The Coaching Habit Quotes

“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.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“If this were a haiku rather than a book, it would read: Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good As you think it is.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Five times a second, at an unconscious level, your brain is scanning the environment around you and asking itself: Is it safe here? Or is it dangerous?”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“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.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“help create the space for people to have those learning moments.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“You want your people to feel that working with you is a place of reward, not risk.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“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 Hear interviews with FREDERIC LALOUX, DAN PONTEFRACT, and JERRY STERNIN at the Great Work Podcast. If you can read just one book on using structure to change behaviours: 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 Hear interviews with ROGER MARTIN, BOB SUTTON, and WARREN BERGER at the Great Work Podcast. 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; about $400,000 has been raised so far.) IF THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS, THEN WHAT KIND OF QUESTIONS DO STUPID PEOPLE ASK?”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Michael Porter’s best, when he said, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“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. This conversation is more rare and significantly more powerful.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“When you build a coaching habit, you can more easily break out of three vicious circles that plague our workplaces: creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed and becoming disconnected.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Your job as a manager and a leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Coming up with ways to fix things feels more comfortable than sitting in the ambiguity of trying to figure out the challenge...”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Stop offering advice with a question mark attached. That doesn't count as asking a question”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“WITHOUT A GOOD QUESTION, A GOOD ANSWER HAS NO PLACE TO GO.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“though it accounts for only about 2 percent of your body weight, your brain uses about 20 percent of your energy.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“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.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“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.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“What will you say No to if you’re truly saying Yes to this?”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“being busy is no measure of success.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“To build an effective new habit, you need five essential components: a reason, a trigger, a micro-habit, effective practice, and a p”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“You already know it’s hard to change old ways of behaving, however good your intentions. Or is it just me who has: sworn not to check email first thing in the morning, and nonetheless found myself in the wee small hours, my face lit by that pale screen glow; intended to find inner peace through the discipline of meditation, yet couldn’t find five minutes to just sit and breathe, sit and breathe; committed to take a proper lunch break, and somehow found myself shaking the crumbs out of my keyboard, evidence of sandwich spillage; or decided to abstain from drinking for a while, and yet had a glass of good Australian shiraz mysteriously appear in my hand at the end of the day?”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“One of the laws of change: As soon as you try something new, you’ll get resistance.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“five types of triggers: location, time, emotional state, other people, and the immediately preceding action. You”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“even though we don’t really know what the issue is, or what’s going on for the person, we’re quite sure we’ve got the answer she needs.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

“Less, rather than more, is often better when you’re giving feedback. If you list twelve things that could be improved, everyone moves into overwhelm mode. More effective is finding the OBT—the One Big Thing—that’s worth remembering. This question will typically have the person focus on the one or two key takeaways from the conversation.”
― Michael Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever