Coaching has proven to be one of the most power and effective ways for leaders to develop and improve their performance. Yet working one-on-one with a coach is not always possible. If you want the experience of masterful coaching, Your Coach (In a Book) provides a time-efficient and affordable solution. Based on the authors' highly successful Masterful Coaching approach, Your Coach (In a Book) is designed to help you master your trickiest leadership, business, and career challenges. Throughout, master-level coaches Robert Hargrove and Michel Renaud engage the reader in a "coaching conversation" about your most important goals, pivotal decisions, bothersome issues, and dilemmas. Your Coach (In A Book) simulates the experience of working with a personal coach. drawing on thousands of hours of coaching conversations. It gives you the insights you need to set aspirational goals, master the corporate chessboard, and create new openings for action where you are stuck or ineffective.

Robert Hargrove is chairman of Masterful Coaching, Inc., of
Brookline, Massachusetts, and a former director of the Harvard
Leadership Research Project. Hargrove focuses on inspiring and
empowering executive leaders in business, government, and nonprofit
sectors to make a difference in their world. He is the author of
Masterful Coaching (from Jossey-Bass), Mastering the Art
of Creative Collaboration, E-Leader, and other books.

Michel Renaud is a senior partner in Masterful Coaching,
Inc. He is the mastermind behind the acclaimed "Action Coaching"
program, which is for people in groups.

"Imagine reading stories about extraordinary coaching conversations with leaders who have faced issues and problems just like yoursconversations that led to simple, powerful, but nonobvious solutions. Imagine the eye-opening insights and new openings for possibility and action that could be triggered in you as you read with your own commitments at stake . . . your own red-hot issues! We wrote this book with you in mind."
From the Introduction

"Your Coach (In a Book) provides bang for the buck in terms of in-depth insights into the leadership, business, and career dilemmas that managers in all organizations face."
Tom Kaiser, president, Arch Insurance

"You can read Your Coach (In a Book) cover to cover so as to simulate a year-long coaching program, or flip through it with your issues in mind and find the golden nugget and run with it. In either case it really delivers."
Richard Severance, senior vice president, ConocoPhillips

"Robert Hargrove and Michel Renaud's Your Coach (In a Book) will make you feel like you have hired a masterful coachat an affordable pricewho will give you tremendous power and velocity in reaching your goals."
Debby Pindar, senior project manager, Khimetrics Inc.

Introduction: Democratizing Coaching 1

1 What's the Opportunity in Coaching for You? 8

Part One: Your Extraordinary Business Challenge 23

2 Declare an Impossible FutureThat Captures People's Imagination 39
Situation: How do you transform a climate of profound resignation into a climate of inspiration? What do you do with big aspirations and small resources? How do you shift from "running the business" to "creating the business"? Let us be your thinking partner here.

3 Face RealityIdentify What's Missing That, if Provided, Will Produce a Breakthrough 46
Situation: You declared your strategic intention and made great forward progress. Yet you have hit a wall and need to declare breakdowns to discover what is missing that will produce a breakthrough. Your masterful coach will offer you a powerful assist.

4 Create a Source DocumentVision, Major Milestones, Key Initiatives, Guiding Principles, and Methodologies 53
Situation: It was a terrific vision statement you came up with at the big meeting, but today it is just another good idea gone up in smoke. You keep asking yourself what's missing that will have impact. Your masterful coach has a great leadership tool to offer you.

5 Get Everyone to Formulate a Significant Business ChallengeCreate Line of Sight to Strategic Goals 62
Situation: You want to create focus and energy around your strategic goals and priorities. People say they want to focus on things that make a difference, but they are bogged down in a laundry list of objectives. Here's a proven method that will pay off in spades.

6 Desperate to Break Out of the No-Growth Morass?Blow Up Your Business Model Versus Tinker at the Margins 69
Situation: You face a dilemma. Either blow up your business model and come up with new wealth-creating strategies or continue tinkering at the margins despite diminishing returns. We'll guide you in getting to the core of your dilemma and cracking it open.

7 Looking to Get a Chunk of Capital at Your Next Board Meeting?The Best Presentation Is the One You Never Make 77
Situation: You have a plan to grow your profitable business, but to do that, you need capital from the CEO and executive committee. Recent attempts to convince the CEO to give money to high-flying growth ideas have met with resistance or been shot down. How are you going to approach your upcoming meeting? Let us help you.

8 Create Customers Who Brag About YouShift from a "Me" Point of View to a "You" Point of View 84
Situation: The people in your company have fallen in love with your advertising, products, and rules. However, they forgot to fall in love with your customers, ignoring their rising needs and expectations. Here is a golden nugget to transform this situation.

Part Two: Your Extraordinary Leadership Challenge 91

9 Be an Extraordinary LeaderRecognize That Your Winning Strategy has Gotten You Here But May Not Take You Where You Want to Go 107
Situation: The ways of being and thinking, the attitudes that were the source of your success in the past, have now become the source of your limitations. You're unaware of this, and you are unaware that you are unaware. Your masterful coach will rip the blinders off.

10 Stand for Something!Leadership Arises in Discovering Yourself as the Stand You Take 114
Situation: You have declared an impossible future and taken on a powerful business challenge, but sense you now need to take on an equally powerful leadership challenge that will require relentless coaching and feedback. If you are ready develop faster, fasten your seat belt and let's go.

11 Get Your Grand Design Over the Line