Provocative Coaching

A highly practical book that provides a theoretical framework on the workings of provocative coaching for all practitioners.

Provocative Coaching ISBN: 978-1845908577

Provocative Coaching

By Jaap Hollander

RRP: £18.99


Crown House | [email protected]

Coaching

(2)

Purchase Review

A highly practical book that provides a theoretical framework on the workings of provocative coaching for all practitioners. A fresh wind is blowing through the worlds of coaching and psychotherapy! It's a unique new cocktail of humour, warmth and psychological provocation.

Provocative Coaching introduces new and innovative coaching and therapy methods getting us to laugh about our own problems. Coaches and therapists everywhere are throwing off the shackles of humming and nodding! Not only can provocative coaching be highly effective- especially with the so called impossible clients, but it liberates professionals as well as their clients!

This is a book about challenging people in order to help them. It explains in detail how to do Provocative Coaching and the psychological mechanisms, through which the provocative style works. It may seem like quite an unusual way of behaving for a professional coach or therapist however humour is an important aspect. Provocative Coaching is related to paradoxical intention and reverse psychology .

Frank Farrelly, the founding father of Provocative Therapy says about author Jaap Hollander: I am very much impressed with Jaap s book. Most people do get the confrontational aspect of provocative therapy but Jaap is one of the few who also understands how important humour is. It is like listening to a master violinist at work, playing the instrument with great skill and intelligence .


Provocative Coaching is likely to push a few buttons and challenge your coaching capabilities

Although Provocative Coaching was first published in 2012, the content is just as relevant today for those who wish to give their coaching style a makeover. And this is not for the faint hearted as you need to have really good rapport and calibration skills, be comfortable bringing humour and laughter into sessions as well as physically touching your Client. Nothing traditional when using reverse psychology ‘what’s the problem with that?’, to challenge your Client to do their thing even more to an absurd level.

Those familiar with Stephen Gilligan’s three archetypal energies of 1) love / softness/ tenderness 2) humour / flexibility / playfulness and 3) strength / hardness / ferocity will recognize the necessity for the coach to juggle and adjust their stance to best provoke the Client without becoming cynical, sarcastic, cold or plain confrontational.

The technique skilfully used, can reveal hindering patterns and strategies as well as applied to different neurological levels.

However, if you are uncomfortable with a Client leaving feeling confused and irritated, with a delayed response to happy and grateful, you may feel inept. Even the way the book is written literally as a transcript from a 3-day training session, like a play with the trainee actors and Jaap taking the lead, is itself different.

For me the image on the red cover succinctly defines provocative coaching as ‘pulling the donkey’s tail’. A very interesting and stimulating read.


Anonymous

Provocative Coaching by Jaap Hollander

I was really looking forward to reading this book and jumped at the chance to write a review. I have used the provocative approach successfully in the past and was interested in finding out some of the theory behind it. The way in which it is written was incredibly frustrating, almost like attending a workshop by proxy and not at all satisfying thanks to endless transcripts. Jaap’s approach involves a lot of humour and I’m all for that but I’m pretty good at recognising humour when I read it; I know it’s a transcript and don’t need to be told that the audience laughed.

The book re-enforced my belief that the provocative approach can be a very useful tool to facilitate change. When he talks about ‘The Farrelly Factors’ in chapter three, Jaap implies a justification for his approach but I’d have preferred to have been at the workshop, reading the book was hard work! I don’t want to be unfair to the guy as there is a lot of good content, but for me the style of delivery got in the way.


Leave a review

You must be logged in to leave a review.