Unlocking Potential

7 Coaching Skills That Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations

By: Michael K. Simpson, Dr. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith - foreword

Narrated by: Mel Foster, Michael K. Simpson

Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

To get the best from your employees, you need to be more than a manager. You need to be a coach.

You're a leader because you possess expertise in your field. You have the training and experience. You understand your business - but can you fully motivate and engage your team?

Michael K. Simpson, a senior consultant to Franklin Covey, has spent more than twenty-five years training executives to become effective coaches, mentoring and guiding leaders and managers to encourage and develop the talent of their people - the most important asset in any organization. In this guide, you will acquire the skills to coach your personnel from the ground up, maximizing their potential on a personal level, as members of the team, and as contributors to the organization as a whole.

Transform your business relationships (and your business) with this comprehensive tool for optimizing productivity, profitability, loyalty, and customer focus. Don't just manage. Energize. Galvanize. Inspire. Be a coach.

©2014 Michael Simpson (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

A Struggle

There was too much listing of information without enough compelling support stories or backgrounds information that might have been helpful in fleshing out the bullet points and making the memorable. it had its moments, but they were too few. I would probably rate it higher had I read a hard copy.

Nothing l've not heard before.

Delivered in vacuous corporate Covey coach-speak. I found myself zoning out repeatedly, changing the playback speed from 1.25X to 1.5X and finally 2.0X to get through it. The coaching questions are good, though you can likely find them online. The author would've been better served by using actual dialogue rather than short situational summaries to relate client interactions.

Another management book

I give this 3.5 stars. The 4 principles of coaching are:
- Trust: trust others and be trustworthy
- Potential: find out what the individuals need and help them grow
- Commitment: help individuals develop a sense of purpose
- Execution: help individuals discover their desired destination to execute worthwhile goals

The section for the 7 coaching skills provide actions for implementing the above principles (like how to develop trust, how to give feedback, how to seek strategic clarity, and how to execute flawlessly). The advice in this book isn't much different from a management book. Becoming an effective manager is about understanding each individual in the team, managing/developing those individuals based on their unique needs, and leading the team to accomplish a shared goal. The only new insight is helping individuals in the middle improve their performance to have a larger impact on long-term success. If a manager focus on top performers and they leave the company, it will create a huge talent gap. If a manager focuses on weak performers to bring them up to a minimum quality level, then the other team members who could be adding more value are not receiving the guidance and attention to make that happen.

Good info worth noting

I'll probably have to listen to this again. But it was well worth my time and I enjoyed it. The performance was very good and it provokes food for thought if you are in an environment that is not quite adopting these principles just yet. It provides a vision of how things definitely can be better.

Inspiring and practical

I appreciate this brief yet dense volume that is full of insights and practices to help my coaching thrive.

Brilliantly inspiring and transformative.

Excellent!!! Full of very valuable tips and guidelines for helping individuals, groups, and organizations maximize their potential. Highly recommended for everybody who's looking to help motivate and lead friends, family, coworkers, employees, businesses, etc towards much greater creativity and productivity. An invaluable resource for growth...

Felt inactionable to me

I feel my rating may be unfair. I found this book to be hard to figure out how I as a leader, a small business owner and mother of 9 should use what was being taught to up my game. Especially in the family. But also in as a small business owner.

Author Not Invested

A reader somewhat expects that an author narrating his/her own book would be invested, passionate, motivated, etc. by their own material. The author here was incredibly monotoned and it almost felt that he was reading off a PowerPoint slide during a mandatory training session. Also Covey was quoted so often, it felt that it would be easier to simply read one of his books instead.

Coaching is such an important subject/skill - just wish the author had done a better job of conveying that fact.

Great read with good examples

very informative. explains in detail how to be a successful coach in today's industries.

Not just coaching

I've read a number of books on coaching, and many don't provide a good framework for approaching the subject. This book provided straightforward advice and a good methodology. I felt the focus was on helping managers become better coaches both to their employees, but also use those skills to evaluate and improve the organization as a whole. The concepts could be found in other books, but I like the structure and delivery choice the author uses.

Outstanding!

This was a great read/listen. I would advise that you keep a journal or notepad handy while listening to get the most out of some of the action points that the author lists. Delivery style is not great but the content more than made up for it.

Clear and actionable

Really helpful and supports the 4DX model and book well. Would recommend to all business leaders and managers

Generic advice that can fit on a two pager

Honestly i tried to like but in the end think it was pretty much a waste of time. The author seems to have credentials to really teach or present insights into the practice of executive coaching.
In the end though it feels like a list of hr activities a fortune 500 would put in their annual. The author introduces a seven step framework for coaching. He then presents each step and illustrates with some generic scientific quotes and example questions for the potential coach.
The big questions remains :so what. What now? All this content could in the introduction. Later the author coule illustrate specific examples. Here i believe the book would benefit the most. Build on the first hand experience of the author.provide detailed cases he faced and then use the framework to show the change.
At this point the written style is just far too corporate. It could be directly copied from a Mercer text. I miss a story, the person being coached and action leading to transformation.

Worth listening to with a notepad over 6 sessions!

Well structured, good as a reminder even for more experienced coaches. Don't like the way he says 'processes' but that's just me! What he says about processes is worth a listen.
Some questions I wouldn't have thought of asking. They apply quite well to my client tomorrow.
Good with a notepad, but also while cycling or walking.

Was not bad

I was expecting more from a covey publication. The book is great for beginners. but so general for anyone who have a any idea of coaching. I think of you are looking for a big picture sort of book. This is a useful tool