The Coaching Habit

by Michael Bungay Stanier (Amazon)

Why coaching?
Prevents us from jumping into advice-giving, problem-solving, Rescuer
mode, which:

Only adds things to our personal to-dos

Robs the coachee the chance to solve their own problems

You risk trying to solve the wrong problem, which is a waste of

everyone's time and energy

#1 The Kickstart Question

“What’s on your mind?”

It’s neither too open and broad not too narrow and confining

Coaching for performance vs Coaching for development

For performance: addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge;
everyday stuff.

For development: turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing
with the issue.

Using the 3Ps to focus

A problem or challenge may be centered on a Project, a Person, or a
Pattern of behavior

“What’s on your mind?” you ask. “The [insert name of thing

they’re working on],” they say. “So there are three different
facets of that we could look at,” you offer. “The project side
—any challenges around the actual content. The people side
—any issues with team members/colleagues/other
departments/bosses/customers/clients. And patterns—if

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 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?”

#2 The AWE Question

"And what else?"

Do not stop at vague, tip of the tongue answers to the Kickstart Question

Ask it at least 3x, no more than 5x

A wrap-it-up version: "Is there anything else?"

Using it in other situations

When presented with the course of action the person plans to take, ask
"And what else could you do?"

When trying to get to the heart of the issue, follow-up "What's the real
challenge here for you?" with "What else is a challenge here for you?"

When brainstorming, "What else might be possible?"

#3 The Focus Question

"What's the real challenge here for you?"

Variation: "If you had to pick one of these to focus on, which one here
would be the real challenge for you?"

What > Why: if you're not trying to fix things, you don't need the
backstory. Ask more What? questions

#4 The Foundation Question

"What do you want?"

Taking responsibility for your own freedom is notoriously

difficult to do. Peter] Block defined an adult-to-adult
relationship as one in which you are “able to ask for what
you want, knowing that the answer may be No.”

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 About the bluntness and directness of the question:

George Bernard Shaw put it succinctly when he said, “The

single biggest problem with communication is the illusion
that it has taken place.” 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.

Nonviolent Communication sets a difference between wants and needs.

Wants are the surface requests, the tactical outcomes

Needs are deeper and help us understand the more human driver who
might be behind the want.

Economist Manfred Max-Neef defined 9 self-explanatory universal

needs:

Affection

Creation

Recreation

Freedom

Identity

Understanding

Participation

Protection

Subsistence

A bit of neuroscience
According to neuroscientist Evan Gordon, the "fundamental organizing
principle of the brain" is the risk-and-reward response

5x/second, at an unconscious level, our brains are scanning the

environment around us and asking itself: is it safe here?

It is only able to engage and operate at a higher level when it

recognizes the current environment/situation as safe (instead of the
fight-or-flight response triggered by an unsafe environment)

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 A bit of psychology
How to influence the brain's perception of safeness? TERA - increasing the
overall TERA Quotient helps raise safeness:

T for "tribe":

the brain: "Are you with me, or are you against me?"

E for "expectation":

the brain: "Do I know the future or don't I?"

R for "rank":

relative, depends not only on title but also on situational power

the brain: "Are you more important or less important than I am?"

A for "autonomy":

the brain: "Do I get a say or not?"

Another helpful tool, extracted from the Solution-Based school of therapy.

Their go-to question: "Suppose that tonight, while you're sleeping, a

miracle happens. When you get up in the morning tomorrow, how
will you know that things have suddenly got better?"

It focus on the end, before working back the means

#5 The Lazy Question

Being helpful vs being "helpful"
Being "helpful": stepping in and taking over

Contributes to a cycle of exhaustion, frustration, and reduced impact

Edgar Schein: when you offer to help someone, you raise your status
and lower theirs, whether you mean to or not

The Drama Triangle

It's a practical interpretation of the therapeutic model of Transactional
Analysis, created by Stephen Karpman

It starts by assuming that, at least some of the time, we're playing less-
than-fantastic versions of ourselves with most of the people with whom

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 we interact (sometimes, changing roles within the same interaction)

We bounce between 3 archetypal roles: Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer

Victim:

Core belief: “My life is so hard; my life is so unfair. ‘Poor me.’”

Dynamic: “It’s not my fault (it’s theirs).”

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:

Core belief: “I’m surrounded by fools, idiots or just people less

good than me.”

Dynamic: “It’s not my fault (it’s yours).”

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:

Core belief: “Don’t fight, don’t worry, let me jump in and take it on
and fix it.”

Dynamic: “It’s my fault/responsibility (not yours).”

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

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 a meddler.

Stuck is: “I feel stuck because my rescuing doesn’t work. I feel

burdened.”

The Lazy Question

"How can I help?"

