Summary: A compendium of articles by experts in the field of leadership coaching describing and assessing different models.

Leadership coaching is becoming increasingly common with senior leadership in organizations and corporations. What one quickly discovers however is that there are a number of models used by coaches in this field. This work is a great introduction to a number of the leading models used in the field.

An introduction to leadership coaching by Jonathan Passmore, editor of this work, focuses on developing a rigorous, evidence-based research basis to coaching, looking at the effectiveness of different models. Following this introduction, fifteen different models are considered:

Authentic leadership
Integrated leadership model
Emotionally intelligent leadership
The Leadership Radar
Asian perspective on leadership coaching: Sun Tzu and The Art of War
Coaching Icarus leadership: helping leaders who can potentially derail
Coaching for integral leadership
Coaching political leaders
Leadership coaching with feedforward
Coaching from a systems perspective
Coaching for transactional and transformation leadership
Coaching for leadership style
Strategy coaching
Coaching global top teams
Coaching using leadership myths and stories: An African perspective

Nearly every chapter includes a case study showing the application of the coaching model in specific leadership situations.

These are some of the valuable resources I gleaned from this survey:

Authentic leadership occurs when there is an unforced alignment between personal values and corporate vision.

The integrated leadership model recognizes that effective leadership is not a single quality but propose six factors in leadership effectiveness: goal orientation, motivation, engagement, control, recognition and structure. Leaders operate on a continuum between two extremes with each factor.

Emotional intelligence is not a single thing but includes understanding and articulating our own emotions, ability to understand and relate to the feelings of others, the ability to manage our emotions, the ability to manage change and solve problems on an intra- and inter-personal basis, and the ability to generate positive mood and be self-motivated.

The Leadership Radar involves leading in the dimension of people, task, and thought, similar to a model I've worked with of vision, structure, and people.

The Icarus chapter identified a number of characteristics of leaders who fail, and most have to do with their personal character, and particularly highlighted leaders with narcissistic personalities, far from uncommon. (The description sounded chillingly similar to the current occupant of the Oval Office.)

Feedforward coaching doesn't ignore past behavior, particularly past failures, but focuses on envisioning how one might improve particular behaviors through careful listening to suggestions from coaches and peers.

I found the chapter on coaching from a systems perspective helpful in understanding the relationships within which one leads--those on top, in the middle, on the bottom, and those who are customers. He also helpfully outlines how systems differentiate, homogenize, individuate, and integrate.

I think I might have found more relevance in reading Sun Tzu that the chapter, which seemed an abstraction of principles from this work. The chapter on transactional and transformational leadership helped make the distinction between these two forms of leadership similar, and helped me see how articulating and embodying vision is critical to the latter. The chapters on coaching politicians and coaching global top teams seemed less applicable, though the chapters made the case for the relevance of each. The African perspective was fascinating in terms of its use of myth and story in leadership coaching.

This work serves as a primer and resource for further study on a number of extant leadership coaching models and introduces one to leading researchers and consultants in the field. The second edition adds chapters on conversational leadership, team leadership, strengths-based leadership, and complexity informed leadership.