Are You Listening?: Stories from a Coaching Life

Description

A unique insight into coaching that shows how even the most successful people can be held back by self-imposed doubts and limitations 'The coaching room can sometimes become its own theatre. A marriage unravels right in front of you. A shaming confession is made. A secret hugged for many years is disclosed. Tears of wrenching anger and despair can take up the whole session. These are times where you and the client hold your breath because nothing is ever going to be the same again.' It is very rare as an adult to find a place where you are not judged, where you can be open, honest and vulnerable- that is exactly what coaching provides. This book brings together twenty different stories which represent the very human dilemmas a coach can encounter. Coaching is not therapy but it is closely related, and while many people seek (or are assigned) executive coaching for work problems, just like therapy each person brings their whole self to the conversation. Exploring Jenny's beautifully written and moving stories will offer the reader a chance for deep reflection on the meaning of modern relationships.

Jenny Rogers has been an executive coach for almost 30 years working with high profile clients across a broad range of sectors internationally. She is one of the UK's most experienced and well known coaches who, in addition to her coaching practice trains other coaches, is a regular contributor to BBC Radio. She has been published widely in the past by a range of professional and academic publishers with books aimed at executive coaches including Coaching Skills- The Definitive Guide to Being a Coach (now in its 4th edition) which is widely acknowledged as being the ultimate book for anyone wanting to coach professionally around the world and has been translated into Polish, Mandarin, Danish and Hebrew.

Every coach and leader needs to read this book! Filled with engaging, impactful stories, Are You Listening? looks behind the curtain of coaching sessions with high level executives. Learn how to fuel your success with your failures and share in the struggles and triumphs of real leaders * Marshall Goldsmith, Thinkers 50 #1 Executive Coach and only two-time #1 Leadership Thinker in the world. * Jenny Rogers cherishes the core of truth in each of us. Are You Listening? takes us with her as she brings people back to that core. When you finish the book, you will see people differently. Not many gifts are for ever, but that one is' * Nancy Kline, bestselling author of Time To Think * Are You Listening is quite simply the best book about coaching I have ever read. It's about the real experience of coaching, rather than a new-and-improved template or method, so it gets right down to the tangled complexities of human exchange and growth. Jenny's wise and humane stories will make me a better person * Sally Helgesen, author, How Women Rise, The Female Advantage, The Web of Inclusion * Jenny's coaching was life changing in my early career and I have never forgotten her rare combination of attention, rigour and wry humanity. Her beautifully written book is fascinating about the challenges of being human and the revelatory power of great coaching * Helen Boaden Former Director, BBC Radio * Jenny Rogers effectively invented the art of executive coaching, and she's certainly done more than anyone to advance and professionalise it. Her remarkable new book inhabits a place between fiction, non-fiction and memoir. It's The Examined Life, Kitchen Table Wisdom, It's All in Your Head, Do No Harm, Love's Executioner and Let Me Not Be Mad all rolled into one. It's a revealing look back on three decades of fascinating encounters, an honest examination of the big questions that make us all tick and, above all, a generous, wise and incredibly moving testament to the power of compassion, acceptance and change * Oliver Rawlins - Vice President, Communications, Netflix * Jenny Rogers has done for coaching what Irving Yalom did for therapy: written a book full of moving stories that show the process, and the benefits * John-Paul Flintoff, author of A Modest Book About How To Give An Adequate Speech * Compelling and compassionate, comprehensive and challenging, the eighteen beautifully-written client histories show that coaching is concerned with big questions of love, authenticity, self-worth, autonomy, isolation, life-purpose and death. Coaching is about 'listening with exquisite attention, offering acceptance, challenge and kindness' * Dr John Raftery, former Vice Chancellor, London Metropolitan University * A fascinating insight into the lives of leaders and the challenges they bring to coaching, from one of the World's best executive coaches. Read this for a fly on the wall view of executive coaching * Professor Jonathan Passmore, Henley Business School * This exceptional book brings together, in rare combination, deep and compassionate insight into individual psychology with a sophisticated understanding of working life in organisations. It will be a source of wisdom for managers everywhere, but also for anyone interested in human nature * Nicholas Spice, London Review of Books * Ultimately, this is an honest and moving account of both client and coach experience. If you enjoyed Yalom's Love's Executioner, you may well enjoy this, and who knows, maybe one day this book will be regarded as the coaching equivalent of that classic text? * Coaching Today *