The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

This chapter guides readers toward developing a habit of using the right opening question in a conversation. Bungay Stanier notes that many managers don’t coach because they don’t know where to begin, and he identifies three reasons for this: The Small Talk Tango (when small talk dominates a conversation); the Ossified Agenda (when a meeting’s structure has become rote); and the Default Diagnosis (when preconceptions about a problem lead to progress in the wrong area). Bungay Stanier suggests opening conversations with a kickstart question: “What’s on your mind?” (47). This type of question invites the other person to guide the conversation while still focusing on the issues at hand.

Before delving into what he calls the “3P model” for conversation (See: Index of Terms), Bungay Stanier offers a comparison between coaching for performance and coaching for development. Coaching for performance takes a limited approach, and usually involves tasks related to everyday issues. Coaching for development focuses on the person rather than the task. Bungay Stanier believes this type of coaching is rare, though powerful, and uses his 3P model to “create focus, make the conversation more robust, and (when appropriate) shift the focus to the more powerful level that’s coaching for development” (40).