The key ideas

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

Michael Bungay Stanier, 2016

People come to you for answers all day, and you answer while your own work stands still. Michael Bungay Stanier offers seven short questions and a way to make them a habit, rather than a new management theory. The book explores why holding back advice is so difficult and what might change if you ask a little more.

Who it is for

For managers, mentors, parents, and anyone people constantly turn to for advice who is tired of solving other people’s problems instead of their own.

Say less and ask more. Your advice is not as good as you think.

What the book is about

A manager people turn to for answers all day often feels useful. In the evening, they discover their own work has not moved forward.

Michael Bungay Stanier spent years teaching managers to coach and cites a figure that caught his attention. A 2006 study by Blessing White found that 73% of managers had received some coaching training. Yet only 23% of the people they coached thought it had significantly affected their performance or satisfaction.

The author’s response is seven questions and the habit of asking them in everyday conversations lasting ten minutes or less. This is a trainer’s practical guide, based on his experience and other people’s ideas rather than experiments of his own.

Idea 1. Three vicious circles

Why should a manager coach at all? Stanier describes three traps.

The first is excessive dependence. The more you solve things for the team, the more often they come to you, and you become a bottleneck. The second is overload: you drown in tasks and lose focus on what matters. The third is disconnection: work becomes a stream of tasks with little meaning.

The author believes the habit of advising a little less and asking a little more can weaken all three vicious circles at once.

An employee writes, “How should I reply to this customer?” You answer in a minute. An hour later, another question of the same kind arrives.

A quick answer may save a minute now and add work later: each problem solved for someone may teach them to come back again.

Read in Livria

About the author

Michael Bungay Stanier writes about coaching and leadership, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and founded Box of Crayons, a training company that teaches managers coaching skills. He later wrote a follow-up, The Advice Trap.

All books by this author: Michael Bungay Stanier

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever Quiz

Terms from the book

  • Advice Monster: A metaphor from the book, not a psychological term: the habitual urge to offer advice or a solution immediately, before hearing someone out.
  • Kickstart Question: The first of the author’s seven questions: “What’s on your mind?” It opens the conversation and lets the other person choose the topic.
  • 3P model: The author’s framework: a difficulty may concern a project, people, or your own recurring patterns of behavior.
  • TERA: The author’s framework of tribe, expectation, rank, and autonomy: four cues through which, in his account, someone may experience a conversation as safe or tense. A working model, not a scientific diagnostic tool.
  • Drama Triangle: Psychiatrist Stephen Karpman’s model of Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer roles. Stanier uses it to show how helping can turn into rescuing.
  • New Habit Formula: The author’s technique: a trigger, an old behavior, and a new, brief action. A practical tool, not a guarantee of change.

All terms

Similar books