Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy - Supervision and Development 

This is a book about our profession which has all the right ingredients to help from a practical or philosophical point of view - July 2007. I read the book from cover to cover, but it’s just as useful to pull out the section in which you are interested and use the information.

You can read this book at a few different levels:

• As a novice who is seeking a thorough grounding in the main theory underpinning our profession.
• As a practitioner who is looking to improve their competence or capability in specific areas.
• As an experienced practitioner who is looking to increase their capacity to deliver change in ever more complex and ambiguous environments.

The book has a few dozen approaches and tools, many of which I’ve used with success on assignments. Several were new to me and I’m looking forward to integrating them into my personal tool bag.

Key points
There are seven golden threads of practice which run throughout our profession:

1. There is always more than one client you serve (the one in front of you, their organisation, and the purpose of their joint endeavour)

2. All real-time learning is relational, and your relationship with clients shifts as they learn and change

3. Robust dialogue, balancing support and challenge, is essential for meaningful relationships to develop and for people to learn

4. Learning is for life, when we stop our effectiveness starts to decrease

5. Adults learn best through experience. We need to create the conditions and experiences that help our clients create transformational shifts

6. Transformational change (when we start to challenge our major world assumptions) becomes self sustaining when we focus on what needs to change in front of us and jointly create a shift in the wider organisational system.

7. Supervision is an essential part of consulting, coaching and mentoring.

Each of these golden threads requires the practitioner to have a set of skills which they can learn to use selectively to develop their competence and in so doing become capable. Competence and capability in themselves are insufficient to deliver transformational change. As we obtain an ever greater amount of knowledge and number of skills, it is our Human Capacity (how we are rather than what we do) that struggles to keep pace with all that is possible. Expanding this Capacity is the key to unlocking transformation and we will need to support each other and get appropriate supervision to help us succeed.

A few personal insights... 

a) There are seven key areas of intelligence which we should develop: 

1. Intellectual – the capacity to think, make sense and understand 
2. Relationship – the ability to create meaningful relationships with a wide variety of people 
3. Action – capability and courage to deliver and the commitment to see it through 
4. Emotional – self awareness, sensitivity, perceptiveness, etc 
5. Ethical – integrity, authenticity and acting in good faith 
6. Bodily – when we are energised but relaxed we have an increased capacity, when we are stressed the opposite is true 
7. Core Self – the space and sense of stillness that makes the other six function properly. 

b) Confidence comes from: 

• Our Authority – past - what I know, what I have achieved and experienced 
• Our Presence – now - through commanding respect and relating well with others 
• Our impact – future - shifting the agenda, mindset and emotions

c) In order to get a shift in an organisation you need to get a shift in the room in which you are working.

d) Humility and humour help us to become untangled from our ego. The Sufi philosophy, approach and tradition is helpful in this area.

e) When we are ‘in the zone’ and have a well developed capacity we should be able to: 

• Have an ability to see patterns happening in front of us 
• See time appearing to slow down in order to give us more response time 
• Seeing where things are going and being ahead of the action 
• Being in a tranquil place, separate from the consequences of the activity 
• Responding in ways which you could not possibly have thought of but which do fit the need

There so much good stuff in the book I can’t possibly do it justice in 3 minutes. 

David Young, Head of Organisation Development, the Department for Work and Pensions

Challenging and Accessible, 3 Mar 2007 - Finding good books on coaching can be quite a challenge, but once you find them, you tend to return to them over and over again. For me, this will be one such book: it covers some quite complex coaching and supervision models in a way that is accessible, rather than aimed at showing how much the authors know. Well written and structured, it considers a wide range of topics (perhaps the sub-title "supervision and development" is a slight misnomer as the book is broader than that might indicate (or at least to me!), and avoids the current fad for numerous "lists" of how to do things. The only encouragement for the authors would be that one of the real nuggets - a chapter on "the deference threshold" is tucked away in an appendix. It deserves to be in a bold chapter, in the centre of the book. Highly recommended.

Peter Matthews

Stimulating and accessible - if you're a coach, buy this book, 14 Feb 2007 - As a fan of Peter Hawkins' previous books and of his coaching supervision workshops, I have been looking forward to reading this book, co-written with Nick Smith, for some time. I was expecting it to be about coaching supervision - which it is - but it ranges much more widely than this as well, exploring team coaching, shadow consulting, organisational coaching, coaching capacities, working with difference and the classic 7-eyed model of supervision (read a summary at http://www.mikethementor.co.uk/classic/7eyed.php#7eyed). This model is not only of interest to people wanting to be coaching supervisors (or receive coaching supervision) - it is also at the heart of transformational coaching, the kind of coaching that leads not so much to a plan of action for the coachee but to a shift in the coachee's state of being. Any coach who aspires to work with leaders should know and be able to use this model - the book is worth buying for this alone. Although it’s only February, I would be surprised if a more stimulating coaching book is published this year!

Dr Mike Munro Turner – “Mike the Mentor”

Clear, insightful, practical, 3 Feb 2007 - An excellent book for coaches who wish to improve their practice; coach supervisors and people who buy coaching for themselves or their organisations. Clearly setting out the values, principles and methods which underpin high quality coaching practice, it goes on to describe helpful frameworks to develop, supervise and evaluate coaching performance. All too often, coaching starts and ends in the one to one encounter between client and coach, without reference to the wider context. Hawkins and Smith's 'seven-eyed process' model is a fantastic lens through which to understand the relationships between the coach and the 'coachee', the organisation cultures and indeed the global environment. A 'must-have' for all with an interest in coaching, team coaching and organisation development, which takes coaching, and its supervision and development, to the next level.

Sue Pritchard

I have already bought and read the book, and think it is excellent! Full of depth and richness, but also written with a 'personal' voice with which I found I could converse in my head...I have been recommending this book widely, and have already used a number of new ideas from it.

Alison Hardingham - visiting Executive Professor at Henley Management College and Lead Tutor in the Certificate of Coaching at Henley

I have to give you some feedback on your new book - it's great! As a coach wondering how to move to the next level I have found it inspiring, for example, the bit on 'transformational coaching'. One of my coaching clients, who himself is going through the School of Coaching programme, has recently asked me to supervise him. Terrified and transparent I said I'd give it a go and nervously climbed on a plane to Texas to see my sister with your book on my knee. On my return I had my first session with him - it went fantastically well. We brought the 7 eyed model into the room and then let it go, but subconsciously it must have stayed with us because on review we had just about explored all the bases and with some great insights. I left feeling invigorated, humbled and impressed. In fact in a similar state to my client I believe. So thanks for getting your head down for the last 100 years and then so artfully regurgitating your experiences between the covers of this book. It's hugely appreciated.

Steve Rawson - Lettoch Associates Ltd

I found your book to be the most comprehensive and stimulating synthesis of depth coaching approaches in present publication. It has provided me with tangible and practical business insights.

Glyn Owen - Owen Consultancy and Coaching Services Ltd  

It is so comprehensive and detailed and user friendly but with without detracting from the depth of the concepts you put forward. The anecdotal stuff is also so vivid.

Danela Ezekiel, Director, YSA-Lapin (Pty) Limited - Johannesburg – Los Angeles – New York