680: Becoming More Coach-Like, with Michael Bungay Stanier

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:00]:
One of the most common desires I hear from leaders is wanting to get better at helping others grow. A great way to do that is to become more coach like. On this episode, Michael Bungay Stanier returns to help us get better at building the skill. This is Coaching for Leaders episode 680. Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave Stachowiak [00:00:27]:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. So many of our listeners and members have told me in recent years how much they would like to get better at coaching. Not coaching in the context of being a professional coach, but coaching as in being more coach alike. Utilizing great coaching skills inside of their organizations to support their teams, to help to develop talent in order to be effective. Today, I’m so glad to welcome back a guest to the show who knows more about being coach like and helping us to do it than I think anybody else. I’m so pleased to welcome back Michael Bungay Stanier. He is the author of 8 books, including The Coaching Habit, which has sold more than a 1000000 copies and is the best selling book on coaching this century.

Dave Stachowiak [00:01:29]:
He is the founder of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that’s trained thousands of people around the world to be more coach like. His TEDx talk on taming your advice monster has been viewed more than a 1000000 times. Michael, it is always a pleasure to have you on. Welcome back.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:01:46]:
Dave, probably know this is my favorite podcast to be on. I was just thinking as you were making the introduction, the number of people who who, you know, they’ve got a book or their sup I’m I’m meeting them on my own. Like, if you’re trying to get onto 1 podcast, get onto Dave’s podcast because he is such a gracious and informed interviewer. The audience, so good looking, so talented, so intelligent, so charming, so susceptible to flattery. It’s wonderful. So I’m really delighted to be back. Thank you for having me.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:14]:
Well, it is a great honor coming from you, of course. And speaking of accomplishment, a million copies of The Coaching Habit.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:02:22]:
It’s like 1.1.2 or 1.3. It’s kind of not getting up there now which is like amazing.

Dave Stachowiak [00:02:27]:
It is amazing. And, you know, part of the reason that this book has been so successful from my standpoint is that so many of the coaching books prior to The Coaching Habit were written for people like you and me and people who do coaching as a profession, right. And great. They were useful and helpful to us, but they weren’t really great at helping people be more coach like the rest of us in management roles and helping develop talent. And you make a distinction in the book between coaching the profession and being more coach like. Tell me about that distinction.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:03:10]:
Yeah. Because the seed of this book came from my deep irritation of being part of other companies and going in and trying to do coach training for managers and leaders in companies. And just hating how it was done because they would just take the training that I had gone through to become a coach. And then they just do the exactly the same for managers and leaders and other people. I’m like, you know, asking questions is the same, but everything else is different. So I had this deep belief that coaching is a really powerful technology to help people change, to help people bring out their best, to help people feel seen and feel heard. And it also arrives with a whole bunch of baggage. A whole bunch of people who are on the other side of coaching and looking at coaches going, I don’t know whatever that is, but I don’t wanna be it or come near it because it’s a bit weird.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:04:04]:
And so I had a really clear goal, which is I’m trying to unwear coaching to the extent of, like, even making it like, let’s not even call it coaching. And so when I talk about this, I say, look. The goal is a definition, if you like, is to stay curious a little bit longer and rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly. So you can see I’m not even defining it as a role. It’s a it’s a core behavior. It’s a core human behavior. Curiosity. Be curious about the person in front of you, and good things happen.

