The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead

About the Author

“Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS) has a gift for distilling big, complex ideas into practical, accessible knowledge for everyday people that helps them be a force for good. His books have sold over 1,000,000 copies, with The Coaching Habit topping the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. MBS has been featured on the blogs and social media platforms of thought leaders including Seth Godin, Tim Ferris, and Brené Brown, and has appeared on ABC, BBC, CBC, Ted.com, and innumerable podcasts – as well as in notable publications, including the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc., and Fast Company.

MBS is the founder of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that teaches coach-like curiosity to improve communication, engagement, and resourcefulness in Fortune 1000 companies. They have trained more than half a million people for clients, including Microsoft, Salesforce, TELUS, and Gucci.

Before establishing Box of Crayons, MBS’ accomplishments included publishing an academic article on James Joyce and a Harlequin-esque short story; playing small roles in helping invent Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza and creating ‘one of the worst single-malt whiskies in existence’; and spending 20 minutes writing what hasremained GlaxoSmithKline’s global vision for more than 20 years. A former Rhodes Scholar, MBS is an Australian who now lives in Toronto, Canada.”

Sources: and “About the Author” section of the book 

Our one-sentence summary

Building a coaching habit by embracing seven essential questions that foster effective conversations leads to development, growth, and greater results. 

Publisher’s Summary

“In Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, coaching becomes a regular, informal part of your day so managers and their teams can work less hard and have more impact. Drawing on years of experience training more than 10,000 busy managers from around the globe in practical, everyday coaching skills, Bungay Stanier reveals how to unlock your people’s potential. He unpacks seven essential coaching questions to demonstrate how—by saying less and asking more—you can develop coaching methods that produce great results. 

• Get straight to the point in any conversation with The Kickstart Question
• Stay on track during any interaction with The Awe Question
• Save hours of time for yourself with The Lazy Question, and hours of time for others with The Strategic Question
• Get to the heart of any interpersonal or external challenge with The Focus Question and The Foundation Question
• Finally, ensure others find your coaching as beneficial as you do with The Learning Question

A fresh, innovative take on the traditional how-to manual, The Coaching Habit combines insider information with research based on neuroscience and behavioral economics, together with interactive training tools, to turn practical advice into practiced habits. Witty and conversational, The Coaching Habit takes your work—and your workplace—from good to great.”

Source: Book Jacket 

Detailed Summary 

“This book gives you seven questions and the tools to make them an everyday way to work less and have more impact” (p. iii). 

You Need a Coaching Habit

• Coaching is an effective leadership style that helps teams achieve better results. Yet, some managers argue they don’t have time to coach or that it doesn’t really work.
• The odds are that you did not get effective coaching and are likely not delivering it effectively. There are three main reasons for this:
  • Your coaching training was overly theoretical and divorced from reality,
  • You weren’t able to figure out how to translate your training into real-life action,
  • Giving less advice and asking more questions is actually difficult.
• Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS) argues that coaching shouldn’t be that hard: seven questions give you most of what you need; you can coach someone in ten minutes or less; it should be done daily and informally; and you can build a coaching habit.
• Coaching can help you work less hard and have more impact. It helps you break out of three vicious cycles:
  • Creating overdependence: People depend on you, you have extra work, and everyone loses motivation. The more you help, the more they need your help.
  • Getting overwhelmed: The faster you work, the faster the work keeps flooding in. You lose focus, and you become more overwhelmed, so you lose more focus.
  • Becoming disconnected: You have to help people do work that has impact and meaning. The more we do work without purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are, and the less likely that we will create good work.
• The seven essential questions presented in this book will help you break out of these three vicious cycles. 

