Our series of book recommendations to empower talent and fuel brands.

Why Perpetual recommends it
Brett Bartholomew’s Conscious Coaching, written from his experience coaching elite athletes, argues that the biggest lever in coaching isn’t technical knowledge, it’s the ability to read a person accurately and adapt your communication style to how they actually process feedback and motivation.
Bartholomew introduces a set of practical frameworks for diagnosing communication style and motivational drivers, pushing back on the idea that a single coaching style, however effective for the coach personally, will work equally well across every person on a team.
The book is candid that many coaching failures come from the coach’s ego, imposing a personal style because it’s comfortable for them, rather than doing the harder work of adjusting their approach to fit the person in front of them.
We recommend this book for anyone doing coaching or people leadership work, because it treats communication style as something to diagnose deliberately, rather than assuming what worked for one person will automatically work for the next.
- Effective coaching depends on adapting to the individual, not applying one fixed style
- Communication style and motivational drivers can be diagnosed, not just guessed at
- Coaching failures often stem from the coach’s comfort, not the learner’s needs
- Reading a person accurately is as important as technical coaching knowledge
Before your next coaching conversation, consciously identify how this specific person tends to respond to feedback, directly or gently, in detail or in summary, and adjust your delivery accordingly.
We give this book three and a half out of five stars.