi Introduction Figure I.1 The Constraints of Learning Keep this in mind as you read the following chapters... supports someone in reaching her goals or as a disciplinarian who changes someone’s unwanted actions Instead we claim that coaching occurs in a bigger frame that sometimes includes these two modalities but goes well beyond that The Products of Coaching Long-Term Excellent Performance This means that the client meets the high objective standards of the discipline in which coaching is occurring Standards... replaced We trained people to remember and repeat “information” and follow rules It was only in the last decades of the 20th Century that various features of the world began to call for the kinds of capacities to deal with the continuously changing environments that this new kind of coaching was invented to address James has put the client in the center of his interpretation of coaching in a way that... habitually do when reading a book, take some time to consider what it is that you want to accomplish by reading and working with this book And then ask yourself what is the best way to do that Intervening in habits is very important in coaching and you can begin to coach yourself by asking these questions Each person, of course, will end up determining for himself what he does The question remains, though—what... self-generate your own innovations? The following is my response to that question “Our chief want in life is someone who will make us do what we can.” —E Why Coaching Now? Maybe as you select a book about coaching you already have in mind the situation in which you want to use coaching Perhaps you’re a manager in some kind of organization who is trying to improve the performance of someone who . for the Second Edition of Coaching In Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others, James Flaherty brilliantly dissects both the art and science of coaching one. an essential ingredient for making a better team, business, service, and world. As you read Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others and begin to practice