Challenging Coaching: Going Beyond Traditional Coaching to Face the FACTS

The book "Challenging Coaching: going beyond traditional coaching to face the FACTS" is a welcome addition to leadership coaching literature.It starts out by clearly laying out some assumptions at the root of the profession of executive coaching today.These assumptions, if unexamined, would limit our effectiveness as coaches:1 - "The core principles of therapy have been used to provide a structure, an ethical basis, and fundamental principles [to the coaching profession]".(Kindle Locations 659-660). However, this introduces a bias in the very foundation of coaching: "The result of this influence is that the skills at the heart of coaching are largely oriented toward counseling skills with a non-directive ethos, majoring on listening skills and the ability to ask powerful questions, and so demonstrating empathy and building a strong rapport between coach and client." (Kindle Locations 655-657). However, often coachees are very high functioning individuals. They do not need support per se. They need a challenge in a supportive environment. As the authors point out, "And when we asked leaders for feedback on how our coaching could be made more impactful, repeatedly they replied: "I love it when you challenge me, so challenge me more!" (Kindle Locations 261-262). So the authors exhort us to "be the missing voice of challenge in the coaching conversation". The traditional approach of coaching carries the risk of collusion and irrelevance, according to the authors. Collusion, when the coach operates in ways which appear to support the clients but actually are ways to avoid difficult conversations that need to happen to help clients make progress. If you are a coach, you know you have been there more than once. Irrelevance, when the focus on individual goals ignores the organizational context.2 - "what shaped business coaching as it developed was a focus on individual wants, not organizational needs. Many return on investment (ROI) measures from coaching initiatives ... reflected this bias, targeting the retention of high performers, improvement in staff survey engagement scores, and subjective feedback from participants rather than progress in specific, bottom-line measures." (Kindle Locations 296-298). I think this is a very important point. Stakeholders, the organization, the market, the company's strategy - they all need to be taken into account and somehow be present in the coaching conversation. I liked the idea put forth by the authors that coaches can be thought of as the stakeholders' representatives.Starting from these premises, the authors develop the FACTS framework to help coaches be more "challenging", or rather hit the sweet spot that balances support with challenge. As the authors point out, "The behaviors and skills in FACTS are not used instead of the supportive skills and models of more traditional coaching approaches, but rather to expand on these skills and leverage them to further improve performance and sustain the coaching impact." (Kindle Locations 382-384). In that sense, the FACTS framework is a useful addition to any coaching model. FACTS is an acronym which stands for: Feedback; Accountability; Courageous Goals; Tension; System Thinking. Each of these key skills for coaches are to be played in a four quadrant matrix where the axes are support and challenge. The optimum development for the coachees would happen in the high challenge - high support quadrant.While the tools itself, e.g. feedback or system thinking, are not exactly new, the way they are used to challenge coachees was definitely interesting and worth the read.I personally got the most value out of the part regarding "Accountability". I loved the emphasis placed on the contract and the systematic ways in which stakeholders, bosses, organizational constraints & culture are taken into consideration. However, if you are new to system thinking or to coaching, then the other parts of the model are a treasure throve of insights as well.I use Solution-Focused coaching protocols in my practice, and I personally I think Solution-Focus does an excellent job in balancing challenge and support. By unconditionally accepting the client's worldview but at the same time by holding the client accountable for his or her perceptions and words (see "Interviewing for Solutions", by Peter De Jong and Insoo Kim Berg).I also think SF practitioners are really good in including stakeholders in their conversations with clients and in their work with organizations. Adopting a "systemic" stance comes naturally to SF practitioners, simply because "relationship questions" are the bread and butter of SF.Still, I would highly recommend this book to all coaches, at the very least to be aware of the "blind spots" rooted in our profession's foundation and of the ways in which they might limit the effectiveness of our work if not examined and remedied.

As a professional coach, I value the emphasis that the profession places on learning and continual improvement."Challenging Coaching" has stimulated my coaching thinking like few other coaching books.Two things distinguish this book, in my view. The ideas themselves, and how they are expressed. Although there is a smorgasbord of examples to select from, one of the ideas that most resonated with me was the concept of setting "courageous" goals. This is in contrast to the more familiar framework of a S.M.A.R.T goal. SMART goals are a useful construct to begin organizing the goal-setting exercise. Where SMART goals fall short for me is that the process is not very inspiring. Boring, really. Authors Blakey and Day provide a welcome antidote to pedestrian goal-setting ennui.Another distinguishing characteristic of this book is their use of many powerful visual metaphors. For example, they compare the support/challenge coaching construct in terms of the acorn and oak in a way that is brilliant in its simplicity.I hope that I don't sound too over-the-top hyperbolic when I say that "Challenging Coaching" will change my career arc as a coach. It is quite easily, among the top 2-3 best coaching books that I have ever read.

