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Jeremy Marchant

Wider context

I like reading books and am influenced by them.

I am a great believer that people should have a 'hinterland' - that, whatever their profession or calling, they should have a range of interests (their hinterland) which they actively pursue and which shed light on their main interest in serendipitous ways.  I am indebted to Dennis Healey, the former Labour politician and fine photographer, for this insight.

Psychology

My main hinterland influence is psychology.  Coaching is primarily an activity which addresses now and the future.  This is often all that is needed.  Many times. though, the client's issues derive from earlier experiences which must be resolved if the client, and therefore his or her business, is to move forward.  NLP offers some timeline techniques which manage to be both clunky and a danger in the hands of someone unsure of what they are doing.

One alternative approach avenue is to explore Psychology of Vision.  This is a personal development philosophy firmly grounded in post-Freudian psychology, with a good deal of NLP thrown in, plus A course in miracles for those inclined that way, and bits of everything else from Jung to gestalt therapy to transactional analysis to... (I even thought I saw some Heidegger in it the other day.)  Far form being a dog's dinner it is extraordinarily powerful   Unfortunately there are no good books on the subject, though Wholeheartedness by Chuck Spezzano (the inventor of PoV) is the best of the bunch (all written by Chuck), if you like the workbook format.  It contains a superb description of the stages a relationship goes through.  This is easily extensible to relationships in business.

Client centred therapy by Carl Rogers is superb for its focus on the need for the therapist (read coach) to enter the client's reality.  Not only is it readable, it contains many transcripts which provide invaluable insights into phrasing and pacing.  That it was written in 1951 beggars belief - it comes up fresh as a daisy, the occasional self-effacing remarks that 'more research needs to be done' being the only aspect that reminds the reader of its age.

For myself, I see one of the coach's tasks is to provide a facilitating environment in which the client feels safe to explore the issues which are holding him or her back from true success - and, consequently, the business from success.  The inventor of this concept was DW Winnicott.  As a paediatric psychiatrist, he used it to refer to the context in which a mother nurtures her young baby.  The child, the family and the outside world is stunning for Winnicott's ability to get into the minds of both the mother and the baby and to describe their worlds lucidly and convincingly. (Winnicott also invented the phrase good enough - originally to describe what baby needed form its mother, but a damn good project management principle.)

Cognitive therapy - not cognitive behaviour therapy - offers many insights for the coach.  As with most of books here, the subject matter is too 'strong' for business coaching - but the use of what, in our world, are extreme examples does enable us to understand the dynamics in play when they are present in diluted, harder-to-detect form in the business coaching context.  Aaron Beck's Love is never enough and Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders are much closer in content than their titles imply.  The former isn't superficial and slushy, and the latter isn't esoteric and dissociated.

On everyone's shelves should be Games people play by Eric Berne. This is the transactional analysis book.  It is essential for interpreting the interactions between people in client businesses.

Coaching is often most successful when it is telling stories.  Stories allow the client to think about difficult situations in believable third party environments, thereby enabling them to think through their own issues which they had previously fought against.  Bruno Bettelheim's The uses of enchantment is about fairy stories (though Bettelehim rails against this term) - again, this is 'stronger' than a coach needs, but the insights provided are considerable.

Language

Language is so important to a coach.  It would be wonderful to be able to recommend a handful of books on the NLP meta model and the Milton model since these are so useful.  If you know of a readable book on these subjects, please let me know.  Meanwhile The language instinct by Stephen Pinker is superb - perhaps the hinterland of the hinterland for a coach, but an essential book nonetheless.  How the mind works is a must read of Pinker's.

Philosophy

I am still getting my head round how to use philosophy in coaching, and I will restrict myself to recommending The consolations of philosophy by Alain de Botton - six essays, each on a different philosopher - which should point a way.  It certainly had me reaching for those volumes of Aristotle bought virtuously as a student and not exactly finished since.  And, for those who don't understand what I mean by a readable book, here is a superb example.  (Enough to make to make you read How Proust can change your life by the same author!)

Honourable mentions

Iron John.  Robert Bly.  I like stories.  This is a story dissected and deconstructed, and the curious thing about this book is that it is like going for a paddle:  as you keep going the water gets thicker and thicker and eventually you grind to a halt.  I stopped at p216, but I am minded to have another go because, as with The uses of enchantment, it demonstrates how important stories are to accessing our unconsciousnesses.

Robert Holden's Success intelligence would have been improved with a self-denying ordinance by the author on the use of the word 'I'.  Too selfregarding to be capable of being read in more than small chunks, but interesting nonetheless - and an important message.

Nick Williams's The work we were born to do.  I am not convinced by workbooks but, if there is such a book to turn my head, this is it.  It's about what it says on the tin 

(this page is work in progress)

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