The Coaching Habit

Do you want to know a secret of a good conversation? The one that gets things done and help people own their ideas and develop their potential? Speak less. Ask more. Ask better questions. Actually listen to answers. And tame your inner Advice Monster. This book unpacks ideas that help us make the most of every conversation and change the way we lead for the better.

 "The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier helps lead better coaching conversations - those that we need to help others and unlock their potential. It uncovers our bad conversation habits and suggests paths to adopt better ones. You can start these new habits right after closing this book. 

My key takeaways:

I. General Ideas and Concepts


Good Work vs Great Work

  • Good Work is every day, get-it-done, this-is-my-job-description type of work.

  • Great Work is the work with both more meaning and more impact. 

  • We need to do more Great Work.

 

What Do You Focus On? 3P of Every Conversation

  • When we unpack a problem, we can focus on 3 different facets.

  • Project:  any challenges around the actual content.

  • Person / People: issues with team members/colleagues/other departments/bosses/customers/clients. When you’re talking about people, though, you’re not really talking about them. You’re talking about a relationship and, specifically, about what your role is in this relationship that might currently be less than ideal.

  • Patters of Behavior: if there’s a pattern of behavior that gets in your own way, prevents you from showing up in the best possible way. 

 

Coaching for Performance vs Coaching for Development

  • Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge. It’s putting out the fire or building up the fire or banking the fire. It’s everyday stuff, and it’s important and necessary. 

  • Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire.

 

The Drama Triangle

  • At least some of the time, we’re playing less-than-fantastic versions of ourselves with most of the people with whom we interact. When this happens, we’re bouncing around between three archetypal roles—Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer—each one as unhelpful and dysfunctional as the other. These three labels aren’t descriptions of who you are. They’re descriptions of how you’re behaving in a given situation. We tend to have a favorite role that we default to most of the time.

  • Victim. The core belief: “My life is so hard; my life is so unfair. ‘Poor me.’” The dynamic: “It’s not my fault (it’s theirs).” The benefits of playing the role: You have no responsibility for fixing anything; you get to complain; you attract Rescuers. The price paid for playing the role: You have no sense of being able to change anything—any change is outside your control. You’re known to be ineffective. And no one likes a whiner. Stuck is: “I feel stuck because I have no power and no influence. I feel useless.”

  • Persecutor. The core belief: “I’m surrounded by fools, idiots or just people less good than me.” The dynamic: “It’s not my fault (it’s yours).” The benefits of playing the role: You feel superior and have a sense of power and control. The price paid for playing the role: You end up being responsible for everything. You create Victims. You’re known as a micromanager. People do the minimum for you and no more. And no one likes a bully. Stuck is: “I feel stuck because I don’t trust anyone. I feel alone.”

  • Rescuer. The core belief: “Don’t fight, don’t worry, let me jump in and take it on and fix it.” The dynamic: “It’s my fault/responsibility (not yours).” The benefits of playing the role: You feel morally superior; you believe you’re indispensable. The price paid for playing the role: People reject your help. You create Victims and perpetuate the Drama Triangle. And no one likes a meddler. Stuck is: “I feel stuck because my rescuing doesn’t work. I feel burdened.”

  • Asking good questions and listening to answers help us avoid falling into one of the Drama Triangle roles.

 

Paradox of Helping

  • When you offer to help someone, you “one-up” yourself: you raise your status and you lower hers, whether you mean to or not. 

  • Do not rob a person of the pleasure to figure out a solution.

  • Rescuers create Victims. 



TERA

  • There are four primary drivers—they spell out the acronym TERA—that influence how the brain reads any situation.

  • T is for the tribe. The brain is asking, “Are you with me, or are you against me?”

  • E is for expectation. The brain is figuring out, “Do I know the future or don’t I?” If what’s going to happen next is clear, the situation feels safe. If not, it feels dangerous.

  • R is for rank. It’s a relative thing, and it depends not on your formal title but on how power is being played out at the moment.

  • A is for autonomy. “Do I get a say or don’t I?”

  • Our job is to increase the TERA Quotient whenever you can.

 

II. 8 New Habits for Coaching Conversations

1. The Kickstart Question: What’s on Your Mind?

  • An almost fail-safe way to start a chat that quickly turns into a real conversation is the question, “What’s on your mind?” It’s something of a Goldilocks question, walking a fine line so it is neither too open and broad nor too narrow and confining.