Dave Stachowiak [00:04:34]:
It’s so interesting to hear you say that. And I don’t know if you and I have ever talked about that, but I think about, less so now maybe because of the coaching habit and so many of the other practitioners who are doing great work, but there was a lot of baggage around the word coaching. So much so that I had a very conscious thought about not using the word coaching in the title of the podcast when I started it back in 2011 because I was worried about some of the baggage that might come along with the word. And you and so many others have helped to, like, really change the perception of coaching into something that I think a lot of us today do see as one of many necessary skills that every leader needs and use the word technology, something that we can learn to get better at and utilize in our work.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:05:21]:
You know, Daniel Goleman in the year 2000 wrote an article for HBR, Harvard Business Review, called Leadership That Gets Results. And he said, look, there are 6 different styles of leadership, and they all have their moment, and they all have pros and cons. Good leaders, great leaders really will use all 6 and they’ll know when the appropriate time to be directive or be democratic or be coach like or- Normal leaders use 1 or 2 or at a stretch 3. In coaching, it’s one of the 6 leadership styles. And Coleman went on to say, look. This style of leadership has a real impact on culture, the way people feel, and having the right people, and also on strategy and on the bottom line results. It really makes a difference.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:06:07]:
And it is the least utilized of the leadership styles. So I was very keen to go. Look, I want you to think of coaching as a leadership tool, a leadership behavior. You can do this every day. You can do this in most interactions. And then as the book became more successful, because I did write it for a kind of organizational context. When I started getting emails from parents and sports coaches and pastors and all sorts of people.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:06:34]:
I got this video the other day from, like, the swimming club leaders of New York state going, we all use the coaching habit in the way that we help people learn how to swim. Wow. Like, that is amazing.

Dave Stachowiak [00:06:48]:
Yeah. It really, I think, speaks to the universal nature of this as a skill set, like listening, like giving feedback, like so many of the other things that we’ve traditionally learned in leadership. And you’ve shared with me that part of this is and doing this well, or at least doing this better, is the being of coaching, the energy of how you show up. Tell me what you mean by that.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:07:15]:
Yeah. You know, there’s some technical stuff around coaching or being more coach like for sure. And it kinda comes down to this. Alright. If the goal is to stay curious a little bit longer and rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly, then how do I do that? Well, one of the things you’re looking to do is tame your advice monster. You know? And that’s what the that’s the TEDx talk you referenced in the introduction, that that hunger and habit we have to leap in with ideas and opinions and suggestions and all of that stuff to be helpful. I’m making air quotes here. And then you’re like, okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:07:52]:
So if I’m gonna tame my advice, monster, because that’s how I stay curious longer, how do I do that? Well, having some questions is a key part of it. And that’s why in the book, I’m like, here are 7 really good questions. They’re not the only questions. They may not even be the best questions, but they’re pretty good. And if you just bring those 7 questions into the way that you practice your leadership or your way of interacting with other human beings, then that’s gonna be a plus. That’s gonna be helpful. And, you know, if there’s one thing that’s evolved and changed over time, for me, it’s a kind of sinking into the deeper power of what this way of being with other people can be. And for the person that you’re coaching or you’re in conversation with, the really powerful things you’re providing, you’re giving them time to think, and you’re helping them be seen and be heard.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:08:45]:
And that turns out to have mean less about the, do you have an array of models and questions and stuff you can pepper them with? And more about how you’re showing up. And so, what I notice is as somebody who wants to bring coaching into their repertoire of how they show up in the world, part of what you’re doing is you’re working on your presence and your it’s still gonna sound woo day, but but but, you know, your energy and the way you are with that other person. Because the way you are allows them to be seen and allows them to be heard and allows you to self manage yourself so they have the time and the space to do the thinking that they’re so hungry for.

