The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 231: Michael Bungay Stanier - Say Less, Ask More, & Change The Way You Lead Forever

Starting point is 00:00:00 One of the ways you can add most value to the people with whom you work is to help them learn. You know, improve their capacity, improve their knowledge, improve their sense of self-sufficiency and autonomy. But to do that, you have to actually understand how people learn. And people don't learn when you tell them stuff. And that's a blow because that's how most things work in organizations. I'm going to tell you stuff. But they don't learn when they tell stuff. They don't even really learn when they do stuff.

Starting point is 00:00:31 I mean, they do eventually, but it's not a really, it's not a strong learning moment. They learn when there is a moment to reflect on what just happened. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. We're going to try something different. Shift to your cell phone since most of you are listening on your phone.

Starting point is 00:00:57 If you'd like to join thousands of other fellow learning leaders, you can text Learners with an S, that's learners to 4422-2. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2 to be a part of our learning leader community. We'd love to have you learners to 4-4-2-2-2. Now on to the nice featured leader. Wow, this one's so good. It's with Michael Bungay-Stanyer. I've been trying to have him on for quite some time.

Starting point is 00:01:27 He's a Rhodes Scholar, the founder of Box of Cranz, a company that helps you do more great work. He's the author of multiple bestselling books, and he speaks regularly to audiences of large sizes all over the world. He really makes you think. A few of the topics we got into his incredible story of failing

Starting point is 00:01:46 and then succeeding to be a Rhodes Scholar and how he did that. Then the best coaching question in the world. You can use this in all aspects of your life and followed up by the best structure for a one-on-one meeting that I've ever seen, I will implement it personally immediately. It's so good.

Starting point is 00:02:04 Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you'll get a lot out of this one with Michael Bungay-Stanyer. All right, Michael, I've really been looking forward to this one. So thank you for being here and welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. Hey, me too. Thanks to having me along, Ryan. To get us going, I love your company. In Boxer Kranz, I love the name of the company. I love the work that you guys do.

Starting point is 00:02:29 And I'm excited for my audience for the few people who don't know you to dig into what you do. But I'm curious. Who are these people? How is it possible that they don't know who I am? How do you not know you? But for the ones who don't, I'm curious, you spent time around a lot of high-level leaders, coaches, you coach coaches, you help people do more, great work. I'm curious, when you think of people who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, what are some of the common themes or common characteristics they all share? well and i i think my answer to that would be is the truth is they probably haven't sustained excellence

Starting point is 00:03:09 that they have not well i think it's really hard to sustain excellence over a long time for a number reasons because i think to be excellent i think people who have risen to the top have figured out how to repeat excellence and sustain it as long possible before falling out of it. It's like meditating. Like when you get into meditation and I'm not a great meditator, I'm a try hard and then give up because it's too hard and forget about it. But, you know, I'm trying to get into meditation because, you know, everybody knows if you can do it, it really works. And from what I can tell, the more you learn about meditation is beginners worry about the meditating, great meditators, people who really

Starting point is 00:03:58 draw wisdom and solace from it. worry about sitting on the cushion and just doing it. And some days they have a good session where they stay focused and they don't get mad monkeys running around their minds. And other days, they do have monkeys running around their minds. But either way, they go the successes in showing up and continuing to do it. And I think actually people who I look to as role models are people who are failing as well as succeeding. because there's a degree of which, just to kind of twist your question a little bit, if I'm sustaining excellence by meaning which I'm kind of hitting it out of the park every time,

Starting point is 00:04:41 the game is too easy. And I think the people who I admire who kind of grow and have impact and they reach, they try a bunch of things, they iterate, they work on, you know, to use the phrase sharpen their own source, So they work on their own wisdom and their own knowledge and their own growth. But they don't hold an output of excellence as the key measure because it's too easy to succeed in a game you've already conquered. This is why I love this, Michael, because I meet interesting people like you who get me to think in ways that I haven't thought before. I think of Scott Harrison, who likes to ask us company, was that power.

