PIC No. 113: Pails in Comparison (March 27, 2026)
• Title: The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever
• Author: Michael Bungay Stanier
• Publisher: Page Two (Feb. 29, 2016, 264 pages)
• Management Bucket #9 of 20: The Team Bucket
Welcome to Issue No.113 of PAILS IN COMPARISON, the value-added sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—shorter reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.
You call yourself a “coach”—but honest, now—how many coaching books have you actually read?
Really. This is not a guilt trip—but I hope to inspire you on your coaching journey. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “Beware the man of a single book.” To borrow from other gurus, “The average coach has only read one book on coaching. That’s why they’re average.” Yikes!
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis writes, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.” Read my review of Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, by Jim Mattis and Bing West (my 2019 Book-of-the-Year).
So here are 27 books on coaching:
· How to be coachable.
· How to coach.
· How to create a coaching practice.
BOOK #1. The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. (Order from Amazon.)
When I reviewed this book in 2016 (Your Weekly Staff Meeting Issue No. 338), I named it to my Top-10 book list. Now looking back—I wondered why I did not name it my book-of-the-year? (But then I'd have to rescind the award to author Gary Keller.) The Coaching Habit has sold more than one million copies—and even more shocking—as of today, 992 people have read my Amazon review.
Read my Amazon review, “The Best Coaching Question in the World.” I started my review with this: “Oh, my. Memo to Every Person I’ve Pretended to Coach or Mentor: I’m so, so sorry! Honest!”
BOOK #2. (Part 2 of 2): Good Coach Bad Coach: Build A Practice Where You Belong, by Simon Harling (Read my Part 1 of 2 review here. Order from Amazon.)
Oh, my. There is way too much wisdom and practical street-smart coaching counsel in this short book. You’ll love the format: niche topics just one-page-or-less. Lots of white space. No wasted words. You’ll think about this:
“The rule of two feet states, ‘If at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing—use your two feet and move to someplace more to your liking.'"
In the author’s “Good Coach Bad Coach Manifesto,” he outlines the following behaviors of a bad coach:
• “A bad coach lives in the land of excuses, preferring shortsightedness to the uncertainty of possibility.”
• “A bad coach is busy accepting all comers and all problems, creating dependency in return for money.”
• “A bad coach seeks expertise.” He explains: “Many of my conference and meeting attendances were driven by the need to keep my job or collect enough brownie points for professional re-accreditation. What is the thinking behind putting a speaker panel—a bunch of overachievers—in a room with the rest of us, anyway?” (Read more about the “super chickens!”)
• “A bad coach has an expert problem.” The author adds, “It’s not what you know that matters; it’s what the person you are teaching learns. That’s the problem.”
And think about this:
“A bad coach doesn’t trust the process.” Noting Sal Khan’s TED talk, “Let’s teach for mastery, not test scores,” Harlan preaches, “Artificially constraining how long it takes to complete a task (school years) and accepting a variable outcome (grades) leads us to believe that some children are better than others. Far more useful is it believe that all children are better than we think. Constrain the outcome, not the process.”
BOOK #3. What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Discover the 20 Workplace Habits You Need to Break, by Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter (Read my review.)
2013 Book-of-the-Year The 20 workplace habits—so convicting! But here’s the good news: Goldsmith says that these faults are simple to correct. Yet there’s also bad news: “The higher you go [in your career], the more your problems are behavioral.”
BOOK #4. The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, by Michael Bungay Stanier. (Read my review.)
2020 Book-of-the-Year
The author (see Book #1) writes, “Your job is to make your coaching an everyday interaction.” He quotes a colleague, “Coaching is no longer an event. It’s a way of being with each other.” And get this: “Coaching is no longer a one-off, occasional, ‘come into my office so I can coach you’ way of managing someone.”
For your current crisis (and the next crisis, and the next crisis…), The Advice Trap is absolutely the first book you and your team should read. Now. Today. The author’s coaching principles are easy-to-remember:
· Be Lazy (“…about jumping in and solving other people’s problems for them. Just stop it!”)
