The Heart of Coaching: Using Transformational Coaching to Create a High-Performance Coaching Culture

Over 175,000 copies sold

This is the 20th year and the 4th edition of this book as an essential resource for those willing to develop coaching as a contemporary leadership skill. It’s continually updated to keep it vital.

It de-mystifies Transformational Coaching into easy-to-understand and follow steps, making it a communication tool for leaders and their teams to coach in all directions: up toward one’s Boss, down toward one’s Direct Reports, and laterally to one’s Peers. Huge benefits accrue to organizations where up-down-sideways coaching becomes a cultural norm…and a true “coaching culture.”

From the Back Cover

The Compelling Vision of a High-Performance Coaching Culture

The premise of this book is simple. As coaching becomes a predominant cultural practice, it will create a high-performance working environment where

All members of the culture courageously engage in candid, respectful coaching conversations—unrestricted by reporting relationships—about how they can improve their working relationships and individual and collective work performance.

All have learned to value and effectively use feedback as a powerful learning tool to produce higher levels of personal accountability, professional development, high-trust working relationships, continually improving job performance, and ever-increasing customer satisfaction.

Transformational Coaching is the requisite skill for today’s leaders, managers, and supervisors who choose to enhance their personal effectiveness and the performance of those they lead.

What People are Saying about The Heart of Coaching

I have not seen the powerful communication and collaboration tools provided in this book anywhere else. The Heart of Coaching creates a shared vocabulary and high-performance focus that will get results in any organization!

Skip Oppenheimer, Chairman/CEO, Oppenheimer Companies, Inc.

The Heart of Coaching arrives at the right time, when leaders need a vision to help them go beyond teamwork. This approach to Transformational Coaching places ownership for the problem where it belongs, with the person responsible for finding a solution.

David M. Lehmann, Vice President & General Manager, Mfg., Solar Turbines, Division of Caterpillar

The Heart of Coaching shows organizations how to tap the power, ideas and wisdom of their people to deliver high performance results. Tom’s authentic and practical approach to coaching (up, down, and across) creates invaluable benefits to those following this coaching methodology.

Val Harding Ph.D, Executive Director, Pfizer

The concept of Boss as Coach is a compelling one, and Transformational Coaching will define leadership in the 21st Century. Tom Crane provides a mechanism for individual and organizational change that will add enormous value to people and their organizations.

Eric Mokover, Asst. Dean and Director, MBA Program, The Anderson School of Management, UCLA

Today’s marketplace demands that leaders place a renewed focus on coaching—the same attention as on strategy. Tom gives us valuable insight on precisely how to best coach others as we continue to strive for excellence throughout the workplace.

Ronald J. Burns, President & Chief Operating Officer, Entergy Corporation

The author has written a comprehensive guide that has the potential to transform any company into one with a widespread “coaching culture,” where everyone in the organization is empowered with the skills and tools to provide coaching to each other. Tom Crane paints a clear picture about HOW to perform the various coaching skills.

If you study and follow the profound wisdom of this model, you can help your company experience the kind of coaching culture where everyone engages in respectful coaching conversations that lead to better relationships, improved performance, and a place where people actually look forward to coming to work.

Meredith Bell

I have read many books on coaching but none come close to Tom Crane’s book, The Heart of Coaching: Using Transformational Coaching to Create a High-Performance Coaching Culture (3rd Edition). Following the principles of The Transformational Coaching Roadmap is just what today’s leaders need to build a coaching culture. After reading Tom’s book I knew I had to speak to him about helping me start to build a coaching culture in my company.

Tom came through for me by building an online coaching workshop for my staff. His workshop has inspired my managers to embrace coaching as the right way to get results through their people. Not only did the workshop teach them how to be great coaches, it contained an ongoing implementation process to make sure the learning never stops.

David Bardon, President, Bardon Bowling Centers

As a professional certified coach, I love this book and use it as a resource in the programs I facilitate on leadership development and business coaching. Tom has such BIG HEART and through this book he provides a wonderful road map on how managers and leaders can begin to create more high-performance work teams.

Linda Denton, A People Development Company

The Heart of Coaching is a current and practical guide that demonstrates how coaching is the heart of leadership that creates and sustains an organization’s competitive advantage. Crane’s superior book shows how to provide feedback with respect, with clarity, and in a partnership that empowers people to contribute increasingly at higher levels of performance.

Mary R. Bast

Of the myriad of books I’ve read on coaching and creating a high performance culture, The Heart of Coaching is by far the undisputed winner!

John L. Naples

I own no less than 30 books on coaching and giving performance feedback, and this is the best yet. I say this for three reasons. It is structured around an easy-to-understand model. It is detailed enough to be genuinely useful without being overwhelming. And lastly, it advocates a strong philosophy of genuine caring that is essential to effective coaching.

You can bury people in skills training, but they won’t do it in the real world unless they have beliefs and values that support this difficult set of management skills. Coaching is easy to talk about, hard to do. This book makes it clear what to do and also encourages the reader to actually do it.

Laura Page

This work is right on point! Performance management is the business issue of our times and coaching is THE requisite skill for all leaders who need to get the best from their teams. Every practitioner will benefit from Tom’s contagiously passionate approach, guaranteed to help you and your team.

C.O. Woody, Senior Vice President, Florida Power & Light

Tom Crane has accomplished a difficult task—capturing the “essence” of coaching while building a rock-solid foundation for practicing this emerging art and science. The Heart of Coaching should be kept close at hand to mine its many tools and techniques and to rejuvenate coaches when they lose sight of why this is such a rewarding and difference-making field of work.

Jeff Zakaryan from Dana Point, CA. USA

For every aspect of management, there are a few fundamental building blocks. For the element of leadership, coaching is one of those critical cornerstones. In this book, Tom captures the full dimensionality of both the spirit and practice of coaching.

Jerrold R. Bratkovich, President & Chief Operating Officer, Organization Resources Counselors, Inc.

This process works! It gets to the truth…it does it with heart…and it unlocks the future! The Heart of Coaching is one of those rare books full of common sense and applicability. I want to be surrounded by people who communicate this way!

James E. Newton, CEO, Newton Learning Corporation

Tom Crane makes a compelling and passionate case that Transformational Coaching is THE REQUISITE SKILL for creating truly aligned and powerful organizations. The book is full of information, tips, and models that help explain this significant art and skill.

Robin Reid, Managing Partner, Reid, Moomaugh & Associates

This book represents his “heart advice” to those of us who would call ourselves “coaches.” Both wisdom and compassion are needed, and Tom’s exploration of these themes is useful to the seasoned leader/manager, as well as to fellow practitioners of coaching from the heart.

Timothy Smith, President, Wheelwright Associates

This book is a highly practical, “hands-on” approach to managing human and organizational performance. The models and methods are based on the solid integration of experience in a wide array of organizations. This book shows you how to generate strategically focused learning and get desired results through the development of the organization’s most important resource—its people.

John E. Jones, Ph.D., President, Organizational Universe Systems