How to Build a Habit

• You likely understand that the key to coaching is asking more questions and avoiding telling people what to do. It sounds simple, but changing this habit is difficult.
• A study at Duke University found that at least 45% of our behavior comes from habits, meaning that a good part of it comes from the subconscious and unconscious mind. The key, then, is to change our habits. To do so, we need:
  • A reason: Make a vow connected to serving others. Try not to focus on what your habit does for you but on how it will help the people you care about.
  • A trigger: Figure out what triggers old behaviors. Avoid the triggers.
  • A micro-habit: Define your new habit as something that takes less than a minute to complete. Be short and specific.
  • Effective practice: Practice smaller pieces of the bigger action, repeat the action as much as possible, be mindful, and celebrate when things go well.
  • A plan: Have a plan for when you stumble.
• At his company, Box of Crayons, MBS teaches what he calls the new habit formula:
  • Define the trigger of the old behavior, being as specific as possible.
  • Describe the old habit specifically so you know what you’re trying to stop doing.
  • Define the new behavior, making sure it takes 60 seconds or less to do.
• Changing a habit is challenging, and you’ll face resistance. To counter it, start somewhere easy, start small, and have a support system (rely on your network). 

Question Masterclass Part 1: Ask One Question at a Time

• Asking too many questions at a time can be overwhelming, leading people to answer without thinking them through. Rather than a supportive conversation, it becomes an uncomfortable interrogation where they come out feeling confused.
• Your new habit should sound like this: After I ask a question, instead of adding another question (or multiple others), I will be quiet and wait for the answer. 

The Kickstart Question

• One key challenge managers face when coaching is that they don’t know how to start.
• If you’re stuck in a conversation that feels superficial, boring, or not useful, you might be facing one of these three situations:
  • The small talk tango: There is a time and place for small talk, but it rarely leads to meaningful conversations.
  • The ossified agenda: Standing meetings (same time, people, place, and agenda) often drain people’s energy. They become routine and prioritize the process over what really matters.
  • The default diagnosis: Because we skip the question and conversation, we begin working on the issue prematurely, not noticing we’re likely taking a mistaken approach.
• A good question that quickly turns into meaningful conversation is, “What’s on your mind?” It’s not too broad or too narrow, and it’s focused.
• There’s a difference between coaching for performance and coaching for development. The first is about fixing an issue or challenge. The second focuses on the person who’s managing the problem. This type of conversation is rarer but more powerful.
• The 3P Model can help you choose what to focus on during coaching conversations. It stands for project, people, or pattern – the three main components around which a challenge might be centered.
  • Project refers to the situation’s content. This is the easiest component to tackle. Sometimes, the conversation might start and end here, but we need to learn to notice and decide when to include one or both of the other two components.
  • People does not refer to the individual but to the relationship and how your or their role in it is affecting the issue.
  • Pattern refers to patterns of behavior that you’d like to change. Here, the focus is on growth and development.
• Once you ask, “What’s on your mind?” depending on the person’s answer, you can offer the person a discussion about the project, the people, or a pattern by briefly pointing to what these are and then saying, “Where should we start?”
• When they’re done discussing one P, you can take them to another by asking, “If this was a thing, what would the challenge here be for you?”

Question Masterclass Part 2: Cut the Intro and Ask the Question

• Most of us start our questions with a slow, wordy, and even confusing introduction. We need to cut these. “If you know what question to ask, get to the point and ask it” (p. 52).
• Your new habit should sound like this: When I have a question to ask, instead of setting it up and taking ages to get to the point, I will ask the question (and listen to the answer).

The AWE Question

• The AWE question is, “And what else?” This is a particularly impactful question because:
  1. It allows for more options that can lead to better decisions. The first answer someone gives you is rarely the best. Yet research shows that 71% of decisions in organizations come from binary questions (such as, “Should we do this?”).
     • The same study found that simply having two options lowered the failure rate by almost half, down to 30%.
  2. It helps you rein yourself in. Often, our advice isn’t as good as we think. Yet most of us are wired to be advice givers because giving wrong advice is more comfortable than the uncertainty that comes from asking questions.
     • MBS calls this the Advice Monster. This monster takes over, and your mind is now focused on finding answers or offering ideas and suggestions.
     • “Even though we don’t really know what the issue is, we’re quite sure we’ve got the answer [our coachee] needs” (p. 61).
     • The AWE question breaks this cycle.
  3. It allows you to give yourself time. When you’re not sure what’s going on and you need time to figure things out, the AWE question gives you a little extra time.
• To ensure that asking, “And what else?” leads to more wisdom, insights, or possibilities, follow these guidelines:
  • Ask with genuine interest and curiosity. Listen to the answer.
  • Ask it more than once, ideally three times, but don’t go over five.
  • If someone says, “There’s nothing else,” don’t worry. It means you’ve reached the end of this line of inquiry, and it’s time to move on to another question.
  • If you feel like the conversation is losing energy, change your question. Ask, “Is there anything else?” to invite closure, but leave the door open in case anything else needs to be discussed.
• While having options is good, having too many options can be overwhelming. Research suggests that the ideal number of information pieces we can manage effectively is four.
• The goal of the AWE question is not to generate a myriad of possibilities. Try to get to three or four. 