· Be Curious (Tame your Advice Monster by “staying curious and managing the process of the conversation.” This is the essential principle.)
· Be Often (You can be more coach-like outside of the “hierarchical, formal event.” Think meetings, phone calls, Zoom calls, email—all forms of communication.)
Bonus: View this 14-minute TEDx Talk, “How to Tame Your Advice Monster,” by Michael Bungay Stanier (March 13, 2020). It’s meaty, funny, and might be your best use of 14 minutes this week!
BOOK #5. Christian Coaching, Second Edition: Helping Others Turn Potential into Reality (Completely revised and updated, Sept. 29, 2009), by Gary Collins, PhD. (Order from Amazon.)
This is embarrassing! In my book, Mastering Mistake-Making, I titled Part 4, “Everyone Needs a Coach, Especially Leaders Who Endorse Coaching Books!” Yes, back in 2001, Dr. Collins asked me to endorse his book, which was an honor. One problem: I talked a good game about “every leader needs a coach,” but I did not walk the talk. (See Book #6 and read my four confessions.)
BOOK #6. Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—and What I Learned (The 10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. (Read more.) Here’s a taste:
· Mistake #12: Talking the Coach Talk, But Not Walking It - Yikes! I recently learned that I am an Advice Monster!
· Mistake #13: Every Leader Needs a Coach—Except Me! - I squandered way too many years treading water without a coach.
· Mistake #14: Ignoring My Annoying Workplace Habits - My “inner compass of correct behavior had gone out of whack.”
· Mistake #15: Assuming I Was Good at Getting Feedback - The “sin of niceness” in my nonprofit circles set a very low bar.
Download the table of contents here and read more.
BOOK #7. Growing Weeders Into Leaders: Leadership Lessons from the Ground Level, by Jeff McManus. (Read my review.)
If your organization has grass (and/or weeds), trees, a front door, or a large campus (think camps, schools, churches, headquarters, or your reception desk), this is a must-read. When McManus accepted the job at Ole Miss, he asked for a direct reporting relationship to then Chancellor Robert C. Khayat, who said his mother mentored him to “make a place look loved.” The chancellor often stopped on a walk across campus to pull a weed or two—“weeding by example,” he labeled his leadership style.
RESOURCE #8. Video: “Everybody Needs a Coach” (from CliftonStrengths and The Gallup Organization (2 minutes). (See also Mistake #17 in Mastering Mistake-Making.)
View the video,
"Everybody Needs a Coach"
(2 minutes).
BOOK #9. For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching, by Michael M. Lombardo and Robert W. Eichinger. (Order from Amazon.)
Coaching People on Competences! No one team member has the whole package. Each of us has glaring weaknesses we ignore or try to mask. The leadership literature says we must build on our strengths and make our weaknesses irrelevant. Easy to do, until you glance over this book that details more than 100 competencies, performance dimensions, and career stallers and stoppers. This add-water-and-stir book is amazingly simple, yet profound.
BOOK #10. Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career, by David Novak and Jason Goldsmith (Read my review.)
Sorry to all my coaching and consulting friends—this brilliant book may put you out of business!
BOOK #11. A Year With Peter Drucker: 52 Weeks of Coaching for Leadership Effectiveness, by Joseph A. Maciariello. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
From the book: "In Week 1, we begin with a consultation Drucker had in early 2002 with senior executives of World Vision International. His subject was `What Do Effective Leaders Do to Create High-Performing Organizations?'" My favorite Drucker insights from Week 1:
--"The only definition of a leader is someone with followers."
--"When you do it, do it your way, what works for you. Do not try to be anybody else."
--"Leadership is an achievement of trust."
"No two leaders are alike," Peter Drucker said. "Some are very gregarious, some are very aloof, some are charmers, and others are like dead mackerel. Some are communicators, and some praise, and others many never praise. They all have two things in common: they get things done, and you can trust them."
