COACHING FOR PERFORMANCE by Sir John Whitmore and Tiffany Gaskell

Reviewed by Dr Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh

This book covers 3 of my favorite topics- coaching, high performance, and leadership. It highlights the importance and benefits of coaching and how coaching delivers high performance.

What appealed to me are the real-life examples showcasing the impact of coaching, powerful coaching questions, and enabling high performance.

What is Coaching?

The book explains that coaching differs from teaching and mentoring—it focuses on enabling learning and growth, not just sharing knowledge. For example, chess champion Gukesh benefited from working with coach Paddy Upton, who isn’t a chess expert. Coaching empowers individuals by fostering choice, potential, and motivation, helping create collaborative, high-performing workplaces.

Coaching is the enabler & a coaching culture creates the conditions for high performance, such as trust, inner values, quality, learning, service, interdependence, etc.

Coaching is a way of thinking, a way of being. Transformational coaching is the practice of emotional intelligence comprising-

Self-awareness
Self-management
Social awareness &
Relationship management

Many leaders are busy firefighting & struggling to get the job done. They are unable to devote time to long-term planning, nor able to grow their people. Coaching is a good solution to these.

When should you use coaching?

When there’s a time constraint
When the quality of the result matters
To maximize the learning
To get real commitment
For engagement and retention

Coaching can be applied for goal setting, strategic planning, motivating and inspiring, teamwork, problem-solving, performance management, people development, etc.

What does a Coach do?

A coach is not a problem solver, a counselor, a teacher, an advisor, an instructor, nor an expert. A coach is a sounding board, a facilitator, an awareness raiser, and a supporter.

Instead of saying the flowers are red, if you ask what colour the flowers are, you are compelled to see for yourself. That’s what the coach does.

Building High Performance Culture

Ending the blame culture, getting people involved, reducing stress, and increasing personal responsibility build a High Performance Culture at the workplace.

High performance leaders have behaviours that support a culture of trust, adaptability & high engagement. Their teams often exceed expectations. It focuses on creating a safe environment for open and honest conversations, supports a resilient & transparent culture.

Impact of Coaching on high performance

When the leader acts as a coach, it enables high performance. We have been told by our parents, teachers, and bosses what to do. In turn, we also tell people what to do. While it’s quick and easy, the dictator is in control. A dictator upsets and demotivates employees. Employees behave differently when the dictator’s back is turned. We do not remember something that we’re told because people learn best through experience.

But coaching is on a different plane. The leader listens to the answers of the coaching questions & it’s non-threatening & supportive. No behaviour changes occur when the leader’s absent.

Coaching Attributes

Asking Powerful questions

In all ball sports, it is certainly vital to watch the ball, but does the command to watch the ball cause you to do so? No. If it did, many more of us would be far better at our sport.

Instead, by asking powerful questions like

Are you watching the ball?
Which way is the ball spinning?
How high is it? etc.

Helps the cause better because it compels the player to watch the ball.

Asking open-ended questions promotes awareness. Example-

What do you want to achieve?
What’s stopping you?
What’s helping you?
Who could help you?

Active listening

When you hear what is said, the feelings are conveyed. Intuition will be the best guide. Listen to the words and the tone of voice. Pay attention to the body language, energy levels & other emotional signals.

Feedback

The following are different ways of conveying feedback on a report that was not prepared well. Point one is the least effective manner of sharing feedback, while point 5 is the most effective way of giving feedback when the leader acts as a coach.

You are useless
This report is useless
The content of the report is good, but the presentation is downmarket
How do you feel about the report?
What are you most pleased with in the report? What would you do differently?

Coaching teams for high performance

It is even more difficult to get the best out of teams because of Global mobility, remote working, continuous forming & re-forming of teams, geographies, complex business challenges etc.

Practical ways of fostering a coaching culture in teams include-

Agree on ground rules
Educate on communication skills & team dynamics
Agree on common goals
Hold team discussions
Have support systems in place
Arrange structured social time together
Common interest outside work
Learn a new skill

ROI of Coaching

Improved performance, productivity, and career development
Improved relationships and engagement
Improved job satisfaction & retention
Increased innovation
Better use of people and knowledge
People who will go the extra mile
Great agility and adaptability
Build high performance culture
Life skill

Why should a Coach read this book?

If you are a Coach, here’s how this book will help you

You can use the points mentioned in this book to explain the importance and benefits of coaching.
There are many sample thought-provoking questions mentioned in this book, which you can use with your clients.
You can effectively pitch to a potential client, as this enables you to clearly articulate the ROI of coaching and also cite this book as an example.

Concluding Remarks

The essence of this book, in my opinion, is:-

The examples of coaching conversations given in the book help understand the impact coaching creates.
The importance of working with a coach who has been trained/credentialed by recognized bodies.
The impact of coaching makes one think, “How can I get better?”