The Coaching Habit
In Review: The Wilder Library
The Coaching Habit
As part of The Leadership Collective, The Wilder Library hosted a discussion around The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier.
“Answers are closed rooms; and the questions are open doors that invite us in.” — Nancy Willard
Imagine this, a member of your team stops by and says the project they are working on is behind schedule, and she is not sure what to do. You’ve been observing and can come up with half a dozen reasons why it probably is behind schedule, and you can feel your list of advice ready to pop out of your mouth. You say, “Weeell, I think I know what your problem is! You should…” And once more, you’ve succumbed to the advice monster. We all have been there. We are quick to tell. We are too quick to jump in to correct or offer our solutions to a problem we think is happening.
Michael Bungay Stanier, in The Coaching Habit, writes that silencing our advice monster is hard to do and a reflex that shortchanges those we lead. He invites us to “Say less, ask more and change the way you lead forever.” The impacts of saying less and asking more are:
You may not have identified the right problem.
You may not have the right answer.
Most importantly, you have taken away the opportunity for your teammate to grow and learn.
In letting her come up with her own solution, you’ve nurtured her growth and ownership of the situation.
So how do we silence our advice monster? We ask a question, then another, and then another. Michael Bungay Stanier of the consulting firm, Box of Crayons, created a list of seven questions we can use to guide those on our team through problem solving and grow in understanding themselves, their team, and their capacity.
At the Wilder Library of Bridge Innovate®, we believe in authentic, exemplary, and curious leadership. Through our bimonthly discussions around business literature, we help leaders in the region tackle tough challenges, change their mindset, and grow in collaborative thinking. In July, we offered a virtual session of the Wilder Library on The Coaching Habit by Stanier. This online discussion was moderated by Glenda Hicks, who brings 20+ years of experience in working with senior leadership teams on leadership, strategy, and innovation challenges. Our participants were made up of individual contributors and team leaders from both nonprofit and for-profit organizations.
Through our conversation, we learned that to silence the advice monster, we need to identify the triggers that awaken that reflex and determine new ways we can respond through asking questions. Through humble listening we can help our colleague determine if the problem is the project, the people, or the patterns. The seven questions can be grouped into these objectives. The first three questions are all about helping identify the actual problem by the person who is experiencing it. Then the last set is about who and what needs to be done. We can also determine what our role needs to be by asking, “How can I help?”
The seven questions are:
What’s on your mind?
And what else?
What’s the real challenge here for you?
What do you want?
How can I help?
If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?
What was most useful to you?
Individually, these questions are impactful—but this sequence of seven really helps our teammates have agency in their situation and grow as they learn how to map out their path. In the current context of collaborative work, leaders can leverage the power of questions in order to develop their team. This also helps them not be bogged down by every problem within their orbit, and keep things moving in the collective problem solving encouraged by The Coaching Habit.
Bridge Innovate® is proud to offer the Wilder Library as part of The Leadership Collective; our collection of robust, accessible leadership programming designed to facilitate continual learning for leaders in the region. Register for the next Wilder Library on September 13th, or sign up for other upcoming events to unlock your leadership.