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Make Them Think: How to Coach for Ownership, Insight and Action
Paperback
Publisher: Jennifer Farrer
Published: Jan 23 2026
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.49
Height: 0.34 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Most managers think they're coaching.
Most coaches think they're helping.
Most people on the receiving end wish they would stop.
When someone is plateauing, stuck, or underperforming, we tend to do what feels responsible: push harder, fix faster, advise more. This approach shows up in leadership, management, executive coaching, performance coaching, and even parenting.
But real growth does not happen through pressure, willpower, or even a perfect plan.
Breakthroughs happen when people discover something they did not know they were thinking. Those moments of awareness, whether they feel like an aha or an oh crap, are what lead to real, lasting change.
Make Them Think is both a rallying cry and a practical roadmap for managers, leaders, coaches, and mentors who want to have better conversations-especially when performance, growth, or change is on the line.
Make Them Think is a rare coaching book that makes high-level coaching principles accessible to everyday leaders. From C-suite executives to parents, anyone in a leadership role will benefit from the quiet yet powerful art of asking better questions.
- Light Watkins, author of Travel Light and Bliss More
Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, communication research, and mind-body awareness, Jenn Farrer reveals why advice so often fails-and how to create the psychological conditions that allow people to think clearly, take ownership, and act with confidence.
Make Them Think beautifully articulates something I've felt for years but never had language for: advice often creates anxiety, not clarity. This book explains why well-meaning advice shuts down creativity-and how asking better questions helps people build confidence and capability that lasts.
- Rachel M., Lead Counsel
In this book, you will learn how to:
- Work with the brain's threat and reward systems to unlock better thinking
- Recognize when defensive mode is running a conversation and how to shift it
- Ask questions that create insight, ownership, and forward movement
- Listen beneath the surface and reflect patterns people cannot yet see
- Move conversations from vision to insight to action to learning
Whether you coach employees, lead teams, manage performance, develop talent, or support athletes, Make Them Think will help you stop carrying the burden of having all the answers and start becoming the kind of leader or coach who creates meaningful breakthroughs.
Not by pushing people harder.
But by helping them think differently.
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