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Challenging Coaching: Going Beyond Traditional Coaching to Face the FACTS Paperback – Illustrated, 5 April 2012

by Ian Day (Author), John Blakey (Author)

4.5 118 ratings

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Challenging Coaching is a real-world, timely and provocative book which provides a wake-up call to move beyond the limitations of traditional coaching. Based on the authors' extensive experience working at board and management levels, they suggest that for far too long coaching approaches have shied away from adopting a more challenging stance - a stance that can provoke greater performance and unlock deeper potential in business leaders and their teams.

The authors detail their unique FACTS coaching model, which provides a practical and pragmatic approach focusing on Feedback, Accountability, Courageous goals, Tension and Systems thinking. The authors explore FACTS coaching in theory and in practice using case studies, example dialogues and practical exercises so that the reader will be able to successfully challenge others using respectful yet direct techniques.

This is an original and thought-provoking book that dares the reader to go beyond traditional coaching and face the FACTS.

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Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Nicholas Brealey International
Publication date

5 April 2012
Dimensions

15.56 x 2.22 x 23.18 cm
ISBN-10

1904838391
ISBN-13

978-1904838395
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Fiona Dent
64
Paperback
7 offers from ₹1,520.00

Product description

Review

Importantly, this book challenges coaches too by giving them permission to break some of the 'golden rules' of coaching. John and Ian show how the FACTS model can help leaders deploy tough coaching skills with the humility that will be necessary to engage and motivate the modern workforce. This is an excellent contribution to the advancement of executive coaching. I hope that others will wake up to this important challenge through reading and re-reading this timely book.

This is a terrific book that should provoke and challenge coaches to 'up their game' and thus provide more value to individuals and also, vitally, to their organisations. The philosophy, observations, process and tools that John and Ian describe are very consistent with my and my colleagues' approach. Read it and I believe you will improve your coaching.

This is a real-world, practical, easy to understand approach to a more challenging style of coaching. A style that is needed to help leaders sit back and think of different solutions and new mind sets in a more uncertain business world. For leaders who are driving for higher performance the FACTS model will allow them to adopt a challenging style but one which, crucially, is respectful rather than threatening in its impact.

Not just for the coaches. This book is critical reading for any business leader seeking to take an honest and challenging approach to developing their people, as well as anyone seeking to add robustness and realism to their business relationships.

This is a book that is at the same time inspiring and transformational. Inspiring because it reinforces the motivational aspects of coaching and transformational because it progresses the discipline in light of today's business environment. I recommend this book to all coaches who wish to challenge conventional coaching techniques.

This new book makes an important contribution to the coaching literature. Blakey and Day challenge all coaches to look at ourselves and how we work to help our clients - both individuals and their organisations. Whilst this might be an uncomfortable experience for us as a profession it is as important that we do it for ourselves as we do with our clients.

I have experience of working with both John and Ian and have found their FACTS method of coaching both energises individuals and ensures alignment with company goals. Any coach who truly wants to add value to the bottom line of their clients should take note of the key messages in this book and not be afraid to challenge the established 'comfortable norms', particularly in these uncertain and increasingly competitive economic times.

This book makes an important contribution to the evolution of coaching as a profession. The authors pose a provocative challenge to the coaching profession to raise their game to better support and challenge individuals and organisations, in service of the wider environment. The book offers new insight for business leaders and coach practitioners alike and is aligned to the most contemporary leadership literature.

We believe in 'challenging you to be the best you can be' and this is the first book to endorse that perspective and brilliantly demonstrates how to do it responsibly. Definitely a core text on our coach training programmes.

Right on target. This book is so practical it reads like a Haynes manual for a style of coaching and leadership based on real human values rather than abstract processes. Notions such as courageous goal setting, feedback as the 'loving boot', the 'player coach' and the 'R' word (responsibility!) particularly rang true for me. These are powerful ideas consistent with my own belief that leadership takes place on the pitch not on the side-lines. I loved it.

Book Description

Challenging Coaching details the unique FACTS coaching model, which provides a practical and pragmatic approach focusing on Feedback, Accountability, Courageous goals, Tension and Systems thinking.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Nicholas Brealey International; Reprint edition (5 April 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1904838391
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1904838395
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 360 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.56 x 2.22 x 23.18 cm

Best Sellers Rank: #613,529 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #39,120 in Analysis & Strategy
- #68,262 in Reference (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 118 ratings

