# The Coaching Habit **Michael Bungay Stanier** | [[Action]]  --- > "Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action." One of your roles as a manager is to have answers. The problem is when that becomes your default behaviour. You jump in too quickly, solve problems that aren't quite the real problem, and create dependency instead of capability. This book is about slowing down the rush to advice-giving. The first answer someone gives you is almost never the only answer, and it's rarely the best answer. You may think that's obvious, but it's less so than you realise. Having just one more option—should we do this, or this, or not?—lowers the failure rate by almost half. The discipline is staying curious longer, asking one more question before you start solving. Seven questions. That's the toolkit. Each one designed to keep you in coaching mode rather than advice-giving mode, to help the other person think rather than to demonstrate how clever you are. --- ## Core Ideas ### [[The Seven Questions]] **1. The Kickstart Question: "What's on your mind?"** An open question that cuts through small talk and gets to what matters. It's broad enough to let them choose the topic, focused enough to avoid aimless wandering. **2. The AWE Question: "And what else?"** This has magical properties. It creates more—more wisdom, more insights, more self-awareness, more possibilities—out of thin air. Three reasons it works: more options lead to better decisions, you rein yourself in from jumping to solutions, and you buy yourself time to understand the real issue. **3. The Focus Question: "What's the real challenge here for you?"** When someone presents a problem, it's often not the real problem. Or there are multiple problems tangled together. This question cuts to the heart of what actually needs solving. The "for you" is critical—it keeps the focus on their challenge, not abstract organisational issues. **4. The Foundation Question: "What do you want?"** Simple, direct, clarifying. People often don't know what they want until asked. Forcing articulation creates clarity. **5. The Lazy Question: "How can I help?"** This stops you from assuming you know what's needed. It forces them to make a direct request—which they may not have formulated yet. And it puts you in service mode rather than hero mode. **6. The Strategic Question: "If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?"** Every yes implies nos. Some are obvious—the options automatically eliminated. But the deeper nos are what you need to say to make the yes happen. What resources, what priorities, what other commitments need to give way? **7. The Learning Question: "What was most useful for you?"** This creates a learning moment at the end of the conversation. It's not "What did I teach you?" but "What landed for you?" The distinction matters—you're asking them to extract their own insight. ### [[Why Questions vs What Questions]] Reframe questions so they start with "What" instead of "Why." The shift is subtle but significant. Instead of "Why did you do that?" ask "What were you hoping for here?" Instead of "Why did you think this was a good idea?" ask "What made you choose this course of action?" "Why" triggers defensiveness. It sounds like you're asking someone to justify themselves. "What" feels more exploratory—you're genuinely curious about their thinking, not interrogating their judgment. ### [[The Two Types of No]] When someone says yes to something, they're uncovering two types of no. The No of omission: the options automatically eliminated by saying yes. If you commit to this project, you can't simultaneously commit to that one. These are relatively easy to see. The No of commission: what you now need to say no to in order to make the yes happen. This takes the conversation deeper. What conversations need to be had? What priorities need to shift? What resources need to be redirected? These nos require active effort, not just passive acceptance. --- ## Key Insights **"Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."** The Eisenhower quote applies to coaching conversations. You're not trying to produce a perfect plan. You're trying to clarify thinking, surface assumptions, and build capability. The conversation itself is the value, not just the output. **Say yes to the person, but no to the task.** A facilitation secret: create a "third point"—write someone's request on a piece of paper, then point to it and say "I'm afraid I have to say no to this." It's slightly better than "I'm afraid I have to say no to you." The relationship stays intact while you decline the specific request. **Four is the ideal chunking number.** When presenting options or information, four is about the limit for what people can hold in working memory. Three questions to ask. Four strategic choices to consider. This applies to coaching—don't overload the conversation. **What standard does this need to meet?** When someone claims something is urgent, useful clarifying questions include: Why are you asking me? Whom else have you asked? When you say 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, what part would you have me do? --- ## Connects To - [[Playing to Win]] - Bungay Stanier references Lafley and Martin's strategy cascade directly; the strategic question maps to "where to play" and "how to win" - [[Never Split the Difference]] - Both emphasise questions over statements; calibrated questions and coaching questions serve similar purposes - [[Nine Lies About Work]] - Both push back against manager-as-expert; the best managers develop capability, not dependency - [[Death by Meeting]] - Both diagnose the problem of unfocused conversations that don't reach the real issue - [[The Fifth Discipline]] - Coaching as a discipline for building learning capability in others --- ## Final Thought The instinct to jump in and solve is strong—it's how you got promoted, it's what feels valuable, it's faster. But speed to solution often means solving the wrong problem, creating dependency, and robbing others of the chance to develop their own capability. Seven questions is a small toolkit. The discipline is using them consistently, staying curious a little longer, asking "And what else?" one more time before you start giving answers. The goal isn't to never give advice—it's to give less advice, less quickly, after you've understood what's actually being asked. "Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action." The same applies to advice-giving. Quick solutions feel productive but often mask lazy listening. The harder work is staying in the question long enough for the real challenge to surface.