PRESENCE-BASED COACHING

Effective coaches, like effective leaders, must have the ability to motivate others, grasp complex issues, act with purpose, and provide a compass for others to follow. What is the essential quality that makes coaches and leaders more resilient, resourceful, and authentic?

Presence-Based Coaching offers coaches a hands-on resource for developing the capacities and skills needed to be reliably present in all situations, and shows how to let go of habitual―and often ineffective―ways of responding. As author and leadership expert Doug Silsbee explains, once a coach has mastered the inner moves of directing their own attention, they can work to develop the same capability in their clients. The ability of a coach to facilitate lasting, sustainable development in leaders rests on the presence a coach offers to the coach-client relationship.

This groundbreaking and practical book shows coaches specifically how to develop the quality of presence within themselves and how to enhance their coaching by cultivating it in others. Silsbee examines presence as an essential element in human learning and development and maps out a comprehensive approach to accelerating and deepening the development process. Step by step, he provides concrete and practical tools for building presence, and includes the tools for accessing and using presence in order to coach leaders to become whole, authentic, and self-generative.

Filled with illustrative examples and tested practices organized around mind, body, and heart, Presence-Based Coaching helps to cultivate the capacity to be fully alive, resourceful, and connected to ourselves, our people, and our environment.

Praise for Presence-Based Coaching

“Presence-Based Coaching is a masterful treatise on coaching in the consciousness age. This book brings structure and strategy to accelerating the evolution of leaders.”
―RICHARD BARRETT, author, Liberating the Corporate Soul and Building a Values-Driven Organization

“Silsbee has done it again! Presence-Based Coaching reaches beyond techniques into an exploration of the value inherent in presence itself. Doug’s passion for the territory, combined with insightful exercises and practices, engaged me in a deeply reflective journey about the impact my being―versus my doing―has on the results I seek to create.”
―CHARLES TOMBAZIAN, vice president, Voice of the Customer Office, Avnet Technology Solutions

“Silsbee’s new book is essential reading for educators at any level. He is exquisitely articulate about how learning is enabled through the interaction between people. It is a gift to us that he has so carefully and precisely written about it.”
―ROBERT C. PIANTA, dean, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia

“As a coach and a Buddhist, I love this! It is hard to help others be mindful, if we aren’t. This book offers great ideas on how to do both and can help leaders―and coaches―have better lives.”
―MARSHALL GOLDSMITH, author, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

“This is the field guide for the new frontier of work, offering a solid foundation for authentic human connection and accelerated leader development with simple, relevant practices.”
―DARELYN “DJ” MITSCH, president, The Pyramid Resource Group, and former president, International Coach Federation

“Doug Silsbee has written a powerful guide for those who believe that presence has moved to the forefront as one of the most important qualities that leaders need. This is a must-read for anyone doing the work of developing themselves and others.”
―ALFRED L. COOKE, director, Center for Organizational Performance, Federal Executive Institute