About the authors

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John Blakey
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As the Founder of The Trusted Executive leadership development consultancy, my team and I help board leaders across all sectors adapt to the ‘new normal’ of trust-based leadership using the unique models and tools from my books, ‘The Trusted Executive’ and ‘Challenging Coaching’.
‘The Trusted Executive' combines prize-winning research to create the Nine Habits of Trust at Aston Business School, together with the learnings from my successes (and failures!) as a former FTSE 100 international managing director and serial entrepreneur. The book was shortlisted as the Chartered Management Institute book of the year in 2017.
'Challenging Coaching', co-authored with Ian Day, is one of the UK’s best-selling leadership books and features the FACTS coaching model. It was inspired by my executive coaching work with over 130 CEOs from 22 different countries, as well as the leaders of gold-medal winning Team GB Olympic squads, premiership football clubs and England cricket.
I deliver keynote speaker sessions on the Nine Habits of Trust at conferences globally and support a small number of pioneering CEOs as an executive coach. Our team can drive specific business impact via our tailored ‘Journey of Trust’ leadership programmes and our Trusted Executive Fellowship Boards, which bring together like-minded, values-led CEOs and entrepreneurs for shared learning and inspiration.
In engaging The Trusted Executive, you can rely on work that has been featured in Forbes, BBC News, HuffPost, the FT and The Sunday Times. Further, you will be helping us, as a not for profit, deliver a ten-year social justice mission to gift over £1m to UK-based Christian-led charities that are inclusive at the point of need.
Visit www.trustedexecutive.com to find out more.
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Ian Day
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Ian Day is an inspirational coach, facilitator and speaker working at Board level for large international clients. Ian graduated with a degree in psychology and spent over 20 years in human resource and development roles in a variety of large organisations within the leisure and tourism, healthcare and utilities sectors including head of talent for an international FTSE 100 group, responsible for group-wide talent management, leadership development, executive coaching and performance management. In this role Ian was coached which was an inspiring turning point in his life and lead him to study for an advanced diploma in coaching and mentoring, a certificate in counselling and to his current work as a leadership consultant. Ian's interest in psychology has never left him as he applies models and theories in his work with individuals and teams, frequently using psychometric personality profiles to create within clients the awareness and energy to change. Ian believes that everyone has greatness within themselves, and he works to release this potential by applying the model and skills of FACTS coaching. www.FACTScoaching.com
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Top reviews from other countries

Chris Holman

A Seminal Coaching Book

Reviewed in the United States on 11 February 2013

Verified Purchase

As a professional coach, I value the emphasis that the profession places on learning and continual improvement.

"Challenging Coaching" has stimulated my coaching thinking like few other coaching books.

Two things distinguish this book, in my view. The ideas themselves, and how they are expressed. Although there is a smorgasbord of examples to select from, one of the ideas that most resonated with me was the concept of setting "courageous" goals. This is in contrast to the more familiar framework of a S.M.A.R.T goal. SMART goals are a useful construct to begin organizing the goal-setting exercise. Where SMART goals fall short for me is that the process is not very inspiring. Boring, really. Authors Blakey and Day provide a welcome antidote to pedestrian goal-setting ennui.

Another distinguishing characteristic of this book is their use of many powerful visual metaphors. For example, they compare the support/challenge coaching construct in terms of the acorn and oak in a way that is brilliant in its simplicity.

I hope that I don't sound too over-the-top hyperbolic when I say that "Challenging Coaching" will change my career arc as a coach. It is quite easily, among the top 2-3 best coaching books that I have ever read.

11 people found this helpful

Martin H

Raising Your Coaching to a Whole New Level

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 April 2012

Verified Purchase

In 'Challenging Coaching', John Blakey and Ian Day have done the coaching profession a significant service. It's time to up our game and refresh the learning many of us experienced as we went through even the most thorough of programs.

This book brought home to me how easy it could be to fail to examine how I coach and test my own comfort zone as I explore the tactics I've adopted over the years.

Whilst on many occasions, I was able to say 'Yes, that's what I do', there were more than enough moments in the book for me to consider closely how I need to reassess some of the value I might have been missing on behalf of my clients.

It might be easy to get all self-critical about this. Yet we, just like our clients, live in challenging times where every income stream is critical to our business success. Developing the self-confidence to go much further than we might feel appropriate to hang onto a client is difficult these days and yet as I reflected on what they said, it all seemed to make sense.

The model itself is not rocket science, but the way they describe the most dynamic skills that we coaches can evolve to, is both practical as well as stimulating in this really easy to read book. It's a book of example - yet it does not fill the book with these as some do. It's a book of technique - yet expressed simply and in easy to apply steps. It's a book that sets the mind thinking - as all good books should do.

If you want to move your coaching onto a new, challenging level and have the courage to see that in you as a coach, then this is the book for you.

As coaches, to take the profession as well as yourself to new heights, then, as the book says, 'Face the FACTS'. Buy the book, I can assure you it will change your productivity as a coach significantly.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Excellent coaching approach

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 January 2023

Verified Purchase

Having read many of the traditional coaching books, Challenging Coaching offers an excellent viewpoint of how to ensure that progress is made both for the individual and for the groups to which they belong, such as their organisation.