Dave Stachowiak [00:09:27]:
When you see people do that well for you, what is it that they do that makes that work?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:09:36]:
I think part of it is how they’re holding the relationship with me. And it’s a paradox, which is they care deeply and they don’t care. And it’s they do both of these things in exactly the same time in a really powerful way. So there’s something about that experience where I just say, this person is so on my side. They are, you know, fully committed for me to figure this out or to have the best life I’m after. They’re just in my corner, and I don’t doubt that. And at the same time, they hold what happens very lightly. That’s what I mean by they don’t care.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:10:16]:
They’re like, it’s your life, Michael. But, you know, have the insight, don’t have the insight. Make the choice, don’t make the choice. Act on the choice, don’t act on the choice. In the end, that’s all down to you. That’s your side of the table. That’s not my side of the table. But they have this ability to both give me the help this is a a quote from one of my mentors, Peter Block.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:10:39]:
He says, “it’s about giving people, responsibility for their own freedom.” And this is insight about, oh, you have the freedom to make choices. You have the freedom to be brave. You have the freedom to do the next big thing. You have the freedom to do the hard thing. And it’s there for you to take or not take. That’s the responsibility or the freedom.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:11:01]:
And that is amazing when that happens. And I know, Dave, when I first started hiring coaches to support me, I I I I was pretty I was a pretty terrible client because, you know, I knew too much, and I thought too fast. And I have a good, you know, I have a a good self deprecating charm to me, which meant that I would typically collude with the other coach so that they weren’t really coaching me the way I wanted to be coached. It was it was very annoying. I was too slippery. And then I had a coach for 15 years, a guy called Ernest Oriente. And he just had a great ability not to be conned by anything I was doing and to care and not care. Like, he was so on my side, and he was so, this is your life, so make your choices.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:11:50]:
It’s it’s not down to me. It’s down to you. And that was why he coached me for 15 years because he was so good at that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:11:56]:
Some of us have had 1 or more people in our lives who’ve shown up who’ve been able to do that, either a friend or a family member or a mentor or a leader. And so many people who I work with, you work with, want to be that person for others, especially in the professional space. And I’m curious about the other part of that question of how it feels on that end when we get that. But how do we know when we’re doing that for someone else? Like, when we’re showing up in that space of having that energy in the right place of being fully aligned with supporting that person, at the same time, like, disconnected enough that we’re really able to help and support and say what needs to be said?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:12:41]:
Well, I think there’s possibly 2 ways you can tap into that. The first way is the lazy way, and it’s a really good way. I’m very pro lazy. Don’t get me wrong. And you ask them. You know, the final question in the coaching habit book is the learning question. And you ask what was useful or valuable here for you?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:12:59]:
And if you’re coaching somebody in a formal or an informal way, ask that question so you can learn what’s working and not working around that. And so that’s a kind of external way of gauging it. And what you’ll hear will be the truth, but probably not the whole truth, but some of the truth, and that’s helpful. And then there’s a internal way of of kind of asking yourself, how am I doing? And, you know, when I facilitate an an online event or a live event or a keynote or whatever, inevitably, I will ask the audience some checking questions right at the start. And the questions I I default to are things like, number 1, how active and engaged do you plan to be? And number 2, how much risk are you willing to take? Number 3, how much do you care about the experience of the other people in the room? And it’s actually a great check-in question for yourself. So imagine just before you get into a conversation with somebody where you’re planning on being curious, you go, how active and engaged do I plan to be? Because I know there are times where I’m like, yeah, I’m in this conversation, but I’m in 2nd gear. I’m not in I’m kind of cruising rather than present and active in it.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:14:16]:
How much risk am I willing to take? That’s such a good one because so often, I will not ask the question because I made up that they can’t handle it. But what I’ve come to realize is it’s like, I can’t handle it. Uh-huh. I’m nervous about the question. I’m nervous about the answer. I’m nervous whether it will work. And so, it took me a while to figure this out, but I would create these stories about how I’m really helping them and protecting them and being nice to them. And, in fact, I’m infantilizing them by not being brave enough to ask the question.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:14:49]:
And then, how much do I care about that other experience? What does it mean to be fully committed to the best of this person? And so, when I am articulating the kind of a motto for my coaching, kind of my the being of my coaching, not just the technical stuff, but how am I trying to show up, the language I will use is fierce love. So love meaning I wanna be fully on their side. I want them to feel like, man, Michael is so in my corner. Michael has my back. Michael is a champion for me to be the best version of myself and to be doing the best work I can be doing. And fierce meaning, I’m not gonna compromise that. I’m not gonna muck around. I’m going to say what needs to be said.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:15:35]:
I’m gonna push where it’s appropriate. I’m gonna challenge where it’s appropriate. You know, one of the permissions, I guess, you could call it that I I give myself, and I try and give others when I we talk about this being of coaching, is to be fierce and not be nice. And that doesn’t mean be an a hole. Although, there’s a there’s actually a really useful place for that, being that kind of for playing that role. But that fierceness, you know, the reason I coached with Ernest for so long is he just had this fierceness, which he just wouldn’t let me get away with stuff, and I love that. So be fierce, not nice. Fierce love, what that does is allows you to show up going, oh, I’m here, and I’m here to serve in the best possible way.

