Coaching guide
Essential bibliography and useful links
Books and resources to explore coaching, change, groups and teams
A useful bibliography guides reading and helps you choose where to begin.
This selection brings together texts on coaching, change and work with groups and teams, alongside books that have personally accompanied Izamara.
The different reading paths are separated to make each title’s role clearer.
Explore the guide
Which question would you like to start with?
You can choose just one book, based on what you want to explore today.
Handbooks offer a map of coaching; texts on change help you observe choices and behaviours; references on groups and teams explore design and facilitation.
You can start with the foundations, change, work with groups or the books that offer a closer understanding of Izamara’s voice.
READING AND PRACTICE
A book broadens the picture.
Ideas become truly useful when tested against experience, context and the concrete questions you are living with.
Foundations of coaching
THE COMPLETE HANDBOOK OF COACHING
Elaine Cox, Tatiana Bachkirova, David Clutterbuck
The most comprehensive text in this selection.
It brings together theoretical traditions, approaches, practical contexts and professional questions, showing that coaching is more complex than a single method.
Why read it
Helpful for anyone seeking a critical map of the field, wanting to compare different perspectives and understand how coaching is applied in different settings.
It is not the lightest book to begin with.
COACHING FOR PERFORMANCE
John Whitmore
One of the books that helped spread modern coaching, particularly through the GROW model.
It connects the goal, the actual situation, options and commitment to action.
Why read it
It helps explain how a conversation can have structure without becoming rigid.
Read it as a historical and practical reference, without turning a useful model into a formula applied identically to everyone.
THE COACHING HABIT
Michael Bungay Stanier
It starts with seven questions and a practical suggestion: reduce the urge to offer advice and solutions immediately.
The text is short, accessible and mainly directed at everyday and managerial conversations.
Why read it
A good introduction to the value of questions and listening.
It shows concretely how a well-formed question can change the pace and quality of a conversation.
Change, choice and action
IMMUNITY TO CHANGE
Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey
The book explores a common situation: sincerely wanting change while continuing to repeat the same behaviours.
The authors show how competing commitments and deeply held beliefs can protect the current situation even when we say we want to change it.
Why read it
It helps avoid reducing every difficulty to a lack of willpower.
Useful when someone knows their goal but something keeps drawing them back in the previous direction.
DESIGNING YOUR LIFE
Bill Burnett, Dave Evans
Applies design thinking to personal and professional choices.
Instead of seeking one definitive answer, it proposes building possibilities, prototypes and experiments from which to gather information.
Why read it
Particularly useful in career transitions and moments with several plausible directions.
It encourages testing a possibility in reality before giving it the weight of your whole life.
Groups, facilitation and teams
THE ART OF GATHERING
Priya Parker
The book starts with an often overlooked question: why are we bringing these people together?
It explores intention, invitations, boundaries, opening, facilitation and the closing of gatherings.
Why read it
Useful for people designing groups, events, workshops or shared experiences who want to go beyond logistics alone.
It offers valuable criteria for bringing intention, shape and quality to how people meet.
THE SKILLED FACILITATOR
Roger Schwarz
A text for people who actively support groups, meetings and decision-making processes.
It examines the facilitator’s role, assumptions influencing their intervention and conditions encouraging participation, learning and shared responsibility.
Why read it
It helps explain that facilitation goes beyond distributing speaking time or keeping to a schedule.
A more demanding read, suited to anyone wishing to deepen their practice.
LEADERSHIP TEAM COACHING
Peter Hawkins
Presents team coaching as work directed at the team as a whole, its internal relationships, shared goals and the context in which it operates.
Introduces a systemic perspective and a programme that develops over time.
Why read it
Especially helpful for understanding why team coaching differs from a Team Experience, a workshop or a single business day.
Clarifies the depth, continuity and systemic perspective characterising this work.
Books that have accompanied Izamara
The titles in this section appear in Izamara’s book and help explain some roots of her language, metaphors and personal journey.
They belong to her history as a reader and show cultural and emotional influences that have accompanied her path.
PUOI GUARIRE LA TUA VITA
Louise Hay
Izamara describes encountering this book in adolescence. It nurtured her interest in self-love, inner dialogue and affirmations.
Why read it
It helps identify one of the cultural and emotional roots of her voice. Read it as a personal development work, with a critical perspective when it addresses health and wellbeing.
L’ALCHIMISTA
Paulo Coelho
A novel built around the journey, choices, signs and the search for personal direction.
It has accompanied Izamara since she was young.
Why read it
Its value in this bibliography is narrative and symbolic.
Its metaphors offer a simple way to question desires, fears and life transitions.
MANUALE DI TRAINING AUTOGENO
Bernt Hoffmann
Izamara connects this book with an early shared experience with her adoptive father involving breathing, relaxation and attention to the body.
Why read it
It helps explain how her interest in presence and self-regulation practices began.
Relaxation practices always require attention to personal circumstances and the setting in which they are used.
I 5 LINGUAGGI DELL’AMORE
Gary Chapman
The book proposes simple language to discuss the different ways people express and recognise affection.
Izamara uses it in her account to revisit differences experienced in relationships.
Why read it
It can open a conversation about needs and different ways to communicate closeness.
It is more useful as a narrative lens and a starting point for dialogue than as a rigid label for relationships.
A book to discover Izamara’s voice
IL CORAGGIO DI ESSERE FRAGILE
Izamara Peres
The book tells the personal journey from which Izamara’s public voice emerges. It has autobiographical roots, a fictionalised narrative form and a final section of reflections and exercises.
It offers an inside view of themes also running through the project: belonging, roles, choice, vulnerability and new beginnings.
Useful links for further reading
For anyone wishing to consult reference sources directly, these resources offer useful definitions and frameworks on the topics addressed in the guide.
INTERNATIONAL COACHING FEDERATION — CORE COMPETENCIES
An overview of the competencies guiding the coaching relationship and process.
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF FACILITATORS — CORE COMPETENCIES
A reference for understanding the design and facilitation of group processes.
FEDERAL OFFICE OF PUBLIC HEALTH — PSYCHOLOGY PROFESSIONS
Official information about the Swiss framework for psychology professions, helpful for distinguishing roles and responsibilities.
Frequently asked questions
For a first introduction to coaching, you could begin with The Coaching Habit or Coaching for Performance. If you are facing a choice, Designing Your Life offers a practical approach; for groups and events, The Art of Gathering is an excellent starting point.
The selection prioritises books offering a useful perspective on the guide’s themes. It is deliberately limited so that each title retains a clear role.
Some foundational references were originally published in English, and Italian editions may change over time.
The original title helps identify the work more precisely.
You can begin with the book closest to the question you bring today.
A book does not need to deliver a definitive answer: it may offer more precise words, a different perspective or a question to explore.
