Books     Apart from Amazon, which I find fantastic – and especially when they email me with recommendations so I buy some more books! – I find Worth Reading! is also excellent. They specialise in supervision, counselling and psychotherapy, couples work, group work and the creative arts therapies, and draw on wide professional experience in their personalised recommendation of key titles. Visit their website or call them on 020 8741 6555. I seem to be overflowing with books that I want to read at the moment. Those that I've listed here are because they're sitting on my desk and I'm not sure where to start and all of them are "must reads" for me. So, here goes... Immunity to Change Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (co-authors of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work) Harvard Business School Publishing, 2009 I was struck initially by the compelling title of this book. I continue to explore and seek to identify and understand what it is that hinders me or my coaching client from making the changes we declare we are committed to. In this book, the authors demonstrate how our individual beliefs, along with the collective mindsets in organisations, combine to create a natural but powerful immunity to change. There are hands-on diagnostics and practical case studies with ideas for how to overcome inertia within ourselves and the organisational contexts in which we work. I found some useful ideas here. Executive Coaching Len Sperry Brunner Routledge, 2004 The subtitle of this book is, "the essential guide for mental health professionals". I was drawn to this book because I've been exploring the question of "to coach or not to coach?" More frequently, supervisees are now coming to our sessions with client issues that are linked to mental health questions. In this book, the authors guide mental health professionals through an explanation and appreciation of executive coaching and how it differs from therapies addressing mental health. What I like about the book is that there are some clear descriptors of all sorts of presenting issues that we as coaches need to be mindful of. I sometimes wonder how effective I am being with a client, especially when they solemnly declare their commitment to the goals and changes they wish to make. When this does not happen, on reflection, I am becoming increasingly attuned to what may be underlying issues, which may be hindering their progress and for which coaching is not necessarily the appropriate intervention. This book goes some way to addressing these questions. Law and Ethics in Coaching Patrick Williams and Sharon K. Anderson John Wiley & Sons, 2006 "How to solve and avoid difficult problems in your practice" is the subtitle of this book. I've been developing and delivering ethical awareness workshops for the EMCC over the past 18 months. As I work with different coaching groups and we delve deeper into the questions that coaches raise about what to do in diverse client situations, I've become increasingly curious about how to decide "what is the right thing to do?" Whilst a code of ethics can guide, as practitioners I think we need to be increasingly alert to the dilemmas that we face. The book explores areas of confidentiality, international perspectives, competence, multiple roles and legal matters. Although this book comes from the United States, where there are distinct differences in approach, this book has given me further insight and enabled me to be better prepared for ethical incidents. On occasion I've been able to pre-empt and defuse before getting drawn into complex dilemmas. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher Kim Etherington Jessica Kingsley Publishing, 2004 The subtitle of this book is "Using ourselves in research". I'm interested in this work as I'm just considering doing some postgraduate research in the field of coaching supervision. Professor Etherington, based at University of Bristol, UK, poses the question of whether or not researchers can keep their own lives out of their work. She also raises questions about how reflexivity by the researcher can add new dimensions and interpretations to a research project that hitherto may have had limitations when following established norms of academic research. She invites us to explore new and creative ways to approach and represent our research. Psychotherapy Through the Group Process Whitaker and Lierberman Aldline Publishing, 1964 It's been a bit of saga to get this book via a US bookseller, but it finally arrived yesterday. I love working with groups, and the literature about what happens in psychotherapy groups is a wonderful source of inspiration when I reflect on the groups I work with in the commercial setting. How to interpret and respond to people's behaviours and my own reactions, both as participant and facilitator, is a constant source of curiosity to me. I'm also fascinated by the changes that occur either individually or collectively through group work. I have chased this book down because it develops a hypothesis based on what is called a "focal conflict model". Briefly, this is explained in terms of what happens in a group. There is a slowly emerging, shared conflict consisting of two elements: a disturbing motive (a wish) and a reactive motive (a fear). As a result of these two conflicting elements, groups attempt to find a solution. "This is usually when they try to reduce anxiety by alleviating the reactive fears and at the same time, satisfy the disturbing impulse." I don't think this focal conflict model is confined to psychotherapy groups. Building on from this, there is the notion of "role lock", an idea developed by Bogdanov & Elbaum (1978). They posit that one member of a group can get locked into a specific existential role, either of their own volition or through the unconscious forces of all members of the group, including the facilitator. I find this fascinating and my antennae are waving whenever I'm with a group. You can read more about this in their article entitled: "Role Lock: Dealing with Monopolizers, Mistrusters, Isolates, Helpful Hannahs and other assorted characters in group psychotherapy" (International Journal of Group Psychotherapy, 28 (2) pp.247-262). It may be a bit tricky to track this article down, so if anyone has a copy of this journal edition, please let me know. My photocopy of the article is pretty tired! Learning as a Way of Being Peter Vaill Jossey Bass, 1996 I've been chatting with various colleagues over the past few days about the whole notion of leadership and how leaders now need to be "different" from the command and control leaders of earlier generations. They also need to be able to think differently in today's turbulent socio-economic and political climate. The subtitle of this book speaks for itself: "Strategies for survival in a world of permanent white water". More than ever, it would seem, with the unpredictability of what is happening in our world today, leaders need to be able to learn – and learn very quickly – because they are constantly in the position of doing things or making decisions about things that are new to them. When Nietzsche Wept Irving Yalom Basic Books, 1992 Yalom is an inspirational psychoanalyst and author who has written some marvellous reference books and novels based on his work. This novel is described thus in the flyleaf: "As the story unfolds, we see a relationship begotten in duplicity and manipulation evolve into a friendship that becomes both powerfully redemptive for both healer and client." Whether you're interested in psychology or not, Yalom's stories have a magnetic quality that I find inspiring.       © Alison Hodge 2009 Tel: 020 8995 5485