Unleashed! Expecting Greatness and Other Secrets of Coaching for Exceptional Performance

Gregg Thompson with Susanne Biro
SelectBooks (2007)
ISBN 9781590791134
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (6/07)


As everybody in the Human Resources field knows all too well, it is time-consuming to find new talent and quite expensive to keep hiring new people all the time. That is why the idea presented by Gregg Thompson and Susanne Biro in “Unleashed!” should prove invaluable to people who are in a managerial/coaching position, regardless of the size of their company. They will show you how to expect greatness, which should open a wealth of opportunities for you and people who work with you.

If the reader is expecting another step-by-step, how-to guide, I would highly recommend he or she picks up another book. This book does not follow such an approach, but rather teaches one the process of becoming the kind of a person that other people would want to receive coaching from. 

Thompson and Biro lead the reader through three principles essential to coaching: Earning the Right to Coach, A Perfect Partnership and Dangerous Conversations. Although this book is not a step-by-step guide, as I’ve already mentioned, it still provides many practical tools and thought-provoking sections. If you want to make sure this is the right book for you, just check out chapter 12. If you can agree with it, buy a copy and I am certain that it will drastically change your approach to life in general as well as your approach to leadership and coaching.

I found this book an enlightening read, written in a fluid, easy-to-follow and easy-to-understand style. My favorite parts were the “Try This” sections, which I found applicable not only to the work situations, but quite often to the general life. The 60 Big Coaching Questions found in Chapter 12 were truly eye-opening and I would have bought this book just for those pages. There are also some great photographs, notably the one on page 98 (and no, I am not going to tell you what is in it!), that complement the writing very well.

Overall I found “Unleashed!” to be a provocative read that delivers. I surely hope a similar description (provocative, but delivers…) would be used for anybody who reads it and applies it to his or hers approach to coaching.

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