BOOK #12. Tales from the Top: 10 Crucial Questions from the World's #1 Executive Coach, by Graham Alexander (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
Action Items: "Give it away. Identify three areas of responsibility and ten places you are involved to give away."
Leadership Notes: "Whenever you have a grievance, only take it to somebody who can fix it. Only have conversations with people who can affect things positively."
BOOK #13. Ruthless Consistency: How Committed Leaders Execute Strategy, Implement Change, and Build Organizations That Win, by Michael Canic. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
The author says that “constructive accountability and compassion are not mutually exclusive.” My suggestion: his five powerful principles for holding team members constructively accountable should be posted on every office wall (and visible during Zoom calls!). He urges all leaders and managers to change their mindsets: “You’re Not a Manager; You’re a Coach” (Chapter 11). He preaches, “Look in the mirror, Coach. It starts with you.”
BOOK #14. The 365 Day Leader: Recalibrate Your Calling Every Day, by Dick Daniels. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.) Yes...365 days of leadership wisdom, including:
Day 3: Leadership Delusion! “Have You Ever Had a Coach? The leadership delusion is to assume everyone needs a coach except you.”
Day 161: I'm Leading. What could go wrong?
"Do yourself and your team and your organization a favor - get a leadership coach and write your leadership opus."
BOOK #15. Coach Wooden One-on-One: Inspiring Conversations on Purpose, Passion and the Pursuit of Success, by John Wooden and Jay Carty. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
Coach Wooden’s 2 Sets of 3:
· Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t steal.
· Don’t whine. Don’t complain. Don’t make excuses.
BOOK #16. How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
On the last day of class each year, Prof. Christensen discussed three questions with his Harvard Business School students. Word got around and he was then invited to give the talk to the entire study body at the 2010 graduation ceremonies. Next, Karen Dillon, then editor of Harvard Business Review, asked him to write the article, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” for HBR. The result: this powerful book.
On keeping commitments and telling the truth, read why Christensen says, “100 Percent of the Time Is Easier Than 98 Percent of the Time.”
BOOK #17. Leading Me, by Steve A. Brown (Read my review.)
Steve Brown notes that there is “the temptation for stewardship to become an idol. This usually manifests itself in an insatiable drivenness toward more activity, more busyness and more accomplishment. Ironically, this kind of behavior in a leader is often applauded and encouraged by boards, churches and employers. They are impressed by and thankful for the output that often seems to accompany driven people and leaders.” Discuss!
BOOK #18. The Softer Side of Leadership: Essential Soft Skills That Transform Leaders and the People They Lead, by Eugene B. Habecker. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
The author quotes Henri Nouwen about blind spots: "The interruption…forced me to enter the basement of my soul and look directly at what was hidden there.”
BOOK #19. Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can’t Afford to Miss, by David Cottrell. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
What if every person on your team had a Monday Morning management mentor for the next eight Mondays? That's the idea in this book and in less than 100 pages, David Cottrell, a management consultant, shows you how to do it.
"Buckets and Dippers” is the topic for Monday Morning #7. "As a leader your job is to keep everyone's bucket filled. You are the Chief Bucket-Filler, and the best way to fill buckets is with excellent communication."
BOOK #20. The Top 10 Leadership Conversations in the Bible: Practical Insights From Extensive Research on Over 1,000 Biblical Leaders, by Steve Moore. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
--“Pride hides from the consciousness of leaders behind a mask of overconfidence. Overconfidence isn’t just annoying to followers. It is dangerous for leaders.”
--Did you ever read this parenthetical note in Numbers 12:3? “(Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.)”
--“I find it easier to admit my lack of patience than my lack of humility.”
There’s more from Moore:
--He references Larry Osborne’s insights: “The journey to accidental Phariseeism begins with a blind spot, not a sin spot.”
--“Busyness is one of the most common ways to reinforce leadership status, so survival and status become symbiotic, to everyone’s detriment. The leader thinks, I must be important or I wouldn’t be so busy.”
