Book review
The Book of Me: Life coach yourself to success
By Barrie Pearson and Neil Thomas
Thorogood, £14.99
ISBN 185418-202-1
One of the 'strings to my bow' is coaching, so I was interested to review The Book of Me. I was wondering how the authors would approach this subject and was curious to see how much I would learn.
I was more than pleasantly surprised. To start with the book is clearly structured and logical. It starts with 'Me First' in Part One, moves on to 'Me at Work and Me PLC', then to 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' and finishes up with 'Action Planning: DIY and Do it Now'. Within these different parts the authors cover just about everything there is to cover. First they guide you through what questions you might ask yourself (to see where you are). They provide worksheets/tables in the book for you to fill in. After all, you need to know where you are before you can decide where you want to go, and once you've decided your goal, knowing where you are helps you to define the steps to get there.
In goal setting they use a well-known tool, namely asking you to write out your ideal obituary and see how far you deviate from that now. The worksheets around financial planning/debt management and savings are particularly good. There is a Personal Financial Management and Wealth Creation Action Plan that is especially useful if you find it difficult to grasp how it all fits together.
The examples are good, as are the metaphors (Chapter One is 'Take stock of your assets: Carry out a personal MOT'). The questions are good too - as I said earlier, I think they have thought of pretty nearly everything. I'm pretty good at thinking up questions, but they have come up with some that I had not thought of asking. So, this isn't just a book for someone who wants a DIY guide, it is also useful for people who are life coaches themselves. Not only for their clients, but also for themselves. A coach also needs to think about their own life and in a sense, coach themselves.
The best parts, for me, were in part two that covered how to do your PR at work ('My brilliant career: up the organisation') and how to set up on your own ('Starting your own business'). Setting up on your own covered all the different ways that one could achieve this including low-risk start up, buying an existing business, buying into a franchise, MBO and MBI. The questions offered for you to ask yourself are very good and indicative of thorough research. There is even a section on finding finance.
It is easy to skim because it is clear where you can find whatever it is you are looking for. So, if you are happy about your health, for instance, and would prefer to work on career matters, it is easy to see what to read.
If there is a down side, it is that it was sometimes almost too simple, telling me things that I already knew (and felt I'd learned at school). And there is repetition, especially between Chapter One and Chapter Eight.
While it can (and does) ask all the right questions, it can't offer the follow-up that live coaching does. I have recommended it to some of the people I coach because I think it is useful as an additional tool. If they go through the book and answer the questions before a session starts, we can spend our time doing a reality check and charting progress or dealing with obstacles, making my coaching better value for my clients.