'This monumental book is the synthesis of nearly 35 years of research and practice in psychoanalysis, top executives consulting and training ,individual/group coaching. The reader enjoys a fireworks of intelligence, culture, theoretical rigour and practical robustness, all this elegantly written in simple words and fun reading. The author also shares with us his emotions, reflections, interrogations and real-time clinical decisions during coaching. A 'must read' for coaches, reflective executives and academics.'
-Georges Trepo, EMERITUS PROFESSOR, HEC Paris
In this book Manfred Kets de Vries empties out the overflowing minds of executive coaches, so that they can overcome their anxieties and doubts and see what was right there in front of them all along: the coaching relationship and all the dynamics at play there. I heartily recommend this book to all professional coaches who want to deepen and explore their own coaching relationships. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, reading this magnificent text you will not cease from exploring your coaching relationships and at the end of all your exploring you will arrive where you started and know the place for the first time.'
-Erik de Haan, Director of the Ashridge Centre for Coaching, Ashridge Business School & Professor of Organisation Development and Coaching, VU University, Amsterdam
Often, we are so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to understand why we do what we do. Once more, Manfred Kets de Vries takes us on a journey into our personal interior to help us to become more reflective practitioners. This book is a 'must read' for anyone interested in leadership coaching for personal and professional transformation.
-Soumitra Dutta, Anne and Elmer Lindseth Dean and Professor of Management
Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University
'This book is an absolute must for executives, coaches, and HR and learning and development professionals. An executive will find cues for exploring her or his inner theater. A coach will be challenged to evaluate her or his practice. An HR or learning and development professional will be better prepared for making educated choices about facilitating coaching interventions and managing the company's pool of coaches. Manfred Kets de Vries has once again given all of us an opportunity to think and talk about what really matters for human beings in modern organizations.'
-Professor Konstantin Korotov, PhD. Director of the Center for Leadership Development Research, ESMT European School of Management and Technology, Berlin
There are hundreds of books on coaching in general, fewer books specifically on leadership coaching and merely a handful on leadership coaching using the psychodynamic approach. Kets de Vries in his latest book skillfully uses the interplay of conflicting emotional forces to provide an excellent guide to leadership coaching which can be considered as groundbreaking.
-Vaseehar Hassan PhD, Advisor and Board Member, Guidance Investments, Malaysia
In our fast-paced world executives are struggling with what it means to be a leader and their coaches are equally puzzled with understanding how to help their clients develop as leadership talents. Manfred Kets de Vries explores these two interdependent topics to help both fields develop new perspectives. Mindful Leadership Coaching meets the needs of coaches in recognising the psychological challenges facing business leaders around the world. Manfred's advice on dealing with psychopathic leaders should be in every career handbook because it is critically valuable to anyone in or aspiring to the executive suite. Combining his long experience in coaching SOB executives with his knowledge of psychology he offers powerful insights that could literally save people's careers and more importantly their self-esteem.
-Professor Randel S. Carlock, Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Leadership, Wendel International Centre for Family Enterprise
So far, apart from Manfred Kets de Vries, no one has described so lucidly emotionally and profoundly the inner lives of leaders and the paths of their development. This book will become absolutely indispensable for both coaches and executives. It invites us into the usually inaccessible atelier/workshop of leadership coaching where paramount changes take place. Case studies abound in this book and they allow the reader to not only live through the experience of the joint work of a coach and coachee, but they also allow one to change oneself. The psychodynamic approach to achieving real personal and organizational changes is portrayed in great detail and it opens for us a whole Universe of inexhaustible opportunities and resources aimed at professional growth.
-Andrey Vladimirovich Rossokhin, Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Department of Psychoanalysis and Business Consulting at National Research University Higher School of Economics (NRU HSE)