4.2.5 Annotated Bibliography—Mentoring

Ambrose, L. (1998). A mentor’s companion. Chicago: Perrone-Ambrose.

A Mentor’s Companion is a compendium of action and reflection about mentoring in business and service industries. Its seven brief chapters are designed to help individuals improve job performance in collaboration with colleagues, supervisors, senior executives, and peers. Ambrose developed the book from application and thoughtful experimentation during two decades of local, national, and international consulting. He draws on examples from the finance, health care, retail, publishing, manufacturing, and a host of service industries to provide valuable insights and strategies. Although the title specifies “mentoring,” the author may be considered a practitioner of coaching in the sense of learning improvement rather than mainly growth-oriented mentoring, as it is usually defined in Process Education.

Daloz, L. A. (1999). Mentor: Guiding the journey of adult learners. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Daloz approaches mentoring from an adult development perspective and bases his strategies and recommendations on extensive life experience as a mentor. He provides a personal sense of the promises, joys, problems, and contradictions endemic to mentoring. The book includes many practical vignettes that capture the nature of mentoring as a process as well as the social and emotional experiences that often occur during a mentoring relationship.

Spears, L. C. (Ed.). (1995). Reflections on leadership: How Robert K. Greenleaf’s theory of servant leadership influenced today’s top management thinkers. New York: Wiley.

Spears brings together a set of authors with varying perspectives on Greenleaf’s 1977 book Servant Leadership (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press) in which he first articulated his vision of servant-leadership. The influence of Greenleaf, the “grandfather” of the modern empowerment movement in business leadership, has steadily increased. Greenleaf describes true leaders as those who lead by serving others, thus empowering others to reach their full potential. He sees the ideal leader as one who transforms and integrates an organization; a steward with a commitment to the growth of people and the building of community. Spears’ volume is one of the more comprehensive sources dedicated to assessment of the servant leadership philosophy.

Stoddard, D. A., & Tamasy, R. (2003). The heart of mentoring: Ten proven principles for developing people to their fullest potential. Colorado Springs: NavPress.

Stoddard and Tamasy explore how, in mentoring relationships, giving often involves receiving, and receiving involves giving. The volume represents mentoring as a process that gets its power from the mentor’s helping others to develop their own values and priorities by sharing aspects of his or her own life. There is no definite formula or agenda, but in the natural course of a well-focused and meaningful relationship, mentors provide life-changing facilitation to their mentees.

Stone, F. M. (1999). Coaching, counseling & mentoring: How to choose & use the right tools to boost employee performance. New York: AMACOM American Management Association.

Stone addresses three crucial professional roles and associated sets of tools to help managers improve the learning, adjustment, and growth of employees. Coaching tools, such as ways to gather information, develop active listening, and improve awareness, can be used when individuals need assistance in engaging in new types of learning to improve their work or their lives. Counseling tools aimed at helping to fix poor performance become essential when people experience emotional, social, or other barriers that must be overcome to make progress in learning and/or growth. Mentoring tools, which enable top performers to excel, facilitate growth-oriented change that is independently desired by individuals. The focus of this resource is on helping readers to improve in skills related to the use of each of these three roles to address change and growth in workplace performance.

Whitmore, J. (2002). Coaching for performance: Growing people, performance and purpose. Naperville, IL: Brealey.

This handbook helps with learning the skill and the art of good coaching to unlock people’s potential to maximize their own performance. The author advises avoiding a “blame culture” and recommends fostering empowered performance. The book contains examples of effective questions for generating awareness and individual responsibility. New sections cover motivation and building self-esteem through coaching, feedback and feed-forward, and a specific chapter addresses learning and enjoyment. Whitmore provides strong tools and insights about enhancement of learning and improvement of performance.

Whitworth, L., Kimsey-House, H.., & Sandahl, P. (1998). Co-active coaching: New skills for coaching people toward success in work and life. Palo Alto: Davies-Black.

For professional coaches, as well as those wanting to integrate coaching skills into their consulting practice, “co-active coaching” presents a collaborative approach for client and coach. The book offers a detailed look at the fundamental principles, skills, and practices critical to coaching success. Consulting Psychologists Press (CPP) is a large purveyor of tests, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and of supporting books that help practitioners interpret and apply test data. CPP offers a “Coaching Report for Leaders,” which is based on a standardized and validated instrument that yields scores for skills in self-management, team-building, problem solving, and other areas in which individuals can benefit from coaching and mentoring.

Williams, P., & Davis, D. C. (2002). Therapist as life coach: Transforming your practice. New York: Norton.

Life coaching (or personal coaching) is the second biggest consulting industry after management consulting. Therapists are well positioned to move into this rapidly growing field since they are already experts at listening, encouraging, and facilitating change. Coaching allows therapists to use their current training with a wide population of clients who are not “suffering mental illness,” but who rather seek to maximize their life potential. Becoming a coach usually requires only a little additional fine-tuning and specific skill building. This book is designed for the therapist who wishes to enter the coaching field.

Zachary, L. J. (2000). The mentor’s guide: Facilitating effective learning relationships. New York: Wiley.

Lois Zachary is a specialist in adult development and learning, and principal of a consulting firm. She presents mentoring as a learning journey in which the mentor and mentee are companions. By using the worksheets and exercises in the book, managers, teachers, and leaders in any setting can successfully navigate the learning journey.

Zeus, P., & Skiffington, S. (2002). The coaching at work toolkit: A complete guide to techniques and practices. New York: McGraw-Hill.

This resource book is a toolkit of coaching tools and psychology-based techniques. It is also a guide to understanding the practice of coaching and applying the theories and language associated with it. Through the use of case studies, practical instructions, and application guidelines, the authors have provided models, principles and techniques that enable professional coaches to achieve what they describe as “breakthrough results.” This book builds upon the authors’ first general coaching reference, The Complete Guide to Coaching at Work.