This is a well researched and articulately written book with good practical applications and examples of coaching that creates tension to accelerate growth. The book has great charts and a clear conceptual underpinning, that helps the reader implement the material. I wish the book was shorter, as the latter sections strayed into philosophical musings that felt superfluous to the subject.Overall, a must read.

Many coaching books stick close to the theoretical underpinnings of coaching based upon clinical therapy. This book recognizes the value of this evolved approach, and builds upon it to ask coaches to "speak their truth, and face the FACTS". The FACTS model is designed, unlike therapy, to work with highly functional individuals, entering the ZOUD (zone of uncomfortable discussion) to challenge and support coachees so that they can reach their greatest potential, sometimes beyond even their perceived abilities.

Builds in top on GROW and other traditional coach models, and bring elements such as feedback and challenge to coaching. I liked the dimension model low/high support and low/high challenge as a model to observe the relationships we build. I am already practicing several of its elements in my coaching practices.

Excellent framework for coaching to enhance your client engagements. Why wouldn’t you invest in yourself with this resource?

Excellent and provoking book that takes coaching to a next level. It has answered some of my doubts and has made me a bit braver to challenge my coaching clients - which proves to be very valuable for them!

Very provocative. At the same time, application oriented. Good examples of application. Comprehensive.

This gives a new perspective on coaching, moving from a person-centric approach to a business-centric one, placing business needs first. The examples and methods are useful and give food for thought. There are two issues, which may be personal to me. One was that the business cultures depicted seemed very target-driven and subconsciously extremely androcentric - indeed, almost all of the 'experts' cited were men when, in my experience as a coach, coaching is a fairly gender balanced field. Once I'd noticed the omission of women, it really jarred with me. Even all the sports stars and fictional characters referenced were male! Secondly, in the 'Systems Thinking' part of the book, the book strayed (as, unhappily, many coaching books do) in to the realms of mysticism - mercifully not religion, but stuff about how the universe works in ways that create opportunities / 'give people what they can handle' sort of things, which just annoyed me. So while I took a fair few things from the book, it left me feeling quite frustrated.

Having read many of the traditional coaching books, Challenging Coaching offers an excellent viewpoint of how to ensure that progress is made both for the individual and for the groups to which they belong, such as their organisation.By viewing coachees as people who are whole and able to be pushed to greater levels, there is potential that greater results can be achieved than through models such as GROW alone.Highly recommended.

I do not normally do reviews on Amazon, however, I feel compelled to complete one for this excellent book. I was recently asked what one book on coaching would you recommend and I suggested this one. As a executive coach who works internally in my company and a leader, the messages in Challenging Coaching really resonated with me. They are quite clear that this is not a replacement for the traditional coaching practices but more a way of going to the next level. Internal coaches need to be more challenging, particularly if they coach senior executives.It is true that the FACTS model can be applied to any conversation, but it does need the coach to be courageous and step in the Zone of Uncomfortable Debate. The support/challenge matrix really does supply a way of looking at coaching and in fact in you are in low support you should not be coaching or leading.My advice would be to listen to the audio book and reference using the text book. Every time I listen or read, I get something new.I would urge coaches to give this a try and see the transformation it can evoke.I look forward to more of John and Ian's wisdom in future books.

In 'Challenging Coaching', John Blakey and Ian Day have done the coaching profession a significant service. It's time to up our game and refresh the learning many of us experienced as we went through even the most thorough of programs.This book brought home to me how easy it could be to fail to examine how I coach and test my own comfort zone as I explore the tactics I've adopted over the years.Whilst on many occasions, I was able to say 'Yes, that's what I do', there were more than enough moments in the book for me to consider closely how I need to reassess some of the value I might have been missing on behalf of my clients.It might be easy to get all self-critical about this. Yet we, just like our clients, live in challenging times where every income stream is critical to our business success. Developing the self-confidence to go much further than we might feel appropriate to hang onto a client is difficult these days and yet as I reflected on what they said, it all seemed to make sense.The model itself is not rocket science, but the way they describe the most dynamic skills that we coaches can evolve to, is both practical as well as stimulating in this really easy to read book. It's a book of example - yet it does not fill the book with these as some do. It's a book of technique - yet expressed simply and in easy to apply steps. It's a book that sets the mind thinking - as all good books should do.If you want to move your coaching onto a new, challenging level and have the courage to see that in you as a coach, then this is the book for you.As coaches, to take the profession as well as yourself to new heights, then, as the book says, 'Face the FACTS'. Buy the book, I can assure you it will change your productivity as a coach significantly.

Challenging Coaching is a very welcome addition to the already crowded coaching library. It dares to question whether traditional coaching approaches are really what is required for today's clients. Without throwing the 'baby out with the bathwater', John and Ian provide a pragmatic and contemporary view of how coaching can be made more effective. On a personal level, this book has been like a 'breath of fresh air', providing a refreshing perspective and helping to reconcile some doubts and concerns that I had been having about 'styles' and 'approaches'. This book will provide me with encouragement and impetus and re-energise my coaching.