Question Masterclass Part 3: Should You Ask Rhetorical Questions?

• It’s never a good idea to offer advice disguised as a question (e.g., “Have you thought of…?” or “What about…?”)
• If you have an idea, wait. Ask the AWE question, and you’ll find that the person often comes up with the very same one. If they don’t, offer your idea after listening.
• Your new habit should sound like this: I’ve got an answer I want to suggest, but instead of asking a fake question, I’ll ask one of the seven essential questions. If I still want to present an idea, I’ll offer it as an option (and not a disguised question) after listening.

The Focus Question

• Organizations program us to fix, solve, or offer solutions to whatever challenge we face. But we often end up focusing on problems that don’t really matter, and the real challenges remain unaddressed.
• When people share a challenge with you, remember that they are often not presenting the actual problem. So, when you start to fix things, you might be going off a tangent. There are three ways this happens:
  • You’re solving the wrong problem. It’s likely that you’ve been presented with a symptom, a secondary issue, or even a ghost of a previous problem.
  • You’re solving the problem yourself. You get your team used to coming to you to fix problems instead of figuring them out themselves. Try not to stimulate codependency.
  • You’re not solving the problem. You might be overwhelmed with other responsibilities and fail to address this problem. Because everyone is dependent on you, you become a bottleneck and slow everything and everyone down.
• The focus question is, “What’s the real challenge here for you?” It will help you solve the real problem rather than the first problem you hear about.
• The question is phrased in this way to ensure that the person considers a number of options while addressing the real problem and that you keep it personal so that the person can figure it out himself or herself.
• Phrasing the question in this way will also help you prevent ineffective patterns that often occur between coaches and coachees:

1. Proliferation of challenges: If an employee lists several problems and you don’t know where to start, resist the urge to give advice or ask a question about one of the issues from their list.

• Instead, ask, “What’s the real challenge for you?” Or “If you had to pick one, which one would be the real challenge for you?”

2. Coaching a ghost: An employee might come to you to complain about another team member, a project, or a given situation. In your effort to listen and ask questions, you accidentally end up gossiping or in a complaining/venting session.

• You can only coach the person in front of you. To make sure your employee is managing the project or the other person properly, ask, “I think I understand some of what’s going on about… What’s the real challenge here for you?”

3. Abstractions and generalizations: An employee might come to you to talk about abstract, generalized, big-picture, or high-level issues, but they don’t involve themselves and don’t get to the point.

• Here, you can ask, “I have a sense of the overall challenge. What’s the real challenge here for you?”
• Remember that your advice will have its place. You don’t have to coach people 100% of the time, especially if they’re asking a specific question.
• Within this process, don’t forget about the second question discussed previously.
  • After you ask, “What’s the real challenge here for you?” add, “And what else?” 

Question Masterclass Part 4: Stick to Questions Starting with “What”

• Questions that start with “Why…?” tend to put people on the defensive. But even if they don’t, their answers will give you more information so that you can solve the problem. “Why..?” questions lead to the vicious cycles of over-dependence and overwhelm.
• Instead of asking, “Why…?” ask, “What…?” For example, instead of “Why did you do that?” ask, “What were you hoping for here?”
• Your new habit should sound like this: When I’m tempted to ask, “Why?” I’ll reframe the question so that it starts with “What?”

An Irresistible 1-2-3 Combination

• The first three essential questions covered so far can combine to become a script for your coaching conversation.
  • You can open with, “What’s on your mind?”
  • Followed by a check-in with, “Is there anything else on your mind?”
  • Then, begin to focus with, “What’s the real challenge here for you?”
  • You can dig deeper with, “And what else?”
  • And probe again with “Is there anything else?”
  • Finally, get to the heart of it with, “So… what’s the real challenge here for you?”