Starting point is 00:05:30 point excellent. Was that email excellent? Was that meeting excellent where they value excellence, but they question it? And I think of you saying, if everything all day, every day is excellent and perfect and you won, so to speak, we're on video here so we can see each other, but I know the listeners are audio, that if that's the case, then maybe you haven't, you're not, for lack of a better word, you're not striving for enough. You're not trying enough new things to innovate and improve. And I think I find that interesting. And I think also it comes down to also about what, so what do you measure and what can you can control? Because you can do a bunch of things right and still fail. And the question is, is, did I give it all? Was I as smart as I could be? Did I learn from what

Starting point is 00:06:21 happened last time? And you can do. still fail, but if you've tried everything and you've shown up in the best possible way, you get to call that, you know, you can frame that as an excellence, or at least I've done all I can. The outcome you have, there's just a lot of luck involved in getting, in being successful. And that luck comes right down to, you know, birth attributes. I mean, I am six foot three not obese, straight, white male who's overeducated. You know, I've just been dealt a really good hand. I'm ahead of the pack in terms of my starting position.

Starting point is 00:07:08 So there's a bunch of things that I can put down on my resume as success. And part of that's just because of the good hand I've been dealt as well. So there's so much that you, that, you know, I look at all. I've achieved, and I'm putting it in inverted commons. And I know that a bunch of it is down to resilience and persistence and hard work and smart thinking. And I've also had good luck as part of that as well. Like this latest book that's come out, it's gone gangbusters. It's like a quarter of a million copies sold of the coaching habit so far, which is like mind-blowingly exciting for me. But I'm not I'm not falling for, you know, so-called survivor bias where I go, well, now I know how to sell

Starting point is 00:07:52 quarter of a million copies of books every time I put it out. I can tell you that the next book I put out is almost certainly not going to be quite as big a hit as the coaching habit. Do you know, Liz Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. Yeah. I remember hearing her talking about after the massive success of that book. And so what are you doing now? She's like, well, I'm working on the disappointing sequel to Eat, Pray, Love, right? Because you know, it's going to, it takes a little bit of lightning in a bottle to have the luck happen as well. The coaching habit is how I first became aware you because I love the thought of studying and coaching, especially your subtitle too, which is say less, ask more and change the way

Starting point is 00:08:33 you lead forever. But you said something in that last answer that piqued my curiosity, which is sometimes you can do it all right and still fail. Is there a specific moment in your life where you felt like you did it all right and you still failed? Well, I personally have never failed. or did anything, but I'm sure other people have. Yeah, I mean, look, the list of failures is, or better put, a list of non-success is long.

Starting point is 00:09:03 I mean, it's long. Yeah. You try a bunch of things and you launch it and you're like, that was disappointing. And or you just try and you don't get it right the first time. So I was a Rhodes Scholar. So that's one of the things on my resume that's kind of fancy. Road Scholar went to Oxford, fantastic. It was like, is this, that and the other?

Starting point is 00:09:27 But I tell you two things about the story of Road Scholar, which is show you how the luck works. The first is I applied and got rejected two years previous to winning the Road Scholarship. I thought, okay, I'm going to be a Rhodes Scholars. This is awesome. I went in and talked to somebody. They said, look, you send in a submission. Everybody gets the first interview.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Then they get a short list. And then you get a second interview if you're on the short list. short list. I apply. I don't even get an interview on the first list. I'm like, oh man, she said, she said everybody got an interview and apparently everybody except Michael gets an interview because, you know, I'm bad at it. And so I kind of went away and licked my wounds and went, okay, so I kind of half, maybe I did half ask it a little bit in that previous application. What does it mean to show up fully, fully committed to applying a second time? So two years later, I reapplied. And I reapplied and I got on the shortlist.

Starting point is 00:10:23 I was pretty excited about that. But then I showed up and I saw, I saw everybody else who'd been on the short list and they're amazing. I was like, ah. So shortlist as far as I go because they're all pretty impressive. But here's what I did. Everybody showed up and they were, you know, there was like, let's say, eight men, two women. Women were in white blouses, blue suits, pearls. men wear blue suits, white shirts, red tie.

