The Coaching Habit – Interview with Michael Bungay Stanier

Box of Crayons helps people and organisations to do less Good Work and more Great Work. Michael Bungay Stanier, the founder and senior partner describes what is Great Work in his interview with Eszter Molnar Mills, and talks about building the coaching habit, the topic of his latest book.

According to Bungay Stanier, everything you do, falls into one of three different categories: Bad Work, Good Work, or Great Work. Bad Work – the mind-numbing, soul-sucking, life crushing sort of work. Good Work is basically the work in your job description, when you are being productive and getting things done. Finally, Great Work is the kind of work that has the most impact and meaning.

Bungay Stanier says that you need three things to do more Great Work. These three are focus, courage, and resilience.

• Focus: What you care about, what work matters to you. You also focus on the opportunities in your organisation.
• Courage: It takes a degree of courage to say yes to doing more Great Work, because the question that’s at the heart of Great Work is: What are you going to say no to so you can say yes to the work that matters?

• Resilience: Sometimes you think everything is flowing, other times you doubt yourself. When you get off the path it takes resilience to stand up and find your way back to continue the journey to do Great Work.

Bungay Stanier thinks coaching is one of the best ways to help people access resilience for themselves. In his new book he draws on his experience of teaching over 10,000 managers how to deliver practical coaching – coaching in 10 minutes or less.

Coaching could be a secret source to working less hard but having more impact. In The Coaching Habit he shares the 7 essential questions that will help you be an effective coach.

“Everybody intellectually gets what coaching is about but nobody puts it really into practice” says Michael. He encourages people to start by becoming more aware of how quickly they want to offer advice and solutions, rather than asking questions. Before you can start coaching others, Michael challenges managers to understand how to change their own behaviour.

He proposes a 3-step process for changing habits in 60 seconds or less:

• When the context where I would like to change a habit arises – e.g. a colleague asks me for advice
• Instead of the old habit – e.g. me providing an answer
• I will follow the new habit – e.g. ask one of the coaching questions: “I think I understand the situation. What do you want from me here? Just out of curiosity, what do you want from me?“

This new habit is going to encourage your staff to articulate a specific request, allowing you to have a more thoughtful, mindful response to the help that they’re looking for.

Fnd out more about The Coaching Habit and Michael Bungay Stanier’s advice on putting coaching into practice in the interview above.

Michael Bungay Stanier is the Senior Partner of BoxofCrayons, a company that helps organizations do less Good Work and more Great Work. Box of Crayons is best known for their coaching programs that help time-crunched managers coach in 10 minutes or less. His latest book, The Coaching Habit is now available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

Coaching is a core leadership skill, which time and again has been shown to increase managerial and organisation effectiveness. View the webinar and learn the key skills of Coaching for Success: Click Here For Instant Access