This book is an excellent source for someone who is actually in a leadership position.  It provides all kinds of tools that can help a leader work to understand their situation better and make improvements.  At the end of each chapter, there are worksheets that are meant to help leaders through the processes of learning about their situation, making goals, and planning what they need to do to accomplish said goals.  For each worksheet the authors provide tips to help answer the questions thoroughly and examples of good practices for leaders in the workplace.  They even provide sections for leaders to rate their competencies and outline ways that they will develop these competencies. 

    In addition to the worksheets, there are tools embedded within the chapters.  They give examples of activities that can be done to accomplish goals, tests that can be used to assess a number of relevant topics, and whenever the authors ask the reader to do something, such as make an action plan, they give a thorough example to direct and ease the process.  There are even report cards for leaders to fill out for themselves as reminders of what they need to work on.  Finally, throughout the text the authors use their vast experience to provide anecdotes that illustrate their point and aid comprehension.

            Besides being practical, the book is based on psychological theories and literature.  The authors site a number of important leadership theories that have been developed.  In addition, they site researchers from a number of other areas of psychology, including developmental theorists.  They also used a lot from the literature on coaching.  They used all of their research to develop a theory and model on what they call “Coaching Leadership” (p. 1).  According to the authors, coaching leaders “align beliefs with action, communicate honestly, focus on the future, and relate to others in an open and authentic manner.”  The model that they developed addresses the coaching leader at four different levels.  They say that leading takes place with the self, with others in their team, with the organization, and with the community outside the organization.  Each chapter is devoted to one of these levels of leading.  Within each chapter, the authors take the reader through their model which contains a series of steps for development.  These steps include (p. 10)

            1.  Establishing the coaching relationship
            2.  Collecting and analyzing data
            3.  Processing feedback and planning actions
            4.  Taking action
            5.  Evaluating your progress

The whole model, and in particular these steps, are very developmentally oriented and therefore are extremely relevant to Leadership Central. 

            Throughout the book the authors identify competencies that are needed for each step.  So, it is fairly easy for the reader to see where the competency they are trying to develop is included.  However, even the process itself illustrates some leadership competence that is not explicitly laid out in the competency sections.  In addition, the entire second chapter is devoted to leading one’s self, which is really a direct parallel to Leadership Central’s Self-Management dimension.  Also, the third chapter is devoted to leading a group and is very similar to Leadership Central’s Leading Others dimension.

            This book is extremely practical for people in leadership positions and useful for the developmental process.  It is simple to navigate through and closely tied to a number of Leadership Central’s competencies.  Especially for leaders interested in developing the Self-Management and Leading Others competencies, this book could prove to be instrumental.