Starting point is 00:10:52 I mean, honestly, it looked like a bunch of politicians. And at the time, I had long hair, dyed blonde, I had multiple piercings. So I wore a purple suit with a pink tie-died tie. And I kind of went, you know what? I'm putting my gamble on. Look, I'm either going to come last by a long way, or if I happen to get lucky and I have a committee that's going for somebody who's zigging when others are zagging, maybe I'll get selected. And so I'm placing a bed on myself and I'm placing a bed around going differently around that.

Starting point is 00:11:30 And then when I got caught in to be interviewed and it's daunting, right? You walk in, you're full of anxiety and, you know, desperate to try and make the thing work. It was a kind of dark room. In my memory, it's basically like an interrogation. You know, bright light shining in my face and the silhouette of eight different people who are interviewing me. I was like, ah. And the first person spoke up and he said, okay, Michael, so you have a degree in literature and you have a law degree. And now you're applying to do a degree in politics at Oxford.

Starting point is 00:12:03 What's the problem with you? Can't you make up your mind? Right. I was like, you know, I prepared for all sorts of questions, but I hadn't prepared for that question. and I went, well, yes and no. And by going yes and no to can't you make up your mind, everybody laughed. I went, oh my God, I accidentally cracked a joke. I didn't mean to crack a joke.

Starting point is 00:12:30 I just accidentally did. And it kind of broke the ice and relaxed me and maybe relaxed them. Who knows? But I went on to get offered the road scholarship. And from the road scholarship, I met my wife. can't and is Canadian at oxford i didn't become a lawyer because i'd done a law degree and i would have been a you know hugely unhappy and largely useless lawyer you know i moved i lived in england and boston now canada you know it all turned on that moment of accidentally turning

Starting point is 00:13:00 it you know cracking a joke plus a degree of backing myself around show up and be different as best you can and be true to who you are as best you can where does it come from to have the guts to to not wear the blue suit with the white shirt and the red tie and to have the piercings and the long hair. Like, where does that come from? Is that something from childhood or where you're in family that built some courage or courage in you to do that? You know, I think it's partly just wiring. I think there's a degree of wiring around that. That is then supported by the power of nurture.

Starting point is 00:13:35 So my parents were, yeah, my mom was like deeply disappointed. in me when I came home with my first ear pierced and then even more disappointed in me when I came home with more ears pierced and then I'm increasingly disappointed when I showed my first tattoo but not so disappointed that it was anything than a, you know, anything that it was a kind of disappointing moment with my parents rather than a crisis. Yeah. So, so there's a degree of, you know, love and support and encouragement to be different. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:14:07 But part of it's just, um, I, I have, I have a. There's slightly rebellious streak in me. So there's a degree to which I'm always going. Is there not a better way of doing this? Do I have to follow the rules? So I think that's partly just wiring. But you were, I would guess, obviously, a good student. Sometimes those things don't coexist where you're a little rebellious, where you still

Starting point is 00:14:30 could be the smartest guy in the classroom. You could be a great learner, but you don't necessarily get the best grades because you don't agree always with the process or the method of which you're being educated. Yeah. So I'm the oldest child. So I have a kind of weird kind of combination of be responsible but be rebellious at the same time. Yeah, because I mean there's a lot of science about if you're first, middle, or last, then usually the last is the more rebellious. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a degree of responsibility. You know, I started my own company. I've grown up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that sort of stuff. So yeah, so it's one of the interesting tensions in my life. I think this is often true with a lot of people where they often have a controlling tension

Starting point is 00:15:20 that has a degree of contradiction in their lives and how they show up. But for me, it is about being a bit of a rebel, but not too much of a rebel. Not too weird, not too outside the system. And how that often shows up is it's like, beat the system, figure out how to beat the system at its own game. And sometimes that can be really rewarding. You know, I'm like, okay, I've figured out how to do university so that I get a good degree and I get good marks, but I'm doing it in as efficient way as possible.

