John Whitmore (racing driver)

Sir John Whitmore
Whitmore in 2007
Nationality	English
Born	John Henry Douglas Whitmore (1937-10-16)16 October 1937
Died	28 April 2017(2017-04-28) (aged 79)
Years active	1959–1966 (racing) and 1979–2017 (coaching)
Previous series
1959–1966 1961–1963 1965	24 Hours of Le Mans British Saloon Car Championship European Touring Car Championship
Championship titles
1961 1965	British Saloon Car Championship European Touring Car Championship

Sir John Henry Douglas Whitmore, 2nd Baronet (16 October 1937 – 28 April 2017) was a pioneer of the executive coaching industry, an author and British racing driver.

Family life and background

John Whitmore was born on 16 October 1937, the son of Sir Francis Whitmore and Ellis Johnsen. He was educated at Eton College, Sandhurst Royal Military Academy, and Cirencester Agricultural College. He inherited The Orsett Estate Company at Orsett, Essex, in 1962, on the death of his father. The inheritance included the family seat of Orsett Hall, from the grounds of which he used to take off and land his plane. In 1968, he sold the house to his friends, Tony and Val Morgan. He married twice, first to Ella Gunilla Hansson, from whom he was divorced in 1969, and later to Diana Becchetti. He had a child from each marriage. He died on 28 April 2017.

Early career (in motor racing)

In his first year in the competition, 1961, Whitmore won the British Saloon Car Championship in his BMC Mini Minor. In 1963 he drove again in the BSCC and came second in the championship in a Mini Cooper, finishing just two points behind Jack Sears. In 1965 he won the European Touring Car Championship in a Lotus Cortina (KPU392C). He won by finishing first in his class in 8 of the 9 1965 ETCC races (and finishing first overall in 6 of the races).

Sir John drove in the 24 Hours of Le Mans for five years between 1959 and 1966. In the first year he finished second in class along with Jim Clark in a Lotus Elite. In 1965 and 1966 he raced in a works Ford GT40, but had to retire from the race both years with mechanical problems. At the end of 1966 he retired from racing. He returned later in life to driving in historic car events such as the Goodwood Revival.

Later career (in business & coaching)

Sir John Whitmore receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Coaching

After leaving racing and the world of motor-sports, he became interested in transpersonal psychology and its emphasis on the principle of will, intention, or responsibility. He went on to apply his learning and skills first to the world of sport and then to business. In 1970 he studied at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, with the likes of William Schutz, creator of team development model FIRO-B, and then trained with Harvard educationalist and tennis expert Timothy Gallwey, who created the Inner Game methodology of performance coaching.

Sir John founded the Inner Game in Britain in 1979 with a small team of Inner Game coaches trained by Gallwey. Initially they coached tennis players and golfers but soon realized the value of the Inner Game for leaders and managers of organizations. Sir John spent much of the 1980s developing the methodology, concepts, and techniques for performance improvement in organizations and showed it was possible to improve performance, increase learning and enjoyment, and find a sense of purpose in work.

Sir John is regarded as a pioneer in the field of business coaching. Along with Tim Gallwey, Laura Whitworth and Thomas J. Leonard, he is credited with launching modern coaching in the 1970s. For some people, Sir John will always be best known as the co-creator of the GROW model, one of the most established and successful coaching models. He presented at numerous conferences around the world and contributed to many other books such as Challenging Coaching and Coaching at Work.

In the 1990s Sir John was a co-founder, along with Eric Parsloe, David Clutterbuck, David Megginson and Julie Hay, of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC).

In 2004 he founded Performance Consultants International, a provider of coaching, leadership development and performance improvement.

Sir John was involved with the Professional and Personal Coaches Association (PPCA), an organization that merged in 1998 with the International Coach Federation (ICF). He served as a Trustee for the ICF Foundation until his death in 2017.

Awards

Sir John Whitmore with coach & author Nigel Cumberland

Whitmore received a number of awards outside his career in motor racing, including:

• A Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Coaching ("IAC") in 2013, presented to him by the IAC President, Krishna Kumar; and
• In 2007 Sir John received the International Coach Federation's President's Award for advancing the profession of coaching.

Bibliography

Whitmore wrote a book titled Coaching for Performance. published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing. It contains details of his coaching model, known as the GROW model. The first four editions sold a million copies in 23 languages. The fifth edition was published in 2017.

Whitmore also wrote the foreword to and is extensively quoted in a book called Nine: Briefing from Deep Space which was published in 2005. The book is based upon interviews with extraterrestrial beings which a group of people including Whitmore, as well as Phyllis Schlemmer and Uri Geller, claimed to have had over a number of years. The book and Whitmore himself have been quoted and spoken about on a number of websites which explore such claims.

Media coverage

Sir John has been interviewed numerous times. Some examples include:

• By Coaching at Work magazine
• At the European Commission
• In Coaching Magazine
• In a book titled Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice

External links

• The European Mentoring and Coaching Council co-Founded by Sir John Whitmore
• Daily Telegraph Interview on Le Mans
• Performance Consultants International, the company founded by Sir John Whitmore.