The Foundation Question

• The foundation question is, “What do you want?” MBS calls this the Goldfish Question because it often elicits a response that he describes as “slightly bugged eyes, and a mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out” (p. 112).
• It can be difficult to differentiate between wants and needs in the context of work. Yet, differentiating between the two is crucial to having clear conversations.
• Manfred Max-Neef argues that there are nine universal needs: affection, creation, recreation, freedom, identity, understanding, participation, protection, and subsistence.
  • When you ask someone, “What do you want?” listen to determine the need behind the request (that is, the want).
  • For example, the request might be “I want you to talk to the VP for me,” but the need might be protection or participation.
  • Recognizing the need will help you determine how to address the request. On the flip side, frame your requests by articulating the need behind them.
• According to neuroscientist Evan Gordon, “the fundamental organizing principle of the brain is the risk-and-reward response” (p. 118). Five times per second, our brains scan the environment around us to determine if it is safe.
  • If it is safe, we’ll be engaged. But if it senses danger, it will react with fight-or-flight responses. Note that we have evolved to default our readings as unsafe under the logic of “better safe than sorry.”
• As a manager, our goal is for your employees to feel safe. There are four primary drivers that influence how brains read situations (making up the acronym TERA):
  • Tribe: Your employee should feel like you’re on their side.
  • Expectation: The environment will feel safe if people know what to expect.
  • Rank: Here, what matters is not the formal title but how power is played. If someone feels like their status is reduced, they’ll feel unsafe.
  • Autonomy: When people feel they have a choice, the environment will seem more like a place of reward, and, therefore, engagement will increase.

Question Masterclass Part 5: Get Comfortable with Silence

• After asking a question, you should remain silent. Don’t get angsty; as uncomfortable as it is, silence creates space for learning.
• Your new habit should sound like this: When I ask a question, and the person does not answer within the first couple of seconds, instead of filling up the space with another question, I’ll take a breath, stay open, and keep quiet for three more seconds. 

The Lazy Question

• According to Edgar Schein, when you offer to help someone, you raise your status and lower theirs, whether you mean it or not.
• The Drama Triangle suggests that we often present a non-ideal version of ourselves, switching between three archetypal roles, each unhelpful and dysfunctional:

1. Victim: We believe life is hard and unfair, and think, “Poor me.” We build a dynamic where nothing is our fault but is the fault of a third-person other. We free ourselves from responsibility, complain, and attract rescuers, but we also lose autonomy.
2. Persecutor: We believe we are surrounded by fools or people who are less talented than we are. We build a dynamic where nothing is our fault but (second-person) yours. We feel superior and have a sense of power and control. But we end up being responsible for everything, creating victims, and becoming micromanagers.
3. Rescuer: We believe that there’s no need to fight or worry because we’ll fix it. We create a dynamic where everything is our fault or our responsibility. We feel morally superior and indispensable, but people will begin to reject our help. We create victims and perpetuate The Drama Triangle.

• When we’re in Rescuer mode, we do it with good intentions, but we become exhausted and irritated and limit other people’s opportunities for growth.
• Noticing The Drama Triangle is the first step in breaking the pattern. Note that escaping it completely is nearly impossible. You’ll only get better at recognizing and breaking free from it faster. To do so, ask the lazy question: “How can I help?”
  • This question will help your report make a clear and direct request.
  • The lazy question will also prevent you from thinking that you know the best way to help, and from leaping into action.
  • The goal is to keep you curious and lazy.
• Many people worry about the range of potential answers to this question. But you have options available other than “Yes.” You can say, “No” or “Let me think about it.”
• At some point, someone will ask you questions such as, “How do I…?” or “What do you think I should do about…?” This might be a time to give advice. The goal is not to avoid ever giving an answer. The goal is to get better at having people find their own answers.
  • Depending on the case, you can try saying, “That’s a great question. I have some ideas, but before I share them with you, what are your first thoughts?” 

Question Masterclass Part 6: Actually Listen to Answer

• While it’s easy to get this distracted, after asking any of the essential questions, you need to listen to the answer genuinely and attentively.
• Your new habit should sound like this: After asking a question, instead of going through the motions of looking like I’m listening, I will actually listen. And when I get distracted, I’ll come back and start listening again. 

