Coaching and Action Learning Resources
Action Learning Resources
Coaching resources
Here are links to research reports, articles, fact sheets and more - to give you more information about these areas of work. If you know of anything else that will be useful to include - please get in touch!
For the latest research on coaching's effectiveness, a huge review of evidence - Read Grover and Furnham, 2016.
This builds on earlier work by Ashridge's Centre for Coaching, (read this short summary.) and a meta-analysis on coaching effectiveness (De Haan and Duckworth, 2012) plus a comprehensive review of coaching research studies called "The State of Play in Coaching Today," Grant et al 2010.
What is action learning? is a short summary of the key points, including an explanation of the "five step model" used.
Here's a short case study, showing benefits of using Action Learning in a project run by Capita.
And here's a short experiential view of How Action Learning Works.
Leadership resources
For a simple, memorable, leadership model, I recommend the Primary Colours Leadership model (Pendleton & Furnham, 2012). By overlaying a personality analysis - like Jungian Type - it's easy to see that no one leader will be naturally good at everything leaders need to do. So they key concept is: you need a good leadership team to be effective. They need to understand each others' strengths, and work together in an atmosphere of trust.
That's also what the research undertaken by Jim Collins (in Good to Great) found: the right leadership team - skilled, honest, and humble - can create a "Flywheel effect" which works in the long term.
And here's a soundbite from Collins: "If you've got more than 3 priorities, you haven't got any."
Other resources
I've lots of lovely things I'd like to share with you...
Don't miss Brene Brown on The Power of Vulnerability - it could be the best 17 minutes you spend all year; and Health Psychologist Kelly McGonigal on why you should Rethink Stress.
Business Balls is a great web site full of free resources, including the Desiderata, which I keep on my office wall and am often asked for!
A quote from my great-grandmother: "Just do your best... a saint couldn't do more."
I'll build this section as more treasures occur to me - do check back often!