Dave Stachowiak [00:16:18]:
You were saying that I was thinking about when I was a Carnegie instructor that somewhere along the way, I learned about the importance of doing exactly what you just suggested, like asking some questions first before an interaction and asking someone, where do you wanna 0 in on? Where do you want feedback? What kind of feedback do you want? And once they identified that, then I found like, wow, how much people were just so thriving for not thriving for, just were also hungry for that. And I realized what you just said a moment ago that sometimes I was the one holding myself back. Like, oh, they’re not ready for this. It’s too advanced. I don’t wanna put someone on the defensive. And oftentimes, that made me realize, oh, wow. They are ready. And then the other thing that it did for me as the coach, facilitator, instructor, whatever role I was in, is if we had that conversation in advance, then it was so much easier for me to say, okay.

Dave Stachowiak [00:17:21]:
I see something that I think would help them to actually say that out loud. And I cannot think of a time in all these years, Michael, where someone I was working with and I had identified something that they wanted feedback on, and I gave them really direct feedback, and that they pushed back or said that was too much or got really frustrated. If anything, it was the opposite. Like, I didn’t hear enough.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:17:44]:
Well, I’ve had people push back, so I think it can happen. And, that’s not a reason not to do it. Right. Because if because other otherwise, you get trapped in this kind of miserable circle of trying to anticipate what you think they will react and how they’ll react and trying to give them what you think they want and what they need. And and that way misery lies. You know, my job is to be the best version of myself because I want people to see that. I wanna be a role model for how to show up to people. And then how this lands, that’s kind of their side of the table.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:18:19]:
That’s for them to worry about. Now I wanna make it land I wanna give myself the best chance of it landing. So I’ll often do a little framing. So I’ll go, you know, alright, Dave. Is it okay if I give you a hard truth here? Because I’ve got something and it’s kind of burning to say it, but it’s provocative, and it might shock you a little bit. So is it okay if I lay that on the table? And almost nobody says no. So this has seen that 99.9% of people say yes to that. Then what I do is I go, okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:18:48]:
So, Dave, here’s the thing. Blah blah blah blah blah. Now I almost point to- I almost won’t be looking them in the eye. I’ll almost be making that piece of news what in facilitation you call a third point. So we’re both looking at that thing together going, here’s the thing. And then I’ll check-in on you. So what rings true about this for you? So part of what I’m I’m doing is I’m not presenting the feedback as the truth. I’m presenting it as, oh, isn’t this an interesting third object for you and me to look at? How much of that feels useful? What feels interesting about that? What rings true for you about that? And so what I am doing is I’m giving them every chance, and I’m giving myself every chance to save face.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:19:35]:
So that if it doesn’t go the way I want it to go, we can both back out of it without damaging the ongoing relationship. So I’ve got another chance to have another tough conversation at another time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:46]:
I’m gonna start.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:19:47]:
Does that land with you? I mean, I’m curious to know if that makes sense and if it lands for you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:52]:
Yeah. As you were saying, I was thinking I might start trying to do that more intentionally.

Dave Stachowiak [00:19:58]:
Yes. I guess I’ve got Carnegie on my mind because I when we did presentation courses at Carnegie, one of the things that we learned as instructors is whenever we did, we would do video review. So would someone would present and then they’d watch the video of themselves. And one of the things you learn really quickly doing that is when watching a video of someone, and especially if you’ve never done that before. It’s a pretty intense experience to see a video of yourself in a screen in front of a group of people and, like, then to approach it and try to learn from it. And we learned, let’s invite the person watching the video too. Let’s look at this like it is someone else. Like it is a 3rd party.

Dave Stachowiak [00:20:40]:
It’s not you. It’s not me. It’s this third person. And if you were going to give this person some praise of what you noticed they did well, and also, if you were gonna offer them an invitation to do something different, what would you say? And it was fascinating at how putting that out there as a third person, a third point, and taking out some of the emotion and the just this is me kind of thing. People were able to set it aside.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:21:09]:
It’s a great cognitive tool Yeah. In all sorts of different contexts. I mean, if you’re talking to somebody and you’re trying to bring out their best, you go, what would your best friend say were your strengths? And that just gives people permission to talk about themselves in the 3rd person in a way that if you go, what are your strengths? It can kind of freeze people up a little bit. It can also it just gives you it also helps people just get a little detachment so they can almost view themselves almost like an out of body experience. You go, oh, yeah. Now I’m looking at Michael. I can see, well, obviously, his strength is he has a face perfect for a podcast. It’s like he absolutely flourishes when there’s no video.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:21:49]:
So or whatever it might be.

