Ep 47. Michael Bungay Stanier: Say Less, Ask More
"The best coaching question in the world: 'And what else?'"
Michael Bungay Stanier
Michael Bungay Stanier is founder of Box of Crayons, a company known for teaching 10-minute coaching so busy managers can build stronger teams and get better results. Michael left Australia 25 years ago to be a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He claims his only significant achievement there was falling in love with a Canadian, which is why he now lives in Toronto. He has also spent time in London and Boston. Balancing out these moments of success, according to Michael, were failures. He was banned from his high school graduation for “the balloon incident,” was sued by one of his law school lecturers for defamation, and his first published piece of writing was a Mills & Boone short story called “The Male Delivery.” More recently, he is also the author of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever and also Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters. Michael was the first Canadian Coach of the Year.
Stew and Michael discuss the term coaching, which is floating around in the business world as a buzzword for all kinds of counseling and management concepts. Driven by globalization and the need for immediate, tangible results, businesses turn to books and experts for coaching, but Michael argues against advice-giving and suggests taking a slow, deliberate approach to management and coaching. Drawing on research in neuroscience and behavioral economics, he has developed seven powerful questions anyone can use to coach others, in teams and in other parts of life, and describes how to use them in this engaging exchange.
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