Fearless Feedback

Dr. Pamela D. McLean

What an outstanding book you have written and what an important contribution to the field of coaching. The 7-step model is crystal clear, the cases are strong illustrations and the templates will be sought after! Bravo to each and every one of you.”

Kevin Cashman

Courageously developing others with caring and direct feedback is both challenging and critical in our hyperactive, driven world. Fearless Feedback gives you the comprehensive and pragmatic tools needed to navigate leadership roles with purpose, clarity and conviction. A great leadership guide for us all!

John Schuster

This book is a real contribution to a part of the coaching process often used, sometimes botched, but in general underutilized for lack of deliberation about the steps, the pitfalls, and the opportunities. As a veteran in the field I found it useful and it made me think anew, and I wish I had access to it when I started coaching.

Sandy Smith

What makes a great coach? Start with a great human, add strong coaching skills, spend countless hours in practice, reflect, adjust, learn. This book is an accelerator created for you by a team of fine human beings who are experienced coaches ever striving to be better. With generosity they give you this boost. Don’t skim the personal insights in the preface. You’ll enjoy the case study with Richard and Greta. The Framework is elegant and actionable. I am blessed to be in relationship with these fine people and this guidebook is a great tool. Enjoy!

Dave Wondra

Whether you are a seasoned coach, just getting started, or working inside organizations, Fearless Feedback is the go-to guidebook for generating and delivering stakeholder feedback. Fearless Feedback provides an in-depth framework to help you get the most out of this important process, and navigate the emotions of all involved.

Dr. Jacqueline Byrd, Ph.D.

This book educates you on how to be a great coach by coaching you. It is deliberate and challenging. If you find yourself reaching for ways to work with difficult clients, get to know Greta, the coach character in this book, and her client Richard. You will have a framework in your pocket that spells success! Key message—you can only take your client as deep as you, yourself, are able to go.

Dr. Beverly Kaye

Changing behavior is a key outcome in any coaching relationship. Who would know if someone changed as a result of your coaching? Stakeholders. Thus, active engagement of stakeholders, and accurate delivery of their suggestions, can make or break the engagement. How to access and translate stakeholder viewpoints is well described and documented with excellent examples throughout this book. I can’t imagine anyone in the coaching profession who would not grow as a result of incorporating these ideas.

I also love that these ideas are the collective thoughts of a team. I can imagine the rich conversations they must have had in bringing their experiences together. Readers are treated with multiple but cohesive perspectives. It’s rare that we see a book written by a team of authors. The diversity of thought that went into their collective thinking makes their suggestions incredibly thorough.

Michael Melcher

Clear, honest and humane feedback is one of the most important tools we have to improve performance and develop leadership. But guess what? We’re human, and feedback is hard – both for the giver as well as the receiver. Feedback is rarely easy and the last thing we want to do is make things worse. The real question is: what are we going to do about this? Into this void step the authors of the book, “Fearless Feedback.” The master coaches who have written this book lay out a step-by-step guide to gathering, delivering and working with feedback. They show you how to do it right. The book is specific and actionable, and is especially noteworthy for the ongoing use of “do this, not that,” examples, as well as the depictions of the un-verbalized conversations that are going on underneath actual feedback conversations. Whether you are a leader, a coach or just a conscious human being, if you are serious about mastering feedback, this book is for you!

Alison Whitmire

How many Master Coaches does it take to write a book that provides a comprehensive framework and illustration of the end-to-end process of collecting and delivering feedback to leaders? Seven, evidently! 360 feedback is (or should be) a staple in every coach’s tool kit. But until reading this book, I’d never seen such a clear step-by-step process of how to do it or a complete examination of all of the factors to consider. And that’s not even what I love most about it.

This book fully explores the critical importance of attuning and attending to the emotional experience of the leader being coached throughout the feedback process. The feedback process can be a mine field for any coach who doesn’t mindfully attend to the internal experience of their coachee. The authors have adroitly addressed specifically how to work with the emotions of leaders to avoid the hidden emotional landmines that can be obstacles to the feedback process.

If you are gathering feedback for your leaders (and if you aren’t, you probably want to be), buy this book! It’ll walk you through the entire process, providing tips and techniques for how to make it all work to the leader’s benefit – and avoid the mines!

Jenny Rogers

Everyone understands in theory that leaders should get feedback from the key people around them. It sounds so simple, the coach just does a few interviews and writes a report, job done! In practice it needs careful preparation from coach and client, and exquisite ability to listen and to debrief in a way that the client can hear. This book does all of this – and more. It is clear, well written and has the authentic feel of real life. Every executive coach should read it.

Ann E. Boyum

A Must Read!! Every leadership & executive coach offering Stakeholder Feedback interviews and insight debriefs, no matter what level of experience, will benefit from this. The Transmitter metaphor offering signal strength and alignment to goal is brilliant! The sample coaching vignettes not only bring the guidebook tools to life, they make it real!

Lynn Schoener

The corporate landscape is littered with wounded relationships, injured by well-meaning but poorly implemented multi–rater feedback initiatives. This competent and compassionate team of coaches have co-authored a book that will expand the consciousness of both the givers and receivers of feedback. The realistic, well-articulated vignettes help practitioners recognize and prepare for the psychological impact of stakeholder feedback ~ the reactions, projections, and emotions that accompany even the best processes. Because feedback is as much about the giver as the receiver, Fearless Feedback aims to help create a field of trust from which change, even healing, can happen.

Richard Leider

“So much in this book resonates with me. Brimming with nuggets of purposeful insight, these master coaches deliver a masterful feedback guidebook for both leaders and coaches.”

Lyndon Rego

Senior leaders often operate to their detriment without much feedback from stakeholders. This is a practical guide developed by a team of master coaches for how a coach can work effectively with a senior leader to close the feedback gap. It is essential reading for anyone coaching a senior leader.

Redia Anderson

A timely and urgently needed book for leadership coaches. It lays bare the essential practices for gathering and delivering meaningful stakeholder feedback to foster deep positive change within the system of relationships where the leader operates.