"This book belongs ON THE DESK as a just-in-time resource for high-impact coaching."

Book Description

This is the 10th year and the 4th version of this book being a vital resource for those who are willing to develop coaching as a contemporary leadership skill. It presents the powerful process called Transformational Coaching as a comprehensive and systematic way to plan, organize, and conduct coaching conversations. It de-mystifies into easy to understand and follow steps, thus making it a communication tool for leaders and their teams to coach in all directions – Up toward one's Boss, Down toward one's Direct Reports, and Laterally to one's Peers. Huge benefits accrue to the organizations where this becomes a cultural norm…and a true "coaching culture."

In the spirit of keeping "The Heart of Coaching" a vibrant and contemporary resource for our readers, we offer this Third Edition where we do several important things. We have deepened the connections between Emotional Intelligence and the art and practice of coaching. We added "setting organizational context" to the expectation-setting portion of the conversation so that coach and coachee both clearly address the "big picture" framework of Vision, Mission , Strategy, Key Objectives, and Core Values.

We added more effective ways for both coach and coachee to explore their individual roles as "co-creators" of the situation they are discussing. We added the powerful step of clarifying the "vision for success" as framing for the contemplated action planning. We also remind the coach to acknowledge overall progress of the coachee as they support them in enhancing their effectiveness over the long haul.

Lastly, we have (in chapter 9) clarified the distinctions between the two primary coaching genres – Executive Coaching and Collegial Coaching. It is important to clearly understand how external coaching relationships and processes are different than the internal coaching relationships and processes between people working side-by-side as colleagues.

From the back cover of the third edition:

The Compelling Vision of a High Performance Coaching Culture

The premise of this book is simple. As coaching becomes a predominant cultural practice, it will create a high performance working environment where…

…all members of the culture courageously engage in candid, respectful coaching conversations, unrestricted by reporting relationships, about how they can improve their working relationships and individual and collective work performance. All have learned to value and effectively use feedback as a powerful learning tool to produce personal and professional development, high-trust working relationships, continually-improving job performance, and ever-increasing customer satisfaction.

Transformational Coaching is the requisite skill for today’s leaders, managers, and supervisors who choose to enhance their personal effectiveness and the performance of those they lead.

What People are Saying about The Heart of Coaching...

"The Heart of Coaching shows organizations how to tap the power, ideas and wisdom of their people to deliver high performance results. Tom's authentic and practical approach to coaching (up, down and across) creates invaluable benefits to those following this coaching methodology."

- Val Harding Ph.D, Executive Director, Pfizer Global Research and Development

"Managers and organizations know that coaching is critical. The Heart of Coaching outlines a process that allows bringing ‘insight to action.’ We have introduced Tom's coaching process in our culturally diverse organization to 900 employees in 9 countries. We have seen improvement in our employee engagement survey, voluntary employee turnover, and are well on our way to being a high performance coaching culture."

- Richard Metheny, Chief Talent Officer, The Marketing Store

"I own no less than 30 books on coaching and giving performance feedback, and this is the best yet. I say this for three reasons. It is structured around an easy-to-understand model. It is detailed enough to be genuinely useful without being overwhelming. And lastly, it advocates a strong philosophy of genuine caring that is essential to effective coaching. You can bury people in skills training, but they won't do it in the real world unless they have beliefs and values that support this difficult set of management skills. Coaching is easy to talk about, hard to do. This book makes it clear what to do and also encourages the reader to actually do it."
– Laura Page

"The concept of Boss as Coach is a compelling one, and Transformational Coaching will define leadership in the 21st Century. Tom Crane provides a mechanism for individual and organizational change that will add enormous value to people and their organizations."
– Eric Mokover, Asst. Dean and Director, MBA Program, The Anderson School of Management, UCLA

"This book belongs ON THE DESK as a just-in-time resource for high-impact coaching."
– Scott Tempel, Senior Consultant

"This book is a highly practical, ‘hands-on’ approach to managing human and organizational performance."
– John E. Jones, Ph.D., President, O.U.S.

"This work is right on point! Performance management is the business issue of our times and coaching is THE requisite skill for all leaders who need to get the best from their teams. Every practitioner will benefit from Tom's contagiously passionate approach, guaranteed to help you and your team."
– C.O. Woody, Senior Vice President, Florida Power & Light

"Tom Crane has accomplished a difficult task--capturing the "essence" of coaching while building a rock-solid foundation for practicing this emerging art and science. The Heart of Coaching should be kept close at hand to mine it's many tools and techniques and to rejuvenate coaches when they lose sight of why this is such a rewarding and difference making field of work."
– Jeff Zakaryan from Dana Point, CA. USA

As the practice of coaching is embraced by an organization, its ability to communicate and deliver results against strategic objectives is measurably increased.

Many coaching models exist today that did not five or ten years ago.

BIO notes…author of “The Heart of Coaching” – over 75,000 copies sold.

Tom Crane, M.B.A., is an experienced OD consultant and facilitator who specializes in working with leaders and their teams to build “feedback-rich” coaching cultures that create and sustain true “high-performance.” His passion is in sharing the Transformational Coaching process as a foundation for leaders becoming significantly more effective, and teams becoming more healthy, productive, and empowering places to work.

For 20years, Tom has worked nationally and internationally with Fortune 1000, small entrepreneurial, non-profit, and government organizations in orchestrating strategic change to optimize performance.

The team at Crane Consulting offers a broad range of experientially-based consulting services including vision and value-based culture change, leadership development processes, coaching workshops, 360° feedback, building high-performance teams, and group facilitation.

The Workshop Materials provide you with the tools needed to bring this dynamic approach into any organization and begin building a Coaching Culture.

"The Heart of Coaching" - Third Edition; plus Participant Workbook (256 pages)