Behind Closed Doors

About Behind Closed Doors

There is great learning in this book for Executive Coaches who are curious about the treasures they can harvest from inquiry and reflective practice.
Niamh Shiell, Executive Coach, Advance Coaching; Chair, Association for Coaching Ireland

Behind Closed Doorsis as enlightening as it is provocative.  …. It is a truly human and authentic account of the subtleties and sensitivities of the coaching journey. … Each chapter provides a new layer of insight and learning.
Johanna Fullerton, Business Psychologist and Director, SEVEN, Psychology at Work

Behind Closed Doors… at once makes you feel both privileged and humbled. …  To get inside the heads and hearts of the coach is to examine the true meaning of vocation.  … (the) chapters will provide any coach with an incredible resource of insights to enhance their practice and transform the quality of their client relationships.
Simon Phillips, Managing Director, Champions Club Community

(This) is the first book I know of that describes how coaches struggle to do their work; about what really happens in a coaching relationship.  It is a ‘must-read’ for reflective practitioners interested in doing a humble inquiry together with their clients.
Prof. dr. Yvonne Burger, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Recent years have seen an enormous growth of individual coaching. Despite the credit crunch, companies appear to be maintaining their investment in executive coaching even if they are reducing their consultancy expenditure overall. Coaching is accepted as a particularly effective and tailored form of leadership development, and this trend is encouraging many organisations to look for ways to enhance the effectiveness of coaching interventions.

Yet, while much has been written about the coaching process, most of these accounts offer theoretical or normative prescriptions for coaches and/or their clients to follow. Seldom do they reveal the reality of the process, which quite often is very different from that envisaged in such prescriptions, messy, emergent, sometimes unpredictable, and always complex. But successful coaching engagements change their authors and their clients for the better.

This book presents a dozen accounts of what really happens in coaching, where experienced 21^st-century executive coaches reveal their personal journeys and learning. It connects theory with the practice of coaching by showing what happens 'inside' coaching relationships, and shows the impacts that the relationships can have on both participants.

Behind Closed Doors is the work of 12 coaches all of whom achieved distinctions in their MSc dissertations at Ashridge Business School. Each offers an account which reveals a particular aspect of the coach's individual practice, often focusing on a very specific theme such as humour, listening, emotions, power, and motivation. Their stories, written in a style which is readily accessible to practising coaches and senior managers but also rigorous and underpinned by theory, provide transformational insights into the coach's reflections and experiences, the evolving relationships between coach and coachee, and the effects and outcomes for clients.

Edited by Erik de Haan, Ann Baldwin, Nicola Carew, Stephanie Conway, Jude Elliman, Jacqui Hazell, Andrew Martin, Saskia Mureau, Paul O’Connell, Nick Pounder, Paul Rutherford and Christina Wanke.