Starting point is 00:15:55 The danger of it is that I get seduced into thinking that beating the system is the game. And sometimes I'm like, you know what, you could get sucked in to beat the system here, but do you even want to be playing this game? I mean, that's why I consider it a lucky for me that I didn't finish my law degree and carry on to become a lawyer, because I could predict that part of me would be going, part of me is looking to disrupt the law firm or my job, but part of me is like, I'm going to hack the system and try and become a partner in the law firm just to show them that I can do it. Yeah. And then before you know it, I've spent 20 years becoming a lawyer just to prove that I can hack the system.

Starting point is 00:16:38 And I'm like, but I hate being a lawyer. What was I doing? So I do think it's one of the great questions to ask yourself is, do I want to be playing this game? Whatever the game is that you're up for. It's like you're striving to win this game. You're striving to climb this mountain. Do you actually want to climb this mountain?

Starting point is 00:16:55 Or did somebody just, did you start just climbing it? Because somewhere, somewhere back in the background, somebody went, that mountain, climb it. Ryan Siss is a great guess. and a friend of mine now who I talked to regularly told me he was climbing the corporate ladder becoming ultimately a VP of marketing and sales. And he told me a great advice about a year and a half ago now, maybe longer. Actually, he said, be careful about getting too good at the wrong thing. Right. And it really had a profound influence on me to the way I think about myself and my career and what you're doing. And it sounds like you had similar thoughts. And it's a good thought process

Starting point is 00:17:33 for everybody to have, like, especially if you're in this game, and I told you, Michael, about some of the people who may be listening if they're trying to kind of go up the natural ladder that society tells you you should try to do. And it's, and those, then going up to corporate ladder can absolutely help the fun, nice, great life, certainly depending on who you work for in the company. But I do think it's worth it to take a step back into that quadrant that is not urgent, but important to where you're thoughtful and you're thinking to say, am I getting too good at the wrong thing. Right. Because like you you probably could have you could have easily been become a partner at a big law firm and done it. But that doesn't mean it would be fulfilling.

Starting point is 00:18:12 You know what I'm saying? But I mean you're smart enough and you probably would have made able to put the work in. But instead, as it let's transition a little bit, instead, you decide to start a company called Box of Crayons. And I'd love for you now. Let's let's shift to talk a little bit about you and starting this company and what Box of Cranes does and why you wanted to do it and why you still continue love to do it. Yeah, sure. So. So. I'll work backwards. So Box of Crayons is a training company. We train 10 minute coaching so busy managers can get better teams and get better results. So it's got a really narrow focus, but it wasn't always the case. You know, I started Box of Crayons 15 years ago. And when I started, and it does

Starting point is 00:18:55 on a side dry, and you can see that kind of that rebel, but wanting to be part of the system in the name Box of Crayons, right? It's an unusual name for a company. But I still work in the, you know, most of my clients are corporations. So you've got that same tension playing out. But when I started it, it was I just moved to Toronto, been fired from my job because it hadn't worked out. And I'd only been in Toronto six months. What job did you get fired from? I worked for a company called, they were called the Independent Order of Foresters.

Starting point is 00:19:28 And they were rebranding themselves as just foresters. Okay. And the background was that I'd had a job lined up as a change management consultant, leaving Boston where I was living at the time and coming up to Toronto. But my flight out of Boston was on 9-11. And what they meant was when we did finally cross the border, the job I had as a consultant had vanished, right? Because all business kind of ground to a hold as we all went.

Starting point is 00:19:54 What's this new world that we're now living in? So that job fell through. they did find this other job for me, which was helping the internal, the company, the organization was rebranding itself and they wanted to make some change happen internally to go, look, we're redoing the logo. How are we going to do, redo things internally? Brand alignment. Or living the brand.

Starting point is 00:20:22 Anyway, I got this job for six months and it was a, I made very little difference, not from lack of trying, but I just was not the right person for that particular job. Okay. So they fired me actually the day after my citizenship status changed, and I became a landed immigrant, like having a green card in Canada. So I was so grateful for that because I probably had a cowardice would have stayed for another month or three months or six months or 12 months as I just got my feet wet. But they kind of threw me over the board and I found it I could swim.

