Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart

A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenges

By Mary Beth O'Neill
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2nd edition, 2007

Consistently one of the top best-selling executive coaching books on Amazon.com!

Coaching high-powered executives requires something special, something extra. Executive coaches must become partners with leaders and carry an emotional investment in business outcomes as well as working for the development of their clients.

They must have the strength and courage to face an organizational leader in a time of crisis and speak the unvarnished truth. They have to be a force to be reckoned with. They have to have backbone and heart.

Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart:

  • Tells coaches how they can and must build their own "presence" with clients.
  • Shows coaches how to see clients in terms of the "force fields" they create within organizations.
  • Explains how to break through these systems to reach desired goals.
  • Outlines four phases of coaching necessary for productive coach/client relationships: contracting, planning, live action intervening, and debriefing.
  • Most importantly, Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart teaches executive coaches how to be with their clients as they face dilemmas in order to find those critical moments when the clients are most open to learning.

What others say about the Book:

"Executives are tough customers with high expectations. This direct and pragmatic book reveals the importance of the coach's immediacy and self-awareness in the successful coaching of top leaders."

Brian Clewes - Senior Vice President, Human Resources - TransAlta Corporation

"O'Neill writes in a way that allows you to see this experienced coach in action. What a wonderful way to learn!"

Geoff Bellman - Consultant and Author - The Consultant's Calling

"This is an important book. Executive coaches will find in Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart a sensible and sensitive process that leads to guaranteed results."

Carla J. Murray - General Manager - The Westin Seattle

"In this book, O'Neill brings form and structure to the art of executive coaching. Novices are provided a path while seasoned practitioners will find affirmation."

Daryl R. Conner - CEO/President, ODR-USA, Inc. - Author: Managing at the Speed of Change

"Effective leaders require courage, compassion, and initiative. O'Neill's systems-based coaching serves as a guide for both coaches and executives to better enable good decisions and good decision-makers."

Paul D. Purcell - President - Beacon Development Group