The Coaching Habit
Author – Michael Bungay Stanier
Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change
The Power of Habit
Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work
The Paradox of Choice
Start with Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action
🌟Flawless Consulting
🌟The Answer to How is Yes
Drive
Helping
Playing to Win
Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
💡 Think less about what your habit can do for you and more about how this new habit will help a person or people you care about.
Ask One Question at a Time!
“What’s on your mind?”
→ An almost fail-safe way to start a chat that quickly turns into a real conversation.
Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge.
vs.
Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue.
Call them forward to learn, improve and grow, rather than just to get something sorted out.
3P model
→ is a framework for choosing what to focus on in a coaching convo. A challenge might be centered around a project, person, or pattern of behavior.
“So there are three different facets of that we could look at. The project side-any challenges around the actual content. The people side-any issues with team members/colleagues/customers/clients/bosses. And patterns-if there’s a way that you’re getting in your own way, and not showing up in the best possible way. Where should we start?”
If you know what question to ask, get to the point and ask it.
→ “Out of curiosity…”
“And what else?”
→ you’ll get more options and often better options. Better options lead to better decisions. Better decisions lead to greater success.
Remember that the first answer someone gives you is almost never the only answer, and it’s rarely the best.
💡 As a guideline ask it at least three times in a conversation.
The AWE question is the quickest and easiest way to uncover and create new possibilities.
“So what’s the real challenge here for you?”
💡 Focus on the real problem, not the first problem.
Researchers found that when the word “you” was present, the questions needed to be repeated fewer times, and the problems were solved in a shorter amount of time and with more accuracy.
→ Adding “for you” to a question helps people figure out the answers faster and more accurately.
Organizations must have as their foundation absolute clarity about the Why of their existence if they’re going to inspire people-customers and employees both-to stay engaged with their brand.
Stick to questions starting with “What” and avoid questions beginning with “Why.”
Give people the responsibility for their own freedom.
“What do you want?”
→ For bonus points, tell the person what you want as well.
9 self-explanatory universal needs:
affection, freedom, participation, creation, identity, protection, recreation, understanding, subsistence
TERA:
- Tribe – “Are you with me, or against me?” If it believes that you’re on its side, the TERA increases.
- Expectation – “Do I know the future or don’t I?” If what is going on is clear, the situation feels safe.
- Rank – “Are you more important than I am?” If you’ve diminished my status, the situation feels unsafe.
- Autonomy – “Do I get a say or no?” If you believe you have a choice, this environment is more likely to be a place of reward and engagement.
→ Your job is to increase the TERA quotient whenever you can.
Embrace silence after a question.
→ Silence is often a measure of success.
Drama Triangle
- Victim‘s core belief: My life is so hard; my life is so unfair. Poor me.
- Dynamic: It’s not my fault(it’s theirs)
- Persecutor‘s core belief: I’m surrounded by fools and idiots.
- Dynamic: It’s not my fault(it’s yours)
- Rescuer’s core belief: Don’t fight, don’t worry, let me jump in and fix it.
- Dynamic: It’s my fault/responsibility(not yours)
“How can I help?”
→ Forcing your colleague to make a direct and clear request; Stops you from thinking that you know how best to help and leap into action.
→ + “Out of curiosity…” or “Just so I know…” or “To help me understand better…” or “To make sure that I’m clear…”
“That’s a great question. I’ve got some ideas, which I’ll share with you. But before I do, what are your first thoughts?”
💡 The more general opening question, the science tells us, you’re not only more effective, but you’re also more respected.
Actively listen.
Five questions for great planning:
- What is our winning aspiration? → Framing the choice as “winning” rules out mediocrity as an option. If you want to win, you need to know what game you’re playing and with whom.
- Where will we play? → Choosing a sector, geography, product, channel, and customer allows you to focus your resources.
- How will we win? → What’s the defendable difference that will open up the gap between you and the others?
- What capabilities must be in place? → Not just what do you need to do, but how will it become and stay a strength?
- What management systems are required? → It’s much hard to figure out what you want to measure that actually matters.
People don’t really learn when you tell them something.
They don’t even really learn when they do something.
They start learning, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.
💡 Your job as a manager and a leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments.
“What was most useful for you?”
4 main neurological drivers of longer-term memory: AGES
- Attention
- Generation
- Emotion
- Spacing
“the act of creating your own connections to new and presented ideas… When we take time and effort to generate knowledge and find an answer rather than just reading it, our memory retention is increased.”
More effective is finding the OBT-the One Big Thing-that’s worth remembering.
Kickstart Question: “What’s on your mind?”
→ quickly into a conversation that matters.
Learning Question: “What was most useful for you about this conversation?”
→ extracts what was useful, shares the wisdom, and embeds the learning.
Tell people what you found to be most useful about the exchange.
That equal exchange of information strengthens the social contract.
Book Recommendations
Self-Management
If you can read just one book on motivation—yours and others: Dan Pink, Drive🌟 If you can read just one book on building new habits: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit”🌟
If you can read just one book on harnessing neuroscience for personal change: Dan Siegel, Mindsight If you can read just one book on deep personal change: Lisa Lahey and Bob Kegan, Immunity to Change If you can read just one book on resilience: Seth Godin, The Dip
Organizational Change
If you can read just one book on how organizational change really works: Chip and Dan Heath, Switch If you can read just two books on understanding that change is a “complex system”: Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations Dan Pontefract, Flat Army If you can read just one book on using structure to change behaviors: Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto If you can read just one book on how to amplify the good: Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin, The Power of Positive Deviance If you can read just one book on increasing your impact within “organizations”: Peter Block, Flawless Consulting🌟
Other Cool Stuff
If you can read just one book on being strategic: Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win🌟 If you can read just one book on scaling up your impact: Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao, Scaling Up Excellence If you can read just one book on being more helpful: Edgar Schein, Helping If you can read just two books on the great questions: Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question”
“Dorothy Strachan, Making Questions Work If you can read just one book on creating learning that sticks: Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, Make It Stick🌟 If you can read just one book on why you should appreciate and marvel at every day, every moment: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything If you can read just one book that saves lives while increasing impact: Michael Bungay Stanier, ed., End Malaria All money goes to Malaria No More.