Dave Stachowiak [00:21:51]:
Yeah. And I have been in the coaching app at so many times over the years and all the conversations we’ve had and the questions. And we’ve had a lot of conversations on the podcast, both with you and others on asking better questions. We haven’t had as many conversations about asking questions better.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:22:10]:
Right.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:11]:
And a couple of things came up for me, and coming back to the coaching habit again this time and looking through it that I don’t think you and I have ever talked about. And you have some wonderful invitations for us. And one of them is stop offering advice with question marks attached you call these rhetorical questions right I call them advice disguised as a question.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:22:35]:
Right. Yeah.

Dave Stachowiak [00:22:36]:
Yeah. It’s it’s kind of the same thing, and it’s something that I don’t know about you, but I see all the time. I catch myself still doing. What is it that is problematic about it, and and what does it sound like when you hear it?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:22:49]:
Yeah. Well, what it sounds like is the the experience people have is they’ve done they’ve done some work on coaching, and they’re like, okay. It’s good to be curious. It’s good to ask questions. And they’re like, you’re absolutely right. But they’re like, and I’m desperate for people to know this thing that’s in my head because I’m sure it’s genius, and they need to know my idea or my opinion or my suggestion around this. So rather than ask a question, they’ll go, have you thought of did you consider? What about? And then I’ll insert their own idea there. And they’re like, well, I’m asking you a question.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:23:22]:
I’m like, you’re not really, are you? You’re really making a statement and just tacking a question mark on the end of it. And it mostly doesn’t work for the same reason a default response to giving advice doesn’t work. And this is an important thing for people to hear, Dave, which is, I am in no way saying don’t give advice. I think giving advice is a really helpful thing to do, to teach, to explain, to transmit. There’s a very important place for all of that. I mean, you and I are both teachers. We do a lot of transferring of content to other people. The thing I am trying to shift when I say being more coach like is staying curious a little bit longer and rushing to action advice, giving a little bit more slowly.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:24:04]:
The thing I’m trying to shift is the default response to having the answer and sharing the answer. And what you’re really learning is to notice the ideas and opinions and suggestions and all of that that you get in your head and to just go, oh, that’s interesting. There’s my advice monster rattling its cage, and now I’ll ask you an actually useful question. So it’s like, don’t kid yourself. This is not a question. In the same way, this is kind of a a related leap in terms of framing questions. It’s kind of crosses it’s the middle ground between asking better questions and asking questions better. One of the things I talk about in The Coaching Habit book is how I privilege what questions over how questions and why questions.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:24:48]:
I almost never ask a why question anymore. There’s a place for that. But in most conversations, most of the time, when you go, well, why, why did you do that? It’s very hard to ask that question in a way that doesn’t sound accusatory. Why the hell did you do that? What were you thinking? You know, it’s it almost always puts the other person on justification and defensiveness. Or you’re asking because you’re trying to find out more information so that you can share your idea and make sure your idea is better. And that’s not the game you’re playing in this immediate conversation. And when you’re into a how question, you’re assuming that you’ve already figured out what the real challenge is. And now you’re right.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:25:34]:
What’s the action plan? How will you do that? And so there’s a place for that for sure. But one of the key insights on The Coaching Habit book is too often, we don’t get to the heart of the real challenge. You know, and the focus question, what’s the real challenge here for you, is so powerful because it slows down that assumption that we figured out the right thing to be working on. And if there’s an identity that I would love for people to change, it’s become known as the person who’s brilliant at figuring out what the real problem is rather than being known as the person who has ideas. Because ideas are everywhere. They’re cheap. They’re plentiful. They’re not even worth that much.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:26:16]:
But somebody who knows how to figure out what the real problem is, that’s a strategic thinker. That’s somebody who’s valuable in any context.

