Book review – Mentor Coaching by Clare Norman

Written for coaches by a coach, Clare Norman’s Mentor Coaching is a great addition to your book collection.

Clare is very honest about her motivation to help further professionalise the coaching industry and her love for the job is obvious as your turn each page. In this clear and practical guide, she makes a convincing case as she details the many reasons why those within the profession should be undertaking mentor coaching alongside supervision.

Clare is quick to point out that mentor coaching and supervision are two different, but very complementary development tools available to coaches. While supervision attends to the ethics side and keeping us safe, mentor coaching offers coaches the all too valuable opportunity to keep sharp and fit for purpose.

Mentor coaching focuses on skills building and enables the coach to receive competency-based feedback so they can concentrate on their potential blind spots, strengths and stretch areas. This area of development offers richer insights and as Clare contends, is one of the most individualised, tailored forms of CPD that you can invest in because it goes straight to the heart of who you are as coach.

Relevant to coaches of all levels of experience, the book is split into two parts with the first half looking at how to develop as a coach, using mentor coaching. The second half is great for those who might want to add mentor coaching to their portfolio and tackles working towards becoming a mentor coach to support the development of other coaches.

I think readers will find this book useful because it encourages some self-reflection and if you are not already benefitting from using mentor coaching, then it will make you ask yourself why not.

Clare has fleshed out her arguments well and makes the book personable by using a chatty, friendly style. She neatly explores the importance of presence and how you show up in the room and has done justice to why it is so vital coaches keep their skills honed for the benefit of the coachee or thinker as she refers to them.

For anyone who is looking to deepen their skillset, then mentor coaching as a developmental tool offers a depth of learning that will add unquestionable value to any coach training or specialist courses you sign up for in the future. Its purpose is to constructively look at how effectively you are coaching in line with professional competency guidelines as well as highlight less-used abilities and really focus on sharpening your professional edge.

The book is quick and easy to read, and Clare has been dutiful in filling the book with informative case studies as well as sharing a lot of sound advice to get started and help your business and yourself to grow.

If you are serious about being the best coach you can be, then as Clare maintains, mentor coaching goes beyond credentialing and should be embraced as a lifelong commitment to learning and development.