Announcing the Thinkers50 2023 Coaching and Mentoring Award Shortlist

ANNOUNCING THE THINKERS50 2023 MARSHALL GOLDSMITH COACHING AND MENTORING AWARD SHORTLIST

In partnership with Coaching.com 

What got you here won’t get you there, as coach Marshall Goldsmith once said. Everyone needs a little help sometimes and the most successful people will tell you they’ve had a coach or mentor at some point in their career. 

This year’s Thinkers50 2023 Marshall Goldsmith Coaching and Mentoring Award is brought to you in partnership with Coaching.com. The recipient will be announced at the Thinkers50 Awards Gala in November, along with the recipients of all nine Distinguished Achievement Awards and the new Thinkers50 Ranking. Join us! 

Coaching.com is the leading professional coaching platform, enabling the delivery of exceptional coaching services at scale. “Our vision at Coaching.com is to harness the power of coaching to unlock human potential worldwide. As such, we are honoured to partner with Thinkers50 to recognize individuals who have made a significant impact in the coaching and mentoring community” – founder and CEO, Coaching.com, Alex Pascal.

The shortlisted thinkers for the Thinkers50 2023 Marshall Goldsmith Coaching and Mentoring Award are (in alphabetical order):

1. Robert Biswas-Diener
for Positive Provocation

Known as the ‘Indiana Jones of Positive Psychology,’ Robert Biswas-Diener’s research has taken him to far-flung corners of the globe. He focuses on cross-cultural issues and applies positive psychology to coaching. Robert has presented in 27 nations and across a wide range of sectors. He is the author of more than 60 academic articles and chapters and seven books, including The Courage Quotient (Jossey-Bass, 2012), the 2007 PROSE Award winner, Happiness (with Ed Diener, Wiley-Blackwell,) and the New York Times bestseller, The Upside of Your Dark Side (with Todd Kashdan (Avery, 2014). Robert’s most recent book is Positive Provocation: 25 Questions to Elevate Your Coaching Practice (Berrett-Koehler, 2023), which serves as a roadmap for great coaches to become masterful coaches. Robert is a regular contributor to the Global Council for Happiness and Wellbeing and is the chairperson for the Working Group on Wellbeing, part of the Global Councils on the Sustainable Development Goals.

2. Michael Bungay Stanier
for How to Work With (Almost) Anyone and How to Begin

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder of Box of Crayons, a training and development company that has taught coaching skills to hundreds of thousands of people across the world. His latest books are How to Work With (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships (Page Two Books, 2023) and How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters (Page Two Books, 2022). Michael’s 2016 book, The Coaching Habit, has sold more than a million copies. It has been translated into 20 different languages and is the best-selling book on coaching this century. Brené Brown calls it “a classic” and featured Michael on ‘Dare to Lead,’ one of the world’s most popular leadership podcasts. Michael’s TEDx talk, ‘Tame Your Advice Monster,’ is based on his 2022 follow-up book, The Advice Trap (Page Two Books, 2020), and has received over 1.5 million views. A former Rhodes Scholar, Michael is an Australian living in Toronto. 

3. Jennifer Garvey Berger
for Unleash Your Complexity Genius

Jennifer Garvey Berger is co-founder and CEO of Cultivating Leadership, a consultancy that focuses on how to use complexity for advantage. Her latest book, Unleash Your Complexity Genius: Growing Your Inner Capacity to Lead (with Carolyn Coughlin, SUP, 2022), provides a set of practices that help you not just to understand complexity but also hack into your own nervous system to bring your natural capacities back online. Jennifer is also the author of Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps (Stanford Briefs, 2019); Simple Habits for Complex Times (with Keith Johnston, SUP, 2015); and Changing on the Job (SUP, 2013). She has worked with senior leaders in the private, non-profit, and government sectors around the world, with clients including Novartis, Google, KPMG, Intel, Microsoft, Wikimedia, and the New Zealand Department of Conservation. Formerly an associate professor at George Mason University, Jennifer learned about deep change when she turned down a tenure offer to move to a small seaside village in New Zealand. 

4. Peter Hawkins
for Leadership Team Coaching

Chairman of Renewal Associates and joint founder and dean of the Global Team Coaching Institute, Peter Hawkins has been coaching since the 1970s. He pioneered and developed the fields of coaching supervision, systemic coaching, and ecological and climate conscious coaching. Peter is an emeritus professor of leadership at Henley Business School, honorary president of the Academy of Executive Coaching, and a senior fellow and advisor to the government of Singapore. He has authored several books including Leadership Team Coaching: Developing Collective Transformational Leadership (Kogan Page 4th ed., 2021); Leadership Team Coaching in Practice (Kogan Page 3rd ed., 2022); Systemic Coaching: Delivering Value Beyond the Individual (with Eve Turner, Routledge 2020); Coaching, Mentoring and Organizational Consultancy: Supervision, Skills and Development (with Nick Smith, McGraw Hill, 2013); and Creating a Coaching Culture (OUP, 2012). Peter is a visiting professor at the University of Bath School of Management and Oxford Brookes University School of Management.

