Coaching Yourself to Leadership: 5 Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader

By Ginny O'Brien

Book Overview

In her easy-to-read style, Ginny O'Brien, an executive and corporate coach, describes the five key strategies that are essential for becoming an integrated leader. Using Ginny's exercises,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874258693
• ISBN13: 9780874258691
• Release Date: May 2014
• Publisher: HRD Press, Inc.
• Length: 172 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.4" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Inspiring and practical! ...not just for leaders!

This book is not just for leaders: anyone will benefit from learning how to coach him/herself to success using the 5 key strategies. I especially liked the self-assessment exercises: identifying skills, clarifying core values and vision, and determining one's level of emotional intelligence (EQ). Ginny's book is easy to read: succinct and practical, with helpful models to support her strategies. It's also inspiring to read the client (and personal) success stories. As a life coach, I highly recommend this book to many of my clients since I think the book gets at the basic strategies someone needs to create a successful, happy life. The many powerful questions, a key coaching skill, are are also very helpful.

Great guide to help you become a better leader

I found this to be a very insightful and helpful guide. The author provides key strategies that are effective, very pertinent and can be easily adopted. This book does not only provide advice to help building successful relationships with work colleagues, it also has advice that is relevant to all aspects of your life. It is an easy, enjoyable read - I highly recommend to anyone who has to manage a team.

Coaching Yourself to Leadership

I found this book terrific. It enabled me to quickly target some key areas that had been challenges for me. Asking myself the questions at the end of each chapter helped me focus on exactly what I needed to do. Ginny O'Brien's knowledge about situations we encounter in the business world is evident, and I found her guidance to be practical and right on the money.

Excellent

Coaching Yourself to Leadership is a fantastic guide and self-study that has helped me recognize my true potential as a leader. This well-organized guide and workbook is an easy read with real, practical suggestions that I can apply to my life today. Excellent!

Five Essential Ingredients Of Effective Leadership

I must admit that I had reservations about the wisdom of reviewing another book on leadership, particularly when its author, Ginny O'Brien, claims to be able to condense the basic principles of leadership into five key strategies which she explains and explores in her recent book, Coaching Yourself To Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader. It is a widely held belief that to effectively lead you must have a combination of character and strategy. In addition, a certain amount of vision and creativity is essential in order to recognize problems before they become disasters. Basically, it is a kind of art or an uncanny knack in persuading individuals to carry out tasks you would want them to do and because they want to do it. These elements, as well as several others, are dealt with in a new book, Coaching Yourself To Leadership: Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader. Its author, Ginny O'Brien, founder of the Columbia Consultancy, specializes in leadership development for men and women and as a skilled facilitator, she has led leadership and career development workshops. With a solid command of her subject matter, O'Brien focuses on five principles that are indissolubly linked to effective management. However, what is novel about her approach is that she explores how both masculine and feminine elements of strength or perspectives can be integrated into effective leadership. As she points out in her introduction, most books on leadership have been written from the male point of view and thus are influenced by characteristics that only men see as important. She strongly believes that "leadership develops internally beginning with a deep understanding of the self, and blossoms externally from learning how to empathize, engage and communicate with others." Each of the five chapters of the book devotes itself to fundamental principles pertaining to such topics as authenticity and personal values, being a visionary, striving for emotional intelligence, assertiveness, and building strategic relationship. These in turn are organized under several subheadings that explain the nuances of each principle; and conclude with a resume and a page or two of questions and exercises. As an example, the chapter dealing with "Be Emotionally Intelligent: Build Your EQ Muscles," informs us that one of the keys to an integrated leader is being emotionally intelligent. It is basically understanding the emotions of others as well as yourselve. As pointed out, "without the proper amount of emotional smarts, you simply won't be able to communicate well or build relationships." In the chapter dealing with assertiveness, the author drives home the point that if you want to be an integrated leader, you must develop your ability to communicate assertively. In addition, learning to listen carefully and attentively is essential in building trust. O'Brien is a seasoned executive and corporate coach with a shrewd and practical un