Title: Interactional Coaching: Choice-Focused Learning at Work
Author: Michael Harvey
Publisher: Routledge
Price: £16.99
ISBN: 978-0-415-61472-6

Interactional coaching is described in this book as “a new, practical one to one learning approach to help executives make the choices that are right for them and achieve what they want at work”. I’m not sure I’d agree with ‘new’ but the approach described is certainly pragmatic, business-focussed and accessible. The overriding theme choice – how to create it and exercise it to identify and get the result you want. This will strike a chord with those who are familiar with NLP.

Harvey’s interactional coaching approach provides a model for understanding the dynamics of a situation by exploring three interactions:

1) Time - how we relate to our past and future and how that impacts on our present;

2) Self - in relation to our beliefs, values, talents, personality etc. and

3) Others - our social and interpersonal relations. 

These interactions are explored at each stage of the coaching process, described by him as possibilising (identifying what you want to achieve and all the possible choices available), probablising (narrowing down the choices in the light of the resources available and what is realistic) and actualising (implementation of and commitment to action and sustaining change), all of which resonate strongly with the familiar GROW model.

Harvey then moves on to explore several coaching purposes, for example managing transitions, self-confidence and interpersonal competence, which are explained in separate chapters and are brought to life through client case studies. These chapters form a useful source of expertise to dip into for guidance and inspiration in different coaching scenarios.

As well as describing the theoretical model and different coaching situations, he describes the techniques, tools and principles of interactional coaching. Most of these will be familiar to an experienced business coach but nevertheless provide a useful refresh of the ‘toolkit’. For example, take the three types of ‘expert listening’ that correspond to the three stages of the coaching process. Open listening (possibilising) is concerned with exploring, expanding and opening up choice; evidential listening (probablising) is concerned with testing and challenging to identify realistic choices; and conclusive listening is about choosing actions.

In the debate about directive vs. non-directive coaching, Harvey is characteristically pragmatic stating that all types of learning (including skills) are offered but not imposed; and the client’s choice to implement the learning or not takes place in the workplace itself - out of sight of the coach.


Anton Franckeiss is managing director of learning solutions consultancy ASK Europe