Review: Mastering Coaching
Mastering Coaching by Max Landsberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the areas I would like to explore more is the world of coaching. 2016 started off with reading this book prior to attending an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Coaching course. This allowed me to understand and come prepared for the course. Mastering Coaching provides a solid foundation of what coaching is about, the various areas of coaching (psychometrics, sports, positive, experiential etc.) along with a number of tools.
The biggest misunderstanding is on what coaching is. Landsberg clears this up with a clear difference from mentoring, counselling and therapy; he refers to coaching as “facilitating self-directed neuroplasticity.”
The book is divided into three areas to provide the reader detail on the science, strategies and situations when coaching. There are plenty of diagrams and examples cited from experts in the neuroscience field. It is an excellent starter manual to the world of coaching. Landsberg also provides a plethora of additional reading options throughout the book for those that want to delve deeper into the various topics discussed.
Three key takeaways from the book:
1. Coaching is very different to mentoring, counselling, and therapy. The best metaphor I can use is to lead a horse to water but not the horse drink
2. Multi-tasking. I am continually reading the message that the brain is built to process one task at a time. If we multi-task, we reduce the brain’s overall speed and accuracy
3. Experimental learning and the 70/20/10 rule. Individual learning comes is 70% self-directed, 20% from specific people, 10% from reading/training