Leadership
The Coaching Habit Summary & Review: Say Less, Ask More, Lead Better
Michael Bungay Stanier's seven essential questions that transform managers from advice-givers into genuine coaches who develop autonomous teams.
Read Summary →Michael Bungay Stanier
"The Box of Crayons founder who reduced effective coaching down to seven simple, endlessly reusable questions."
Michael Bungay Stanier is a Canadian author and coaching expert who founded Box of Crayons, a company that has trained managers worldwide in practical coaching skills. His book "The Coaching Habit," published in 2016, distilled coaching theory into seven simple, memorable questions designed to help managers break the habit of giving too much advice and instead help their teams think for themselves. Drawing on his background as the first Canadian to win the Coach of the Year award from the Association for Coaching, Bungay Stanier built the book around the insight that advice is generally overrated—people retain and act on conclusions they reach themselves far more than solutions handed to them—and "The Coaching Habit" became one of the best-selling business books of its era.
1 book featured·Founder, Box of Crayons·First Canadian named Coach of the Year by the Association for Coaching
Books by Michael Bungay Stanier
Our in-depth summaries and reviews of his work
Key Ideas & Recurring Themes
Advice is overrated
Bungay Stanier argues that telling someone an answer has limited staying power, while a well-asked question that leads them to generate their own answer sticks far better.
Tell less, ask more
His central coaching habit is deceptively simple: default to asking a genuine question instead of immediately offering advice or a solution.
Strategy means choosing what not to do
Bungay Stanier frames focus itself as a coaching skill, arguing that clarity about what to decline is as important as clarity about what to pursue.
Notable Quotes
"This is why, in a nutshell, advice is overrated. I can tell you something, and it's got a limited chance of making its way into your brain's hippocampus, the region that encodes memory."— The Coaching Habit
"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do."— The Coaching Habit
"If this were a haiku rather than a book, it would read: Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good As you think it is."— The Coaching Habit
"Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action."— The Coaching Habit
Related Authors
Book Author Michael Bungay Stanier
The Coaching Habit Summary & Review: Say Less, Ask More, Lead Better
Michael Bungay Stanier's seven essential questions that transform managers from advice-givers into genuine coaches who develop autonomous teams.