THE COACHING HABIT by Michael Bungay Stanier | Core Message

[Music] I recently read the book the coaching habit by author Michael bungay staner when one of your friends is in a stressful situation and they come to you

for help how do you coach them through it do you offer them advice author and world renown performance coach Michael bungay staner says your advice is not as

good as you think it is to be a grade coach you need to spend less time telling someone what to do and more time asking good questions there are four excellent questions in the coaching

habit that you can use to help your friends your teammates or your employees to find their way out of overwhelming and stressful situations I personally found that these four questions are actually a great way to start journaling

and Coach myself whenever I feel stressed question number one what's on your mind when you ask what's on your mind you invite the person you're

coaching to skip the small talk and get to what matters Stan says rather than talk about the weather or how their sports team is doing and any other superficial boring and simply useless

chitchat get to what matters what's provoking anxiety what's all consuming what's waking them up at 400 a.m. when

you ask what's in your mind you're essentially saying I'm here for you and I want to help you work through whatever is bothering you but if you ask what's in your mind and you still feel like they're holding something back follow up

their answers with what else what else acts like a pressure relief valve it gives them permission to open up and allow important but uncomfortable

issues to flow out staner says asking what else creates more wisdom more insights and more self-awareness than any other question but there's one downside to asking what else you may get

flooded with a long list of challenges it might tell you about those four projects they're worried about the five people they're frustrated with or the two angry emails they don't know how to respond to it's in to pick out what you

think the most important problem is and start offering advice but if you tell someone what to do you're essentially raising your status and lowering theirs by saying hey I have all the answers and you don't when you lower their status

you strip them of the confidence they need to make their own decisions so instead of deciding what they should focus on ask them what's the real challenge here for you you see when

someone's stressed and overwhelmed Everything feels like a challenge but when you ask someone what's the real challenge here you get the person you're coaching to pause and look Inward and

determine what one challenge if resolved would provide the greatest relief or put another way what rock in their backpack of challenges could you help them remove

and alleviate the most amount of stress yesterday morning cleaning my house would have provided me with a mild sense of relief but I knew that finishing this video would provide me with the greatest sense of relief at that time I find that

the real challenge is often the challenge I'm avoiding most so so the next time you're coaching someone through a stressful situation and they insist on focusing on Petty issues that you know won't matter a week from now

say that sounds like a challenge but what's the real challenge here for you when you include the word you in your question you make the question easier to

answer in a 1997 study researchers discovered that when the word you was presented in a math question students came to a solution faster and more accurately than if you was left out so

to help someone prioritize ask them what's the real challenge here for you once they discover their real challenge help them develop a strategy to overcome that challenge by asking them the fourth

and final question if you're saying yes to this what are you saying no to in other words if you're saying yes to dealing with this challenge how are you

going to make space to focus on that challenge if you're saying yes to completing a challenging project are you going to say no to useless meetings even if saying no might UPS at your boss or

your co-workers if you're saying yes to being self-employed and turning that passion project into a profitable business are you willing to say no to distractions and delete Facebook Twitter and Instagram off your phone are you

willing to say no to watching TV at night and going out with friends on the weekend saying yes to overcoming a real challenge requires more time and energy than the person you're coaching may

think by asking if you're saying yes to this what are you saying no to you're helping them strategically free up time and energy energy to focus on what matters as business coach Michael Porter

says the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do in the end to be a great coach and a great leader you must help others see a path forward by asking a

series of questions ask what's on your mind to skip the chitchat and get to what matters ask what else to get them to dig deep and surface challenges they

might be overlooking ask what's the real challenge here for you to help them focus on what matters most and then ask if you're saying yes to this what are

you saying no to to help them develop a strategy and commit to making progress staner says the change of behavior at the heart of what this book is about is this a little more asking people

questions and a little less telling people what to do that was the core message that I gathered from the coaching habit by Michael bungay staner this book contains many more great

questions that you can use as a leader and a coach I highly recommend it if you would like a one-page PDF sumary of insights that I gathered from this book just click the link below and I'd be happy to email it to you if you already

subscribed to the free productivity game email newsletter this PDF is sitting in your inbox if you like this video please share it and as always thanks for watching and have yourself a productive

week