Book Review: Leadership Coaching

Edited collections of chapters by several hands can founder if presented as a monograph. Potential lack of inclusiveness, repetition, and variety of content and style can result in an unhappy dog’s dinner.  However, this is not the case under Jonathan Passmore’s masterful editorship of Leadership Coaching: Working with Leaders to Develop Elite Performance. 

As a coach, I had my own thinking enlarged, challenged and stimulated by the depth of treatment achieved through the variety of 25 specialist practitioners and researchers who have contributed.

Chapters concentrate on a particular model of leadership (integral, integrated, emotionally intelligent, servant, transformational etc) while others draw from contexts such as the political arena (an MP’s amusing view of 360 is related – p.166), derailment, team coaching; and yet others draw from Asian and African perspectives.

Chapters abound in uniformly presented case studies, thus attaining that vital balance between research, interpretation and practice.  This is a landmark book on a topic of rising importance and popularity.  Published by Kogan Page together with the Association for Coaching, and reasonably priced for its breadth and depth, it may not be necessarily a work to be read all at once, but will certainly stand as a reputable work of reference for several years.

Reviewed by Gordon Harris FCMI

Published by Kogan Page
£24.95
ISBN 978-0-7494-5532-3