Starting point is 00:20:59 but when I started Box of Crayons, I had the classic solopreneur, you know, starting point of my business model is to say yes to anybody with a pulse and a wallet, you know, and the pulse being optional. So somebody's like, okay, Michael, can you do blah, blah? I'm like, let me just Google that and I'll see if I can or not. Probably. But Jim Collins, who wrote from good to great, has a very nice. metaphor about understanding strategy or focus at least. And he says it's about firing bullets and

Starting point is 00:21:36 about firing cannon balls. And you may know this metaphor, Ryan. He told us this on the podcast, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Perfect. So I think it's really useful. I mean, his, the man has a gift for metaphor. Yeah, I love it. And the idea is that in a perfect world, when you're trying to figure out what to do, you fire bullets, bullets being low risk experiments. And once you kind of get your target, you figure out what to go for, you fire cannonballs. You know, you kind of commit and you go for it. And his point, as I understand it, is people either fire their cannonballs too soon. They kind of go all in on an idea that they haven't really tested out and they don't really know whether it works.

Starting point is 00:22:19 And then they suffer for that. Or they never fire their cannonball. They never quite commit to what they stand for. So they're like, I think this is the idea, but you know what? I'll just keep my options open. I'll just keep playing it safe. And what we've tried to do at Box of Crayons is fire bullets and fire cannon balls. So when we started, I did a bunch of things and most of it was by myself, you know,

Starting point is 00:22:43 because I had a background in creativity and innovation and coaching and facilitating. So I could wing my way through most things. But, you know, in the last seven, eight years, we've increasingly gone. We're just firing cannonballs, and it's about practical coach training for busy managers. You said 10-minute coaching. Can you define or, I mean, obviously 10 minutes is 10 minutes, but can you define to go a little bit deeper on 10-minute coaching? It means it takes 120 seconds. No, I'm kidding.

Starting point is 00:23:14 It's not even that is it. It's 600. And never mind. I'm being facetious. Yeah. So here's what I mean by that. There are three ways coaching shows up in organizational life. The first is you hire executive coaches.

Starting point is 00:23:27 And that's an important tool for most organizations. But the exact coaches tend to help people at the top of the house or maybe high potentials. Or maybe you're kind of important to us, but you're struggling. So this is going to help you with that. The second type of coaching is you train an internal cadre of people to be the internal coaching team. So you send off a bunch of people.

Starting point is 00:23:51 Often they're kind of maybe HR business partners or something like that. They do coach training. and then they're like, here we are, we're a resource. And then the third type is that you train all your managers and all your leaders to be more coach-like. And that's what we do. We're focused on coaching as an ongoing everyday leadership skill. And we think in almost every organization,

Starting point is 00:24:16 coaching is a woefully undeveloped skill. As for most organizations, it's a weird HR thing and it's for weird HR people. And I'm just a busy person trying to get, do my work and have a successful team and hit my goals and go home and see my family. So for us coaching, we start with the kind of being leader management centric about, okay, so why doesn't coaching work for most managers? And one of the starting points is nobody feels I have time to do coaching, right?

Starting point is 00:24:49 They're like, they're really busy. They've got an over cram schedule and an over cram to do list and an over popular KPI list, all of that sort of stuff. So for us, we start with a couple of assumptions. The first is, if you can't coach in 10 minutes or less, you don't have time for coaching. So it's immediately blowing up that idea that kind of carries over from executive coaching that, hey, this should take you 30, 45 minutes, 60 minutes. But like, you can do it and you have to be able to do it fast.

