Sir John Whitmore (1937–2017) was the pioneer of coaching in the workplace, and co-founder of Performance Consultants International, the foremost provider of coaching, leadership development and performance improvement in the workplace globally.
A pre-eminent thinker in leadership development and organizational change, he wrote five books on leadership, coaching and sports, of which Coaching for Performance is the best known having sold a million copies in 23 languages. This seminal text introduced the world to the GROW Model, created by Sir John and his colleagues in the 1980s. GROW has become a favourite of managers and coaches worldwide, thanks to its success in both problem-solving and goal setting, helping to maximize and maintain personal achievement, enjoyment and productivity.
Coaching and Leadership Pioneer
Honoured with the President’s Award by International Coach Federation (ICF), rated as the Number One Business Coach by the Independent newspaper and as having had the most impact on the coaching profession by the Association for Coaching, Sir John will always be considered one of the leading figures in the international coaching community. One of the founders of the European Mentoring & Coaching Council (EMCC) and instrumental in the early stages of the creation of the ICF, which is now the world’s largest organization of professionally trained coaches, Sir John remained involved in the evolution of coaching and the ICF, serving as a Trustee for the ICF Foundation.
He devised public and in-house training programmes to develop a coaching style of leadership, build coaching cultures and create professional coaches. And he created Transpersonal Coach Training, an advanced-level workshop for experienced coaches wanting to acquire leading-edge coaching principles and techniques to help their clients discover the power and effectiveness of who they are and create deep and meaningful change, broader perspectives on the challenges they face, and achieve higher performance and authentic leadership.
Co-founder of Performance Consultants
Sir John Whitmore founded Performance Consultants with partners after originally forming The Inner Game in the United Kingdom following a period of studying and working with Tim Gallwey and Bob Kriegel in the United States. They were the first to formulate the coaching processes and introduce their approach to organizations.
For four decades, Performance Consultants’ experiential learning programmes have helped individuals in organizations to overcome the inner obstacles to human potential and high performance (eg fear, doubt, limiting beliefs) and to develop their own leadership qualities and ability to unlock potential and raise individual, team and organizational performance.