As I continue to read various things on coaching, I read Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. The book is a fairly concise toolkit for coaching conversations along with helpful insights as to why coaching is the most effective way to come alongside others.
At the heart of the book are 7 questions that can provide a basic questions roadmap to a lot o coaching conversations. Here they are…
Stanier’s Seven Essential Coaching Questions:
- “What’s on your mind?” (The Kickstart Question)
- “And what else? (The AWE Question)
- “What’s the real challenge here for you?” (The Focus Question)
- “What do you want?” (The Foundation Question)
- “How can I help?” (The Lazy Question)
- “If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?” (The Strategic Question)
- “What was most useful to you about this conversation?” (The Learning Question)
The key for all of these questions is the coach exercising self-control and not offering advice to short-circuit the learning by discovery Stanier calls it taming the advice monster.
There was a helpful chapter here talking about the dynamics of “helping” that was helpful. He demonstrates through his “Drama Triangle” how there are 3 typical roles people find themselves in – victim, perpetrator, and rescuer. All of these work against adulthood and flourishing. Questions like the above questions help pull people out of any of those 3 roles they might be in and push them towards responsibility.
This was definitely worth the money as there’s great nuggets throughout and it’s overly heady or verbose. It’s practical wisdom and insight that can really help someone become a better coach, leader, or supervisor. I recommend it if you haven’t done read much on coaching.
