The Little Book of Coaching : Motivating People to Be Winners

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Summary: Huddle Up with Ken and Don
Review:

Imagine yourself in a huddle with Ken & Don. They give you a little coachng nugget on one page and then elaborate for several paragraphs on the facing page. A slimmed down version of their earlier coaching book, but still useful to cover some essential coaching principles.

- Mark Kelly, coauthor of MASTERING TEAM LEADERSHIP: 7 ESSENTIAL COACHING SKILLS

Rating:
Summary: Little in So Many Ways
Review: I began to read this book with great expectations because I hold both Blanchard and Shula in such high regard. Perhaps my expectations were unrealistic but I had hoped for some penetrating insights; instead, I found recycled material from previous publications. Shula is among the greatest football coaches ever but has also achieved great success in an equally competitive environment, the restaurant business, so I had hoped for some of his observations about that. None. Blanchard is among the most innovative thinkers about business and presumably sees all manner of subtle but significant correlations between a great CEO and a great coach. None. From a marketing standpoint, the book's concept is clever. In terms of execution, borrowing a situation from football, it is a fumble on the authors' own goal line.

Rating:
Summary: Four Stars
Review: I bought this book for a college class. Excellent ideas on how to coach or lead in a business.

Rating:
Summary: Four Stars
Review: I bought this book for a college class. Excellent ideas on how to coach or lead in a business.

Rating:
Summary: Simple and Powerful
Review: Ken Blanchard's wisdom and Don Shula's coaching experience come together in this easy-to-read book. The simple truths expressed by these two gurus are very applicable in both your professional and personal lives. This book is appropriate for all levels in an organization and is a "must read" for any leader or coach.

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Summary: Double Benefits
Review: Life, no matter personal or bisiness, is so much like the game (such as NFL).

How to make yourself stay competitive and strong is as important as how to motivate people surrounded you to spearhead to victory.

Business guru Kenneth Blanchard and NFL coach Don Shula share with us their perspectives on coaching and leadership with different methods but same objective. So you can have a better view of how to improve your own coaching skill.

One book, one price for two professional and treasurable insights. It's obviously a best buy!

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Summary: Don Shula on Coaching
Review: Seldom has a book fallen so far short of the philosophy it espouses. Save your time and your money by reading another book on coaching.

"C.O.A.C.H." is the acronym that encompasses this book's brief content (probably less than 15,000 words):

C is for conviction ("Have a common vision and everyone will begin to move in the same direction." "Beliefs come true." " . . . a good coach provides the direction and concentration for performers' energies . . . ." "If you don't seek perfection, you can never reach excellence." "Lacking something to uplift their hearts when difficulties arise, their minds will not be equal to the task.")

O is for overlearning (" . . . get overprepared and help your people do the same." "Perfection happens only when the mechanics are automatic." "People generally respond well to leaders who have high expectations and genuine confidence in them.").

A is for audible-ready ("Prepare well with a plan -- then expect the unexpected and be ready to change that plan." "Audibles are . . . strategies your team knows about and has practiced thoroughly . . . .").

C is for consistency ("Respond predictably to performance." " . . . use redirect and praising more." "Mistakes cannot be tolerated.").

H is for honesty ("unquestionable integrity" "genuine and sincere" "Never ask your people to do more than you are willing to do." " . . . genuine faith [in God] is eminently practical.").

As a summary: "Who believed in you?" "How do you create that spark of self-recognition in others?" "It's about your believing in someone." "And then doing whatever it takes to help that person to his or her very best.")

The book itself offers little more than aphorisms. There are a few football examples. There are even fewer business examples. Examples from other contexts are almost nonexistent. This book would have been better with exercises for readers, questions to answer, and more relevant examples.

Personally, I disagree with the point that perfection should be the vision. Perfection could be a useful goal for an empowering vision, such as the one that the Salvation Army has.

The main benefit I got from the book was thinking through the way that companies fail to prepare for predictable alterations in circumstances, in the way that football teams do with audibles. Using scenarios to think through the future is relatively new to all but a few organizations. Clearly, this major lack will continue to harm organizations in the increasingly volatile social and economic climate of today.

If you have read The One Minute Manager and have seen and heard a top coach in action, you can skip this book.

Provide an example that others can easily understand and follow!

Rating:
Summary: Good in spots, but...
Review: The Little Book of Coaching is more or less a summary of the longer work Everyone's a Coach. This book attempts to present a concentrated portion of what it takes to lead and motivate others based on the acronym C.O.A.C.H., which stands for Conviction-driven, Overlearning, Audible-ready, Consistency, and Honesty-based. These characteristics form the divisions in the book, and for each division, the authors provide an inspirational quote (which is printed on an entire page), an anecdote or two (usually by Shula about his football coaching career), and an application to leadership (usually by Blanchard).

The book is only about 120 pages long, and given the fact that the actual dimensions of the book are smaller than average, coupled with the fact that the quotations given are printed on a full page, what we have here is approximately 50 pages of real text, half of which contain stories about Don Shula and the Miami Dolphins, and the other half Blanchard's ideas on leadership. ... this is not really worth the money, although some of the material is not bad. The ideas and examples the authors present are based on sound principles (most of which, incidentally, are explained with much greater attention to detail in books by John Maxwell, Stephen Covey, and J. Oswald Sanders), but this book is more of an after dinner mint than a meal. I would recommend leadership books by any of the aforementioned authors before I'd advise picking this one up. As a gift book it is fine, but as a stand-alone leadership book it lacks quality.