Everyone connected with coaching - clients, commissioners, coaches and academics will be delighted to hear that the Open University Press is to publish a new series of five books on coaching entitled Coaching in Practice. Its editor, and one of the series' authors, is Jenny Rogers - also an executive director of Management Futures. Her book Coaching Skills:A Handbook (2004), is widely praised and used.

New series on coaching

1. Developing a Coaching Business AVAILABLE NOW
by Jenny Rogers
Order your copies at £14 (+ £1.50 P&P) - click here to order

How do I set up a coaching business? How do I find clients? How do I market myself successfully? If you are considering these questions, then this is the book for you. The coaching market is thriving but many coaches need practical help on how to develop and grow their businesses. Being a good coach is never enough. How do you find your natural clients? How do they find you? What should you charge? Should you have an office or can you work from home? Start-up costs are never as minimal as they might look, so how do you sustain yourself while you are building the business?

Then there is the whole question of selling - a process many coaches dread but which has to be done because word of mouth on its own will never generate enough clients to earn a decent living. And what are the plusses and minuses of growth?

2. NLP Coaching DUE DECEMBER
by Phil Hayes

Phil Hayes is also an executive director of Management Futures and writes regularly for Futures. He is a former head of management training at the BBC.

NLP Coaching offers a practical guide for executive coaches who would like to introduce elements of NLP into their coaching. It describes NLP-influenced approaches to some of the issues that arise with great regularity and frequency in executive coaching, for example:

• Career or life development issues
• Issues of confidence in the workplace
• Relationship issues
• Goal-setting
• Resolution of dilemmas

The real meat of the book is looking at the common issues that clients bring to the coaching room, and the detailed descriptions of how the coach can use NLP approaches to help address these issues. Coaches are shown some of the possible pitfalls that can arise in trying the techniques in order that they can avoid mistakes in their use.

3. Psychological Dimensions to Coaching OUT NEW YEAR
by Peter Bluckert

Peter leads a coaching and coach training company in Yorkshire. His experience in both organisational development and Gestalt therapy spans twenty-five years. He is also a founder member of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC)

The purpose of Psychological Dimensions to Coaching is two-fold: firstly to provide the foundations of a psychological framework for coaching, and secondly to fill an important gap in current coaching literature by bringing a Gestalt perspective to coaching.

The four sections of the book begin with a framework for effective coaching. The second section builds the rationale for a stronger psychological approach by examining the most common themes and topics brought to coaching sessions. This is followed in section three by exploring the key psychological competencies required, how to develop them, and the training and supervision issues implicit in this approach.

The final section focuses on the unique contribution that the Gestalt perspective offers the coach.

4. Reflective Practice and Supervision for Coaches OUT NEW YEAR
by Julie Hay

Julie Hay is internationally accredited as a transactional analyst and supervisor and has been training and supervising fellow professionals since 1986. Julie was one of the founding directors of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council. She has been a regular presenter at international conferences and is the author of numerous articles, audiotape sets and books.

Skilled craftspeople look after their tools and seek new and improved versions. The tools for coaches are the coaches themselves hence we need to pay attention to maintenance and to developing more advanced models of ourselves. Reflecting on our practice and getting professional support to develop our supervision are powerful ways of ensuring we sort out any problems and continue to improve.

You will be guided through the processes of reflection alone, with colleagues and with a formal supervisor - and will be encouraged to `expose' your weaknesses and gain the significant growth that follows.

5. Therapist into Coach OUT NEW YEAR
by Julia Vaughan-Smith

Julia Vaughan Smith is an experienced executive and leadership coach, organisational consultant and facilitator with a Coaching and Consultancy practice. She is also a practicing psychotherapist.

Therapist into Coach is written for those who are qualified and experienced as psychological therapists, for example psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists. It aims to make a bridge between the approaches, exploring the similarities and differences.

The valuable expertise psychological therapists bring can enable them also to become effective coaches.

Therapist into Coach aims to help readers decide if coaching offers a development path they wish to take and will be of interest too to anyone who is thinking of widening the case-mix of their practice. It also considers the opportunity to bring elements of a coaching approach into a psychotherapy or counselling process. It highlights those aspects of a therapeutic model which are inappropriate for coaching as well as the elements which add a richness to the process.