Dave Stachowiak [00:26:24]:
I think that’s the distinction I missed every other time I looked at the coaching habit and thinking about avoiding questions starting with why is I get the part about putting people on the defensive and that makes sense. And we’ve heard that message a few times on the podcast over the years. What I didn’t really pick up until just now as much is the problem with the why is you’re trying to solve the problem. And that’s where this gets really it then it’s not being coach like. It’s giving advice, which to your point, there is a time to give advice. But it’s just to be really clear about what am I trying to do in this moment in this conversation.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:27:05]:
Yeah. So one of the marks of somebody who’s really sinking into the being of coaching is they start becoming more finely attuned to, is this conversation to help me or is it to help them? And there are sometimes you find I’ve done this many, many, many times. So sometimes you find yourself asking a question, and it’s because you wanna find something out rather than going, I’m trying to help them find something out. And so if you can hold that space, which is if I am fully in service to that person, if I’m really committed with fierce love to do all I can for this person, Is this question truly in service of them, or are they just telling me stuff they already know and it’s all for me?

Dave Stachowiak [00:27:51]:
There’s a 4 word invitation in the book to “get comfortable with silence.” And you follow it up and say, “silence is often a measure of success.” How so?

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:28:06]:
Because it doesn’t feel like that in the moment. If if people want a a really good example of this, maybe a couple of years ago, I I coached Brene Brown on her podcast, Dare to Lead. And it was this is a bit of an aside day, but it was like this First of all, Brene, who I’d known before she became super famous, but then we kind of fell out of touch because she became super famous. And when I wrote her at brene@aol.com, which was her old email address, nobody answered. So I was like, oh, well, you know, there was my brief touch of fame. But then her team reached out and said, do you wanna come on the podcast? I’m like, yes. Yes. I would like to come on the podcast.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:28:45]:
And then I was in Australia at the time. So this is at, like, 4 AM my time, whatever time, Texas. So I was, like, you know, nervous and 4 AM ish. And she normally does it audio and video, but the video failed immediately because my parents’ Internet broadband wasn’t very good. So I was doing it blind. I didn’t know what was happening or how she was responding. And, like, 45 minutes into the podcast, she goes, well, okay. So coach me.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:29:11]:
I was like, oh, man. In my head, Dave, I’m going, please don’t muck this up. You could do a good job with this. And what you’ll notice if you go and listen to that is I’ll ask a question, and there’ll be these pauses. I’m not even sure how long they take, but they felt like they felt like an hour. It was probably more like 3, 4, or 5 seconds. And I had lots of people over the years tell me that they’re, like, checking whether their podcast player is still running because they’re like, what’s this silence about? But here’s the thing about silence. When you ask a question that really lands, people need some time to figure out the answer to it.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:29:50]:
And when you see people, often their eyes go up into the left as they kind of, oh, I don’t know the answer to that. I don’t have a quick obvious answer or reply to that. I’ve gotta think about it. You’re literally seeing new neural pathways being formed in front of you. Your job at this stage is to shut up. Don’t awkwardly fill the silence, but just go, this is amazing. This is great coaching happening even as we speak. And the other thing to know about silence is however uncomfortable you are with silence, the other person will crack first.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:30:24]:
So ask the question, be quiet, and then just the silence will encourage them to go and say the thing that they’ve been sitting on. So it’s a really powerful tool. It’s powerful because it gives people space to think. It honors people having new ideas. If you’re an introverted type of person in that way that you need to get your thoughts together before you speak rather than, like, me extroverted where I just start speaking and, you know, have no idea what I’m actually gonna say, it’s just a really powerful place where, you know, we talked about your presence, your calmness, your solidness can really show up, and it’s in that comfort with sitting with the silence and saying, this is fine. My job is to hold the space for you so you can figure some stuff out, and I’m delighted that you’re wrestling with the question.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:13]:
Many people in our audience and our members are readers and read lots of books. And, but I also come across folks in our listening community, Michael, who don’t read a lot or don’t read much at all. And once in a while, one of those people will reach out to me or will be having a conversation and say, I don’t read a lot. I listen to podcasts. I do other things, but I’d like to read a leadership book. What’s one you would recommend? And it’s the same answer almost always for me every time. It’s The Coaching Habit. Oh, thank you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:31:47]:
Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of The Coaching Habit. Say less, ask more, and Change the Way You Lead Forever. Michael, always a pleasure.

