Episode 65: The Coaching Habit Unlocks Human Potential with Michael Bungay Stanier

Highlights of This Episode:

• Why coaches need to shift from giving advice to inspiring curiosity
• What four approaches are keeping some coaches from being effective
• How to manage the Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer dynamic within the “drama triangle”
• Why some coaches are “advice monsters”
• How to be a great manager by asking two simple questions
• What negative patterns people often fall into when trying to make life changes, and Michael’s universal solution

“Coaching is about leading with curiosity, not advice.” – Michael Bungay Stanier (Tweet this)

Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Box of Crayons
• Great Connections Help You Bring Projects To Fruition
• Do More Great Work by Michael Bungay Stanier
• End Malaria
• Malaria No More
• Moving Beyond Crushing It
• The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier
• “Leadership That Gets Results” by Daniel Goleman (2000) (Unfortantely, only HBR subscribers can access this article.)
• TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments by Douglas Conant and Mette Norgaard
• Immunity to Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey

Here are the seven most powerful coaching questions for managers, from The Coaching Habit (p. 200):

1. The Kickstarter Question: What’s on your mind?
2. The AWE Question: And What Else?
3. The Focus Question: What’s the real challenge here for you?
4. The Foundation Question: What do you want?
5. The Lazy Question: How can I help?
6. The Strategic Question: If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
7. The Learning Question: What was most useful for you?

About Michael Bungay Stanier:

Michael Bungay Stanier is the founder and Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, a company that helps organizations all over the world do less Good Work and more Great Work. Box of Crayons is best known for their coaching programs that help time-crunched managers coach in 10 minutes or less.

Michael left Australia 22 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where his only significant achievement was falling in love with a Canadian, which is why he now lives in Toronto, after spending time in London and Boston.

He has written a number of books; the best known, with almost 100,000 copies sold, is Do More Great Work. The one he’s proudest of is End Malaria, a collection of essays on Great Work from leading thinkers which raised $400,000 for Malaria No More. Michael was also the first Canadian Coach of the Year, which is pretty good for an Australian.

Balancing out these moments of success, Michael was banned from his high school graduation for “the balloon incident,” he was was sued by one of his law school lecturers for defamation, and his first published piece of writing was a Mills & Boone short story called “The Male Delivery.”

Michael and I have jammed before in our “Making Plans that Work” tele-seminar – available in the Productive Flourishing free content library – and other projects as well.

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