(McGraw-Hill Open University Press 2011)
ISBN-13: 978 0335 24115 6 (pb)
Reviewed by Edmundo Currie and Clara (Shinta) Togatorop
Over the last couple of years, Coaching underwent a rapid growth in many parts of the world. The profession stretches from Sports to Business organizations and has become an important trend. The author aims this book at novice coaches, but also for the more experienced coaches who want to be up to date with the latest developments within this field.
The book consists of 11 chapters and starts off with a brief introduction of positive psychology and its implementation in Coaching. The first chapters cover all the six main themes in Positive Coaching, namely:
- Strengths
- Mindset
- Resilience
- Positive emotions
- Relationships
- Personal growth
The themes are thoroughly explored and each chapter contains several examples in the form of the author’s personal experiences. Due to the author’s informal style of writing, it makes the chapters easier to read, and to be implemented in daily practise.
The author’s analysis of coaching practices suggests that Psychotherapy and coaching are in a way inseparable, and their positive correlation is frequently mentioned throughout the book. Another strong point about this book is the fact that it explores the relationship between Gestalt Psychotherapy, Mindfulness and Coaching.Each Chapter ends with a conclusion, which gives food for thought. On page 94 the author concludes: “For many of us, it confirms things we have learned from practice. But I still find it useful at times to go back to the beginning and ‘re-learn’ something rather than merely try to map new information onto what I have already learnt. I recommend this practice to experienced coaches as well as trainees because it is easy to become complacent and complacency undermines a coach’s professionalism.”
Coaching Positively by Matt Driver, is part of a series called “Coaching in Practice”. Other titles are:
- Hayes: NLP Coaching
- Bluckert: Psychological Dimensions of Executive Coaching
- Vaughan Smith: Therapist into Coach
While reading this book, we became more aware that coaching can be used in therapy sessions and practices. Coaching skills are used in a wide range of situations, connected with what we are doing. Many professions such as doctors with their patients, teachers with their students, parents with their children, and psychotherapists with their clients can use coaching in their practices. The message in coaching and other related fields such as psychotherapy is similar. The message is to build people’s resourcefulness and positive beliefs about themselves. Through coaching, therapists can help the clients to see the options needed in order to do their best in life. Positive psychology is cited in this book as a major contributor to the field of coaching. Positive psychology also is aligned with such therapeutic topics as strengths, mindset, resilience, positive emotions, relationship, and personal growth. These topics are all seen as part of the client’s life and as approach venues for therapeutic exploration as well as coaching reflection.
By employing some coaching strategies in therapy sessions, the therapist can help the client to prioritize the actions that they need to take. In terms of supporting the client, the therapist can help the client to identify and pursue their deep un-acknowledgement, unclearly inhibited dreams, and other possibilities. Often our clients cannot recognize, identify, or pursue their abilities, dreams, and other things because they do not have the motivational skills, practical knowledge, active support, and tough encouragement. These skills, knowledge, and kinds of supports are not typically the intention in therapy sessions, rather it focuses more on nurturing, treatment of psychological injuries, and rehabilitation process of the client. In terms of helping the client sort out their priorities in practice, coaching is very helpful when used in therapy sessions. This book helps us to get the idea in how to put coaching in related or similar area such psychotherapy.
Our conclusion is that the book is well written and can be useful for anyone who is interested, or works within this profession, but we still need to mention the following: The book gives a clear definition of “culture” and the final chapter is almost devoted to that, but it is more focused on its form within organizations.
Although the author repeatedly mentions the correlation between Psychotherapy, Positive Psychology and coaching, it somehow fails to go into more details such as, how to deal with a coachee that has other unsolved issues going on in his/her life and if so, which is priority? It would be to easy to think that positive psychology alone would be a remedy for all; hopefully in another book in this series called “Therapist into Coach” from Vaughn, there will be more information for mental health workers (as coaches) about how to better understand and assist one’s client..