Michael Bungay Stanier [00:31:55]:
Dave, thank you.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:03]:
If you’re familiar with the coaching habit book, then you know there’s 7 tentpole questions that are part of the framework Michael presents. We didn’t talk about those much in this conversation because we did talk about them in detail in one of our past episodes. Episode 237 is one of them I’d recommend if this conversation was helpful to you. These coaching questions get results. In that episode, Michael and I talked about the 7 questions, when to utilize them, why they work, and more importantly, use utilizing them as a starting point for the questions that you may ask inside of the situations you’re in each day. Episode 237, a great compliment to this conversation.

Dave Stachowiak [00:32:41]:
I’m also thinking about episode 440, leadership in the midst of chaos. Jim Mattis was my guest on that episode. Former secretary of defense here in the United States, 4 star general in the US Marine Corps. Jim talked on that episode about how much he uses coaching in his leadership. And as he pointed out in that conversation, he said I could command in 15 minutes a day. Most of the rest of the time was coaching. How to utilize so many of the things we talked about today in practice in a such a large organization and in such a visible roles. Episode 440 for that.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:14]:
Also recommended episode 613, how to lead better through complexity. Jennifer Garvey Berger was my guest on that episode.We talked about the distinction in that conversation between complicated situations and complex situations. Complicated situations, of course, hard, but often have a clear answer. Complex situations are dynamic, and the answer from yesterday may not be the answer that works today or tomorrow. And one of the points she made in that conversation is when you experiment, you need to release your attachment to the outcomes. Michael echoed a bit of that in this conversation today. I think it’s a wonderful compliment to the coaching habit, episode 613.

Dave Stachowiak [00:33:53]:
And then finally, episode 654, how to help others be seen and heard. Scott Shigeoka was my guest on that episode, and we talked about the importance of presence of energies. We talked about a bit in this conversation as well too with the intention of making sure others are seen and heard. So many of us not only want that for ourselves, but we want the work that we do, our leadership showing up more coach like to be able to do that so much better for others. All of those episodes you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website. I’m inviting you today, if you haven’t already, to set up your free membership at coachingforleaders.com. It’s gonna open up access to a whole bunch of benefits inside of the free membership, all of them available to you for free. One of those benefits is all of the audio courses that are inside of the portal so you can utilize them and find very specific topics that will be helpful to you. And I’m thinking about that because one of the audio courses is 5 simple questions that move people forward. One of our members asked me recently, Dave, what are the best questions you use? Which ones are your favorites? I love The Coaching Habit questions, and I use them all the time.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:08]:
And that course is 5 other questions that I use all the time in addition to the coaching habit questions. If you’d like to find out what those are, go over if you already have your free membership activated. Go over to courses, find the course on 5 simple questions that’ll move people forward. You’ll see them all there. And if you don’t have your free membership set up, just go to coachingforleaders.com. That will get you a full access to that. And while you’re there, you may want to look at Coaching for Leaders Plus. It is how you get even more resources from me, more access to what the experts are thinking about, and more practical next steps on how to handle challenging situations.

Dave Stachowiak [00:35:45]:
One of those situations that came up a few weeks ago in a conversation with one of our members was how to navigate awful meetings. How he, show up and engage at a meeting that as he said, I go to a couple of these every month that are just not run well. I don’t get a lot out of it. It doesn’t feel like a good use of everyone’s time. We had a conversation about that. And one of my recent journal entries is how to reframe awful meetings. If you find yourself in that situation where you’ve got to go to a meeting once in a while, that is not good. How do you show up in a different way and actually make it work better for you and for others? It’s one tiny piece of Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Dave Stachowiak [00:36:25]:
If you’d like to find out more, go over to coachingforleader.plus. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. I will be back this coming Monday for our next conversation. Thanks as always for listening, and I hope you have a great week.