Top Coaching books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Coaching books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Coaching

Understanding the concepts of Coaching starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Unlocking Potential: 7 Coaching Skills That Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations Michael K. Simpson

It describes how to assist your people to execute their goals flawlessly. To do this you will need to give feedback that is effective in helping the person move forward, and not feel complacent. There is advice on how to tap into the talent so many people possess, and how this can be developed.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The Coaching Effect: What Great Leaders Do to Increase Sales, Enhance Performance, and Sustain Growth

Authors Bill Eckstrom and Sarah Wirth have spent a decade researching the activities, behaviors, and performance of leaders. After studying more than 100,000 coaching interactions in the workplace, primarily of sales teams, they have been able to determine how coaching affects team outcomes and growth. The authors share three critical performance drivers, along with the four high-growth activi…

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The Prosperous Coach: Increase Income and Impact for You and Your Clients

Steve Chandler is a powerful motivational speaker who used his expertise to write his first book 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself: Change Your Life Forever. The book, which received the 1997 King Features Syndicate AudioBook of the Year Award, teaches interested individuals how to remove the barriers that keep them from realizing their dreams. Believing that anyone can become a highly energetic, …

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Co-Active Coaching: Changing Business, Transforming Lives

Co-Active Coaching has proven time and again that it's an essential “must-read” for coaches everywhere, focusing on the scientifically proven Co-Active Model. It identifies the ground conditions necessary for sustainable and transformative change in all coaching relationships, whether formal or informal.

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The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever

From the author of the runaway bestseller The Coaching Habit comes an authoritative guide to getting the most out of your workforce—and it all starts with curbing your urge to dole out advice. In The Advice Trap, bestselling author, speaker, and leadership coach Michael Bungay Stanier shares his invaluable insights into developing team members’ professional performance, using tips that even th…

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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey provides a transformative guide for personal and professional success. It emphasizes proactive thinking, prioritization, effective communication, collaboration, and personal growth.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Additional Coaching Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Coaching, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

Coaching Questions: A Coach's Guide to Powerful Asking Skills

In this volume, master coach trainer Tony Stoltzfus joins with 12 other professional coaches to present dozens of valuable asking tools, models and exercises, then illustrates these coaching strategies with over 1,000 examples of penetrating questions.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Challenging Coaching

Challenging Coaching by John Blakey and Ian Day offers an alternative approach to coaching that challenges traditional methods and promotes questioning, disobedience, and authenticity. It encourages coaches to focus on creating a safe and supportive environment in which clients can challenge themselves and grow.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Effective Coaching: Lessons from the Coaches' Coach Myles Downey

His experience has taught him what works and what doesn't. This book strips away the theory and academic definitions in favour of practical exercises, stories, anecdotes and conversations, leaving the ability to coach in the readers' hands.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The coaching habit : say less, ask more & change the way you lead forever

In Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact. Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your peoples' potential. He unpacks sevenessential coac…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Dweck, Ph. D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Effective Group Coaching: Tried and Tested Tools and Resources for Optimum Coaching Results

This book provides a foundation and practical perspective on group coaching―what it is and how it differs from one-on-one coaching and training, and includes ready-to-use tips and resources for coaches/practitioners in the development, implementation, and marketing of their own group coaching programs.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Specializations and Deeper Coaching Knowledge

You've got your basics in order – time to move on to some advanced and specialized concepts. Coaching is evolving every day, these books can help you master it.

Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition

As an agile coach, you can help project teams become outstanding at agile, creating products that make them proud and helping organizations reap the powerful benefits of teams that deliver both innovation and excellence. More and more frequently, ScrumMasters and project managers are being asked to coach agile teams.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

The HeART of Laser-Focused Coaching: A Revolutionary Approach to Masterful Coaching

This book is different because it: Includes brilliant tools for beginner-to-seasoned coaches. Offers advanced techniques for developing powerful questions without any lists. Provides principles of human behavior that help you quickly identify what's really going on.

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

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I am a seasoned Marketing Executive with a proven track record of revenue growth, cross team collaboration and successful outcomes with experience scaling organizations from $1m to $350m+. Highlights of my career to date include: *A successful exit to Atlassian for $175M *Driving revenue growth, from $160M to $320M for …

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