By viewing coachees as people who are whole and able to be pushed to greater levels, there is potential that greater results can be achieved than through models such as GROW alone.

Highly recommended.

Vernon Stinebaker

Excellent book that brings a balanced perspective

Reviewed in the United States on 6 May 2016

Verified Purchase

Many coaching books stick close to the theoretical underpinnings of coaching based upon clinical therapy. This book recognizes the value of this evolved approach, and builds upon it to ask coaches to "speak their truth, and face the FACTS". The FACTS model is designed, unlike therapy, to work with highly functional individuals, entering the ZOUD (zone of uncomfortable discussion) to challenge and support coachees so that they can reach their greatest potential, sometimes beyond even their perceived abilities.

One person found this helpful

ItalCali

The Unexamined Assumptions of Leadership Coaching

Reviewed in the United States on 26 July 2012

Verified Purchase

The book "Challenging Coaching: going beyond traditional coaching to face the FACTS" is a welcome addition to leadership coaching literature.

It starts out by clearly laying out some assumptions at the root of the profession of executive coaching today.

These assumptions, if unexamined, would limit our effectiveness as coaches:

1 - "The core principles of therapy have been used to provide a structure, an ethical basis, and fundamental principles [to the coaching profession]".(Kindle Locations 659-660). However, this introduces a bias in the very foundation of coaching: "The result of this influence is that the skills at the heart of coaching are largely oriented toward counseling skills with a non-directive ethos, majoring on listening skills and the ability to ask powerful questions, and so demonstrating empathy and building a strong rapport between coach and client." (Kindle Locations 655-657). However, often coachees are very high functioning individuals. They do not need support per se. They need a challenge in a supportive environment. As the authors point out, "And when we asked leaders for feedback on how our coaching could be made more impactful, repeatedly they replied: "I love it when you challenge me, so challenge me more!" (Kindle Locations 261-262). So the authors exhort us to "be the missing voice of challenge in the coaching conversation". The traditional approach of coaching carries the risk of collusion and irrelevance, according to the authors. Collusion, when the coach operates in ways which appear to support the clients but actually are ways to avoid difficult conversations that need to happen to help clients make progress. If you are a coach, you know you have been there more than once. Irrelevance, when the focus on individual goals ignores the organizational context.

2 - "what shaped business coaching as it developed was a focus on individual wants, not organizational needs. Many return on investment (ROI) measures from coaching initiatives ... reflected this bias, targeting the retention of high performers, improvement in staff survey engagement scores, and subjective feedback from participants rather than progress in specific, bottom-line measures." (Kindle Locations 296-298). I think this is a very important point. Stakeholders, the organization, the market, the company's strategy - they all need to be taken into account and somehow be present in the coaching conversation. I liked the idea put forth by the authors that coaches can be thought of as the stakeholders' representatives.

Starting from these premises, the authors develop the FACTS framework to help coaches be more "challenging", or rather hit the sweet spot that balances support with challenge. As the authors point out, "The behaviors and skills in FACTS are not used instead of the supportive skills and models of more traditional coaching approaches, but rather to expand on these skills and leverage them to further improve performance and sustain the coaching impact." (Kindle Locations 382-384). In that sense, the FACTS framework is a useful addition to any coaching model. FACTS is an acronym which stands for: Feedback; Accountability; Courageous Goals; Tension; System Thinking. Each of these key skills for coaches are to be played in a four quadrant matrix where the axes are support and challenge. The optimum development for the coachees would happen in the high challenge - high support quadrant.

While the tools itself, e.g. feedback or system thinking, are not exactly new, the way they are used to challenge coachees was definitely interesting and worth the read.
I personally got the most value out of the part regarding "Accountability". I loved the emphasis placed on the contract and the systematic ways in which stakeholders, bosses, organizational constraints & culture are taken into consideration. However, if you are new to system thinking or to coaching, then the other parts of the model are a treasure throve of insights as well.

I use Solution-Focused coaching protocols in my practice, and I personally I think Solution-Focus does an excellent job in balancing challenge and support. By unconditionally accepting the client's worldview but at the same time by holding the client accountable for his or her perceptions and words (see "Interviewing for Solutions", by Peter De Jong and Insoo Kim Berg).

I also think SF practitioners are really good in including stakeholders in their conversations with clients and in their work with organizations. Adopting a "systemic" stance comes naturally to SF practitioners, simply because "relationship questions" are the bread and butter of SF.

Still, I would highly recommend this book to all coaches, at the very least to be aware of the "blind spots" rooted in our profession's foundation and of the ways in which they might limit the effectiveness of our work if not examined and remedied.

4 people found this helpful

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