BOOK #21. Mentoring Moments with Myself: Letters to My Younger Self About Life, Faith, Love and Leadership, by Michelle Hoverson (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
What a brilliant idea. Write letters to your younger self: counsel, thoughts, reflections. Hold nothing back. And thus inspire other leaders to write “Dear Younger Me” letters. (There are blank pages at the end of every short chapter.) Her insights abound:
“In an effort to avoid mistakes, you will want to retreat from making daring and bold moves. When you find yourself deliberating too long or waiting for one more sign from God, you will risk missing the miraculous if you choose safety and don’t go up the mountain.”
BOOK #22. Legacy: 60 Life Reflections for the Next Generation, by Steve Macchia. (Read Jason Pearson’s review. Order from Amazon.)
The author wrote 60 life lessons upon turning 60. (John Maxwell postponed writing Leadership Gold until he was 60. Catch the theme here?) I inspired my son, Jason (not yet 60!), to review Macchia’s mentoring book.
BOOK #23. This. Customizable Journal: 52 Ways to Share Your World With Those You Love, by Jason Pearson and Doug Fields. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
If you’re a parent or a grandparent and you were (sadly) hit by a bus tomorrow—and exited this life prematurely, what words, wisdom, and wit would be remembered and treasured by your children and grandchildren?
This creative book is beautifully designed as a tool (really a treasure) for parents and grandparents to think, write, and then pass along to each child or grandchild. This gem prompts you to share meaningful messages on 52 topics in a fill-in-the-blanks journal approach. It’s so creative!
BOOK #24. Stay Sane in an Insane World: How to Control the Controllables and Thrive, by Greg Harden with Steve Hamilton. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
With 37 short chapters, this is a no-brainer resource for the next 37 weeks of your weekly staff meetings. I couldn’t find any fluff in any of the 37 relevant topics. Your coworkers and direct reports will love this book too.
Greg Harden’s insights will enrich your leadership and your one-on one coaching. (If you’re a wanna-be author, you’ll borrow the book’s brilliant format.)
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Wait...what? Pearson! You've only listed 24 books on coaching! What's with that?
Me: Sorry! I will check with my coach and remind him to inspire me to read more books asap!
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PAILS IN COMPARISON: Reading this book reminded me of several other must-read books in the Team Bucket, plus other buckets/core competencies.
3 MORE! Read my reviews of three more coaching books—recently reviewed in Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews (Issue # 676) and over at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog:
[ ] BOOK #25: Ten Marks of a Coachable Leader, by Gary P. Rohrmayer. (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
[ ] BOOK #26: Coaching the Other Way: How to Effectively Coach and Be Coached, by JD Pearring and Brian Burman (Read my review. Order from Amazon.)
[ ] BOOK #27 (Read Part 1 of 2): Good Coach Bad Coach: Build A Practice Where You Belong, by Simon Harling (Read my review. Order from Amazon.) See Part 2 of 2 above (Book #2).
BREAKING NEWS: 1 MORE!
BONUS BOOK! Just as we were going to press, we learned about this new book coming in April. (Kindle version is available April 1, 2026.) It's now on my read-and-review list. (Watch for the audio version also from Libro.)
Lessons From the Bench: Unlocking the Impact of Bench Players on Teams and in Organizations, by Brandon Bakke. Pre-order from Amazon. (Note: the author, an educator and former Fresno State University basketball player, is the nephew of Dennis Bakke, author of my 2006 book-of-the-year, Joy at Work.)
About Brandon Bakke: "Drawing from more than 30 years in athletics, education, and leadership, Bakke shares nine practical lessons that reveal how those outside the spotlight can drive culture, strengthen teams, and create lasting success."
MORE RESOURCES:
• John Pearson’s Buckets Blog
• Subscribe: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews
• John Pearson’s book reviews on Amazon
• Management Buckets website
• Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations Blog
Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Pails in Comparison Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 100+ blogs posted (between 2022 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.
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