5. Haesun Moon
for Coaching A to Z

Champion of the power of conversations, Haesun Moon is a communication scientist, semiotician, and educator. Haesun’s research in coaching dialogues and pedagogy led to the development of a coaching model, the Dialogue Orientation Quadrant (DOQ). She teaches Brief Coaching at the University of Toronto, where she received her PhD in Adult Education and Community Development and serves as executive director at the Canadian Centre for Brief Coaching, as well as principal at the Human Learning Institute. Haesun’s 2022 book, Coaching A to Z: The Extraordinary Use of Ordinary Words (Page Two), draws on her research to provide a set of powerful words or phrases – one for every letter of the alphabet – as a guide to having more powerful conversations. In the book, Haesun invites the reader to step into the transformative spaces of purpose, possibilities, and progress, moving them from conversation mystery to mastery, one story at a time. Haesun is also co-author of Thriving Women Thriving World (Taos Institute Publications, 2019).

6. David Noble and Carol Kauffman
for Real Time Leadership

David Noble is the founder of VIEW Advisors and specialises in high complexity, risk, and uncertainty. As assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, Carol Kauffman is executive director of the Institute of Coaching, which she founded in 2009. She is also the director of Faculty Coach Training at Massachusetts General Hospital. Carol’s work focuses on high-stakes coaching, where managing leadership impact is crucial and quick intervention is necessary. David and Carol are the authors of Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High (HBR Press, 2023), which explains how their innovative new framework, MOVE, can equip leaders with the tactics to slow down high stakes situations. With practice, they argue, the MOVE framework can help you manage and master critical moments by generating and quickly evaluating response options. Previously a senior advisor to Oliver Wyman Group on organisational effectiveness, David was also a member of the management advisory board of TowerBrook Capital Partners, the first B Corp private equity firm. Carol has worked with multinational organisations including AstraZeneca, BCG, BUPA, and Unilever.

7. Jonathan Passmore
for Coach Me!, Third Wave Cognitive Behavioural Coaching, and Coaching Practiced

Jonathan Passmore is Senior Vice President at EZRA Coaching, LHH and also professor of coaching at Henley Business School. He has held C-Suite roles over the past two decades in the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors as a director and chief executive, and worked for PWC, IBM, and OPM Consulting. He has also been managing director for a UK psychology firm and was the Inaugural Chair of the British Psychological Society Division of Coaching Psychology in 2021-22. Jonathan is the winner of multiple awards for his research and contributions to organisational psychology and coaching. He is co-editor of Coach Me! Your Personal Board of Directors (with Brian Underhill and Marshall Goldsmith, Wiley, 2022); Third Wave Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (with Sarah Leach, Pavilion Publishing and Media, 2022); Coaching Practiced (with David Tee, Wiley 2022), The Ethical Coaches Handbook (with Wendy Ann Smith, Routledge, 2023), The Coaching Buyers Handbook (with Sam Isaacson, Libri Publishing, 2023) and Coaching Tools (with Julie Flower, Libri Publishing, 2023) among his 40 practitioner coaching books. He is also a widely published academic, authoring over 250 scientific papers, scientific reports and academic chapters, making him one of the most cited coaching researchers in the world.

8. Marcia Reynolds
for Breakthrough Coaching

At age 20, Marcia Reynolds was in jail for drug abuse. She was angry and felt disconnected. She has since turned her anger into a force for good, studied neuroscience, and learned how to train people to change their own minds and behaviours. Her Mastery of Coaching programmes teach leaders and coaches around the world to listen without judgement, regulate emotions to maintain trust, and use reflective inquiry to change minds. Her 2020 book, Coach the Person Not the Problem: A Guide to Using Reflective Inquiry (Berrett-Koehler), outlines five essential practices and three mental habits to help people break through the frames that limit their perceptions. Marcia is also the author of The Discomfort Zone (Berrett-Koehler, 2014); Outsmart Your Brain (Covisioning, 2017); and Wander Woman (Berrett-Koehler, 2010). Her forthcoming book, Breakthrough Coaching: Creating Lightbulb Moments in Your Coaching Conversations (Berrett-Koehler), introduces a coaching method based on psychological safety and is due out in January 2024.

Recipients will be announced at the Thinkers50 Awards Gala 2023 on 5-6 November 2023.