  • It’s a question that says, Let’s talk about the thing that matters most.

2. The AWE question: And What Else?

  • The Best Coaching Question in the world.

  • When you use “And what else?” you’ll get more options and often better options. Better options lead to better decisions. Better decisions lead to greater success.

  • You tame your advice Monster and you buy yourself more time.

  • Ask it one more time.

  • “There is nothing else” is a response you should be seeking. It means you’ve reached the end of this line of inquiry. Take a breath, take a bow and go on to another question.

  • The goal isn’t to generate a bazillion options. It’s to see what ideas that person already has (while effectively stopping you from leaping in with your own ideas). If you get three to five answers, then you’ve made great progress indeed. Move on when it’s time

 

3. The Focus Question: What's the Real Challenge Here for You?

  • Focus on the real problem, not the first problem.

  • The simple act of adding “for you” to the end of as many questions as possible is an everyday technique for making conversations more development- than performance-oriented.

The first three questions can combine to become a robust script for your coaching conversation.

 

4. The Foundation Question: What Do You Want?

  • The illusion that both parties to the conversation know what the other party wants is pervasive, and it sets the stage for plenty of frustrating exchanges. That's why we need this question.

  • It is the Goldfish Question because it often elicits that response: slightly bugged eyes, and a mouth opening and closing with no sound coming out. Here’s why the question is so difficult to answer.

  • We often don’t know what we actually want. Even if there’s a first, fast answer, the question “But what do you really want?” will typically stop people in their tracks. And even if you do know what you want, what you really really want, it’s often hard to ask for it.

  • And even if you know what you want and are courageous enough to ask for what you want, it’s often hard to say it in a way that’s clearly heard and understood.

  • And even if you know what you want, and you ask for what you want, and it seems to be heard, it’s often hard to hear the answer to your request, which might be not Yes but rather No. Or Maybe. Or Not that, but this instead.

 5. The Lazy Question: How Can I Help?

  • The power of “How can I help?” is twofold. 

  • First, you’re forcing your colleague to make a direct and clear request. That may be useful to him. He might not be entirely sure why he started this conversation with you.

  • Second (and possibly even more valuably), it stops you from thinking that you know how best to help and leaping into action.

  • The more direct version of “How can I help?” is “What do you want from me?”. You can soften it with “Just so I know…” or “To help me understand better…” or even “To make sure that I’m clear…”

  • New habit: WHEN THIS HAPPENS… Someone gives you a call/drops by your cubicle/shouts out across the office/sends you a text message and asks, “How do I [insert query most likely to sucker you in]?” INSTEAD OF… Giving her the answer… I WILL… Say, “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?” And when she answers, which she will, you’ll nod your head and be engaged and interested, and when she finishes, say, “That’s terrific. What else could you do?”

6. The Strategic Question: If You’re Saying Yes to This, What Are You Saying No To?

  • What you say No to is more important than what you say Yes to.

  • The secret to saying No was to shift the focus and learn how to say Yes more slowly. Saying Yes more slowly means being willing to stay curious before committing. Which means asking more questions: Why are you asking me? Whom else have you asked? When you say this is urgent, what do you mean? According to what standard does this need to be completed? By when? If I couldn’t do all of this but could do just a part, what part would you have me do?

  • It’s awkward saying no to something because actually, you’re saying no to someone.

  • The Strategy Question can help us avoid at least two of these biases. The first bias is the planning fallacy, which can be summed up as saying that we’re lousy at figuring out how much time something will take us to complete. The second bias, known as prospect theory, tells us that loss and gain are not measured equally. One result of the bias is that once we’ve got something, not only do we not want to let it go, but we also tend to overvalue its worth.

 

7. The Learning Question: What Was Most Useful for You?

  • It helps finish any conversation in a way that will make you look like a genius.

  • People don’t really learn when you tell them something. They don’t even really learn when they do something. They start learning, start creating new neural pathways, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.

  • This question creates the space for those learning moments.

  • It Assumes the Conversation Was Useful

  • It Asks People to Identify the Big Thing That Was Most Useful

  • It Makes It Personal. Add “for you”

  • It Gives You Feedback

  • It’s Learning, Not Judgment

  • It Reminds People How Useful You Are to Them

  • It leverages on the peak-end rule: how we’re evaluating an experience is disproportionately influenced by the peak (or the trough) of the experience and by the ending moments. Finish on a high note and you make everything that went before it looks better.

 

Arina Divo