The Strategic Question

• Quoting Michael Porter, MBS describes his favorite definition of strategy as choosing what not to do.
• The strategic question is, “If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”
• With the first part of this question, you’re asking people to be clear and committed. You can then ask, “What would being fully committed to this idea look like?”
• The second part of the question addresses a “No” of omission and a “No” of commission. The first refers to the options that they automatically eliminated by saying “yes.” The second refers to what they now need to do to make the “yes” happen.
  • The 3P Model can help cover all the bases of what needs to happen. For example, you can ask, “What projects do you need to abandon or postpone?” Or “What expectations do you need to manage?”
• It’s hard for almost everyone to say “no.” That’s why we need to learn to say “yes” slowly. We often commit quickly without fully understanding what we’re getting ourselves into or why we’re being asked.
  • Being slow to say “yes” means asking, “Why are you asking me?” or “When you say this is urgent, what do you mean?” Or, “What would you like me to take off my plate so I can do this?”
• Another way to say “no” is to create a Third Point – something else you can say no to that isn’t the person. For example, if you write down the request on a sheet of paper, you can say, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no to this.” 

Question Masterclass Part 7: Acknowledge the Answers You Get

• Within the coaching process, it’s important to acknowledge the person’s answers before asking another question, such as, “And what else?”
• You don’t need to say much. Your goal is to let people know that you’ve listened. You can simply say, “Fantastic!” or “Yes, that’s good.” Or even “Mmm-hmmm.”
• Your new habit should sound like this: When a person answers a question I’ve asked, instead of rushing into another question, I’ll acknowledge their reply by saying something like, “Yes, that’s good.” 

The Learning Question

• As a manager, you want people to get things done. But you also want them to learn so that they become more competent, self-sufficient, and successful.
• Helping people learn is difficult because:
  • People don’t learn when you tell them something.
  • People don’t learn when they do something.
  • People will learn when they can recall and reflect on what is happening.
• The learning question is, “What was most useful for you?”
• The model AGES explains the four main neurological drivers of long-term memory. AGES stands for attention, generation, emotion, and spacing.
  • This model suggests that taking time to generate knowledge and find answers rather than just reading them increases retention.
  • Rather than providing advice, ask a question and have people generate the answer themselves to increase learning opportunities.
• Other experts argue that one of the best strategies for people to learn is information retrieval. That is, you have to interrupt the process of forgetting (which happens immediately). To do this, ask questions that prompt people to reflect.
• Example questions include, “What was the key insight?” or “What’s important to capture?” However, “What was most useful for you?” is particularly effective because:

1. It assumes the conversation was useful. The learning question frames what just happened as something useful and allows for a moment to figure out what it was.
2. It asks people to identify the big thing that was most useful. Here, the importance is specificity. If you list too many things, everyone will be overwhelmed. Focus on one or two takeaways from the conversation.
3. It makes it personal. The question also prompts people to tell themselves what was useful. Their own advice will always sound better than yours or those of others.
4. It gives you feedback. Their answer will guide you on what you need to do more of next time, reassuring you that you’re being useful.
5. It’s learning, not judgment. It forces people to think through and extract the value from the conversation.
6. It reminds people how useful you are to them. Because they’re actually learning, people will grow, and they’re more likely to notice how you’ve helped them.

Question Masterclass Part 8: Use Every Channel to Ask a Question

• The seven essential questions are just as effective in online contexts as they are face-to-face. For example, you could type, “Before I jump into a longer reply, let me ask you: what’s the real challenge here for you?”
• Your new habit should sound like this: When I get an email that triggers the Advice Monster, instead of writing out a long, thorough answer full of possible solutions, I’ll respond to that email relying on the seven essential questions. 

Conclusion

• In his experience as a subordinate, manager, and coach, MBS argues that most conversations between managers and subordinates are too often very messy, grounded in too many (and often mistaken) assumptions, get off track easily, and leave both people feeling exhausted without having accomplished as much as they’d hoped.
• He argues this sensation can be avoided by building a coaching habit. Embracing the seven essential questions will help you work less hard and have more impact.
• He contends that the secret relies on building a habit of curiosity. Give less advice and be more curious. But build your coaching habit.