First, you're forcing the person to make a direct and clear request

Second (and more importantly), it stops you from thinking that you know
how best to help and leaping into action

More direct version: "What do you want from me?"

It can be softened with "Out of curiosity", "Just so I know", "To make

sure that I'm clear"

Don't bite the cheddar on the mousetrap

Being asked things like "What do you think I should do about ...?" can
trigger our Advice Monster and make us jump into advice-giving.

Instead, use this: "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?", followed up
with "What else could you do?"

The goal is not to stop giving advice at all but to prioritize making people
better at getting to their own answers (and at the same time, not adding
more work to your pile)

#6 The Strategic Question

"If you're saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?"

“Work smarter, not harder.” “Be more strategic.” These

maxims tend to be TBU True But Useless sound bites that
sound good but are impossible to act upon.

When you combine the overuse of the term with the fact
that anything to do with strategy is often seen as being
“their work”—when “they” are anyone two or three levels

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 higher than the employees—well, you’re likely to encounter
a nasty but predictable case of the SPOTS Strategic Plans
on Top Shelf.

Of the many definitions of “strategy” that I’ve seen, I think I

like Michael Porter’s best, when he said, “The essence of
strategy is choosing what not to do.”

It asks for an explicit commit

Can be followed by "What could being fully committed to this idea look
like?"

But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries

and form. And in fact, you’re uncovering two types of No
answers here—the No of omission and the No of
commission. The first type of No applies to the options that
are automatically eliminated by your saying Yes. [...] The
second type of No you’re uncovering—which will likely take
the conversation another level deeper—is what you now
need to say to make the Yes happen. It’s all too easy to
shove another Yes into the bag of our overcommitted lives,
hoping that in a Harry Potter magical sort of way it will
somehow all be accommodated. This second type of No
puts the spotlight on how to create the space and focus,
energy and resources that you’ll need to truly do that Yes.

You can use the 3Ps Projects, People, and Patterns of behavior) to frame
this

It can counteract two biases related to fast-thinking decision making

(Thinking, Fast and Slow):

Planning fallacy: we're lousy at figuring out how much time something
will take us to complete

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 Prospect theory: loss and gain are not measured equally, so we hold
tight to what we already have and overvalue its worth

The other 5 Strategic Questions

From Roger Marting and A.G. Lafley's Playing to win

5 non-linearly-answered, go-back-and-forth questions to define a

strategy:

"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 (and against) whom. What impact
do you want to have in and on the world?

Where will we play? “Boiling the ocean” is rarely successful. 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 easy enough to measure

stuff. It’s much harder to figure out what you want to measure that
actually matters

#7 The Learning Question

What was most useful for you?

It assumes the conversation was useful

It asks people to identify the Big Thing that was most useful

It makes it personal

It gives you feedback

It's learning, not judgment (vs Was this useful?

It reminds people how useful you are to them

People don't really learn when you tell the something

They don't even really learn when they do something

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 They start learning, start creating new neural pathways, only when they
have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened

Chis Argyris calls this the "double-loop learning" 40 years ago

The 1st loop is trying to fix a problem

The 2nd loop is creating a learning moment about the issue at hand,
when people pull back and find insight (the aha moments)

It's the job of a manager/leader to help create the space for people to
have these learning moments

Josh Davis and colleagues from the NeuroLeadership Institute: AGES

model for neurological drivers of long-term memory Attention,
Generation, Emotion, and Spacing)

This is “the act of creating (and sharing) 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.” This is why, in a nutshell, advice is overrated. I
can tell you something, and it’s got a limited chance of
making its way into your brain’s hippocampus, the region
that encodes memory. If I can ask you a question and you
generate the answer yourself, the odds increase
substantially.

Another strategy to improve learning, from Peter Brown, Henry Roediger

and Mark McDaniel (Make It Stick):

The first major tactic they share is harnessing the impact of

information retrieval. They put it beautifully: “What’s
essential is to interrupt the process of forgetting.” That
forgetting starts happening immediately, so even by asking
the question at the end of a conversation, you’ve created
the first interruption in that slide towards “I’ve never heard
that before!” And if you want to up the ante, you can find a

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 way for this question to pop up in places other than the end
of a conversation. The authors say, “Reflection is a form of
practice”; create these moments and you find a place for
Dan Coyle’s Deep Practice. One option is to ask the question
at the start of the team meeting or the regularly scheduled
one-on-one. “What have you learned since we last met?”

Another reason it's a great way to finish the conversation:

Research from Daniel Kahneman about peak-end rule: we tend to

evaluate an experience disproportionately influenced by the peak (or
the trough) of the experience and by the ending moments

Use every channel

Questions work just as well typed as they do spoken.

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