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James M. Hunt and Joseph R. Weintraub. The Coaching Organization: A Strategy for Developing Leaders. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2007, 252 pages, $34.95 softcover.
Reviewed by Stephen Hrop, VP, Executive & Organization Development, Automatic Data Processing, Roseland, NJ.
The Coaching Organization picks up where the authors' prior book (Hunt & Weintraub, 2002) left off. The latter focused on what happens within the coaching relationship between managers and their direct reports, but this one takes a much broader perspective by including three additional types of coaching (external expert, internal expert, and peer coaching) and addressing all four from an organizational and business point of view. Given this macro focus, the target audience for this book is internal human resources professionals who have responsibility for designing and managing leadership development and coaching programs within their organization.
The authors limit their coverage to developmental coaching, which they define as "relationship-facilitated, on-the-job learning, with the most basic goal of promoting an individual 's ability to do the work associated with that individual's current or future work roles." Other types of coaching, such as life coaching, targeted skill building (e.g., presentation skills), transition coaching, mentoring, career counseling, and "remedial" coaching are not addressed. Don't be put off by this seemingly narrow focus because within the umbrella of developmental coaching are four varieties, as noted above. The result is a book that achieves a nice blend of focus and breadth.
Drawing on the pioneering work of Hall (2002), the authors identify four developmental outcomes relevant to this type of coaching: improved performance, attitude (how a person evaluates his or her role and career), adaptability (dealing with change), and identity (the ongoing yet evolving sense of self in the workplace).
Before doing a deep dive on each type of developmental coaching, the authors set the table with four overview chapters. This early material not only defines key terms and provides a general overview of what is to follow but includes several excellent tools for...