An excellent primer for executive coaches who want to develop greater psychological depth

Many executive coaches coming purely from a business background lack the psychological depth needed to help clients make significant and long-lasting change. While much of the popular coaching literature overlooks or simplifies the challenge of personal change, Leadership Coaching provides an accessible guide to coaching from a mature psychological perspective.

Graham Lee introduces a number of valuable frameworks which, along with a series of case studies, provide the coach with valuable resources to deepen his or her practice.

First the nature of the self is explored using the notions of ‘compliance’ (responsiveness to the needs of the organisation) and ‘defiance’ (responsiveness to one’s own needs). An important goal of leadership coaching is to identify such patterns of relating and to work towards ‘authenticity’. (As someone else put it, as human beings “we tend to collude, or collide. The challenge is to connect”.)

Second the nature of change is explored in terms of how individuals establish habitual ways of experiencing and making sense of the world. Lee introduces the ‘ACE FIRST’ framework: Actions, Cognitions, Emotions, Focus of attention, Intention, Results, Systemic factors, and Tension (in the body). These eight factors provide a valuable focus for the coach’s attention, enabling the client’s patterned ways of being and relating to be brought to light.

Third, Lee provides a down-to-earth explanation of the place and significance of the unconscious in coaching. For any practitioner who is unfamiliar with the impact of ‘unconscious process’ on coaching, this may be the most valuable section of the book. It’s remarkable that concepts such as transference and counter-transference are omitted from much coach training, so essential are they to any coach serious about helping clients change established ways of being.

Fourth, Lee introduces a process of leadership coaching, termed ‘LASER’. This covers ‘Learning’ – concerned with creating and maintaining the conditions necessary for change. ‘Assessing’ – concerned with collecting and reviewing information. ‘Story-making’ – forming and testing hypotheses. ‘Enabling’ – recognising which factors will enable and which limit the possibility for change. And finally ‘Reframing’ – designing interventions that enable the client to see aspects of their experience in new ways.

All coaches who are getting serious about facilitating change in others, and who understand that resistance to change is normal, and that deconstructing established patterns of behaviour requires the right conditions, would do well to read this book.