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Area author offers coaching
advice
Scott Blanchard devises way to personalize coaching
experience in hardcover form
"Because of e-mail, of voice mail and the speed and
pace of things, people are making more decisions on a
daily basis now than they used to make in a week," said
Scott Blanchard.
Couple that with a changing
corporate climate where the working generation doesn't
believe that their company will take care of them and
you have a setting ripe for the growing industry of
coaching.
Blanchard, a part-time Summit County resident, is a
coach, speaker and now author, focusing mostly on
succeeding in the workplace. He recently published a
book about coaching with Madeleine Homan called
"Leverage Your Best, Ditch the Rest The Coaching Secrets
Top Executives Depend On."
The co-authors have both worked as coaches and began
the coaching website, www.coaching.com. Blanchard's
father, Ken Blanchard, is the author of "The One Minute
Manager" and other self-improvement books. Blanchard is
senior vice-president of The Ken Blanchard Companies,
which now owns coaching.com.
"The book is designed specifically to work like a
coach," said Blanchard.
This is possible because, unlike what many people may
think, they don't have 1 million problems, 1,000 or even
100, he said. After working with approximately 3,000
clients over the past four years, Blanchard and Homan
distilled the myriad of problems into eight different
areas. At the beginning of the book, the reader takes a
small survey, or 'scrubdown,' that pinpoints where the
trouble areas lie and then they jump directly to that
chapter, said Blanchard.
One of the biggest challenges was creating a book
that could be as adaptable as a live coach. 'Leverage
Your Best' begins with teaching its readers to see
themselves as whole and complete and to stop beating
themselves up.
"If people can hold that belief of themselves, it
creates an environment for change," said Blanchard.
Helping to identifying obstacles, which begins with
the scrubdown, is one of the main advantages of the
book, said Blanchard. One example of an obstacle is the
standard, or rule that a person lives their life by.
Blanchard described the dilemma of a former client
who had the standard at work of making herself
accessible by returning phone calls and e-mails the same
day and continued to try to keep that standard even when
the volume quadrupled.
"She now had a standard she could no longer live up
to," said Blanchard.
By stepping back and identifying the dilemmas of the
standards, the client could work out a new system.
"Standards, boundaries and several other leverage
points are things that happen that cause stress for
people," said Blanchard.
When they clear up those leverage points, the relief
and subsequent improvement in the quality of life is
amazing, he added.
Although the idea of coaching is most familiar in the
corporate world, the book is not just for top
executives.
"The target for our book is people who have jobs or
want them," said Blanchard.
Many of the concepts are applicable in people's
personal lives as well.
Blanchard and Homan added an interactive level with a
website that works with the book leverageyourbest.com.
The site not only works with readers of the book, it
also allows browsers to take the scrubdown and decide
whether to go further before buying the book.
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