You’ll know by now that I have a new book coming out in September, The Transformational Coach: free your thinking and break through to coaching mastery [insert link].
The title of a book has so much resting on it, not least of which is to grab the potential buyers’ attention and convince them that they really need this book. So I thought you might be intrigued as to how I landed on the title of this book.
UnLearning to Coach
Originally, it was going to be called UnLearning to Coach. Some of my friends and colleagues tell me they wish I had stuck with that. But here’s why I didn’t:
- There is actually no such thing as unlearning – it’s not possible, according to research by David Wilkinson in The Oxford Review Research-based Guide to Unlearning (2018).
- My publisher thought coaches would think it too difficult to unlearn what they have learned, so would not buy the book, if it felt that difficult!
- It needed a bit of explaining as to what I meant by unlearning to coach.
You might argue with all of these. We change behaviour all the time (indeed, that is what coaching is all about, right?!). But we aren’t actually unlearning; we are building on our prior learning, adapting what we learned previously to something more useful.
And coaches aren’t afraid to do things that are difficult! Or are you? Maybe you want some quick fixes, just like the general population would prefer learning and change to be easy.
Anyway, I did decide to listen to the publisher and we started to brainstorm what I really wanted to convey in the book’s content and in the title itself.
We went through many, many iterations, the following are just a few:
- UnLearning to Coach: shedding scripts that get in the way of extraordinary coaching
- The unencumbered coach: unburdening yourself from unhelpful mindsets
- Marginal Gains in Coaching: a field-book for coaches
- The enlightened coach: jettisoning old mindsets to become an extraordinary coach
- The unburdened coach: embrace a new way of being
- The learned coach: shaking off old beliefs to make way for the new
- Embrace your Coaching Superpowers: change your coaching skin
- Blank-sheet coaching:
- Unfettered coaching or the unfettered coach
- Liberated coaching or the liberated coach
- Silencing old scripts
- Free yourself, free your coaching: embrace a new mindset
- Unlock your mindset: how changing old beliefs can help you become an extraordinary coach
- Open your mindset: how unlocking old patterns can bring new energy to your coaching
- The mindset toolkit: how tackling old beliefs can renew your coaching
- Mindset coaching: shake off your old beliefs to help others be extraordinary
- The liberated coach: how tiny shifts in your coaching practice will change the world
- Liberate your coaching superpowers: 83 shifts that will take your coaching to the next level
Liberate your coaching superpowers
At one point, we did land on this last one, “Liberate your coaching superpowers”. Liberate because I wanted you to be free of mindsets that were/are holding you back. But we decided that superpowers didn’t convey the classic, essential, authoritative nature of the book. I still rather like liberate though – now replaced by “free your thinking” because David Clutterbuck describes himself as the Liberated Coach and I didn’t want to step on his toes!
We discussed who the book is aimed at, to try to figure out what you would want from a book. It’s really for people who have been coaching for a while, experts if you like, with practitioners following close behind. What is it that expert coaches are thinking and feeling? Perhaps you feel that you have plateaued in your coaching, become somewhat routinised, having lost a bit of your spark, your edge, maybe operating in your comfort zone rather than stretching yourself.
I wanted you to feel emboldened, empowered, ecstatic even as you read the book, having found some ideas that would take your coaching further faster, towards mastery.
I also knew that the key messages were around:
- Change your mindset and your skillset will follow
- You can make marginal gains, which will make a maximal (transformational) difference to your thinker
We went through words like reframe, unleash, decouple, detach, discard. None of these worked.
I learned that gerunds aren’t a good thing in a title as they aren’t definitive! Who knew?!
More ideas:
- Masterful coaching: a joint endeavour to move beyond known thinking to discover new thinking that energises change [this is my definition of coaching and so I was wondering whether it might be good to include, though it knocked mindset out of the equation]
- Masterful coaching: shift your mindsets, to jointly discover transformative thinking
- Masterful coaching for transformational change: shift the mindsets that keep you and your coaching small
- Masterful coaching for transformational change: shift your mindsets to become more potent
- Potent coaching: Shift your mindsets for transformational change
When you are figuring out your book title, you also need to look up whether there are already books with that title, or people who have claimed something as their brand. So that knocked a few options off the table.
We got there in the end!
We finally landed on The Transformational Coach: free your thinking and break through to coaching mastery. It feels like a strong, original and unique package with a strong promise (free your thinking) and a compelling outcome (coaching mastery). It also keeps it well positioned for coaches looking to reach that next level.
I hope you agree!
I did have a bit of a wobble, just after settling on the title. Nick Bolton of Animas Coaching School, recorded a series of webinars explaining why he thought we should be using the word transformative rather than transformational. I respect Nick enormously, so it knocked me off my perch for a day or two. But I soon got back on it!
So that’s the story of how my book got its name, after many, many iterations. I hope it does grab your attention, by outlining the promise of the book and the outcome you can expect. I really believe that by experimenting with the different mindsets outlined in the book, you will become a more masterful coach, providing a really high quality thinking environment to your thinkers.