Starting point is 00:25:23 The second thing for us is that we say, look, the, the, the, the, the, with coaching is, first of all, don't think that you're becoming a coach, but realize that you're a manager or a leader or an individual contributor, for that matter, who is being more coach-like. Because it turns out that most managers and leaders don't want to be a coach. They want to be a manager or a leader, but being more coach-like says, this is an additional tool that will help you be more effective in that role. And then the third thing is to say, look, we're not trying to add anything to your workload because you're full. You don't have space for adding. What we're looking to do is transform what's currently there to be more coach-like. And in fact, what we found that if

Starting point is 00:26:07 you can be more coach-like and use some of the simple tools that we tend to talk about, we're actually teaching people to have more impact, but work less hard. Hmm. Okay. And one of part, part of your framework are these seven questions. Right. And I'd love to go through, well, maybe all them, but we can, we can start and kind of see how, see where this takes us. We might, we might, that's the beauty of the show is that I have, have a lot of notes, but don't have any questions. I have to create, I have to create those on the fly. That's part of the, the fun of this challenge for me. It makes for a better interview. It does. It means you listen to the conversation and then we get into something interesting, right? Yeah, normally I would have told you this before. I forgot to even say this before we hit record, but I view these, and so we can go a little inside baseball for a minute. But I view these conversations as if I was lucky enough to meet you for lunch or a cup of coffee.

Starting point is 00:27:04 And I probably wouldn't script out that conversation. Now, I would have thoughts and I would be prepared and I would have notes and thoughts in my mind to say, you know, Michael's really good at this and this and this. So let's be prepared to talk about it. But I wouldn't script it. So I think that's what I hope my listeners can understand. That's my approach. And I think that's why they seem to like it and they share it and things like that.

Starting point is 00:27:23 Are you telling me that you could be buying me lunch? It could be. I got a flight to Toronto, do that. That might be the cool thing to do moving forward this podcast. I don't know. That'd be fun. Well, you know, my assistant is based out of Ohio. Really?

Starting point is 00:27:34 Maybe I'll pop down. Where? What part? It's called her town is Mainville, Ohio. I don't know where that is. I'm in southwestern Ohio, Dayton. I'm, you know, I'm Australian who lives in Canada. It's all a bit confusing all that middle part of America.

Starting point is 00:27:49 I don't fully understand them. Yeah. So for the seven questions to get started. Yeah. And feel free to take this wherever you want to go. Yeah. But to get started when it comes to coaching of asking, what's on your mind? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:05 And the starting point is to say to people who are listening in, part of our goal is to make being more coach-like as simple as possible for people. And what we've discovered is that actually for most people having a coaching model isn't that helpful. I mean, it can be maybe a little bit helpful here and there, but for most people, not so much. It turns out that if you have a few good questions and the willingness to translate them from an idea into a habit and action, that's where the key shift to becoming more coach-like. So in writing the coaching habit book, you know, I started with a lot of, I started with a habit,

Starting point is 00:28:42 a lot of questions and I pruned them and I went, is it nine? Is it five? And eventually I ended up on seven because seven's one of those magic numbers. And because I thought these seven covered most of what you need most of the time.

Starting point is 00:28:59 And the opening one, the kickstart question, just as Ryan said, is the question what's on your mind? Now here's why I think this is so powerful. In fact, we call this and the final question, the bookend question. So we'll cover the bookend questions as the first two questions to talk about.

Starting point is 00:29:15 If you want to coach in 10 minutes or less, you have to get into the real conversation fast. And what we noticed was that a lot of people, when they're in a conversation, there's a whole lot of kind of meandering going about as you try and figure out what the thing is to talk about. And the person being coached kind of knows but kind of doesn't. The person who's coaching is probing and guessing and trying to be helpful. But they spend, you know, they spend 30 minutes of a 45-minute coaching session

Starting point is 00:29:50 talking around the challenge. And what we found is what's on your mind is a way of just getting into a juicy conversation faster. Because when you ask what's on your mind, you're not saying to somebody, tell me anything or tell me everything. that's going on, you're saying, look, you get to pick what this topic is about. So I'm giving you autonomy and control and status and all those great neuroscience things that help people stay engaged and feel appreciative. But, you know, let's go somewhere that you're excited about or worried

Starting point is 00:30:30 about or anxious about. Go to the place where I can be most helpful for you. And what's on your mind is both open and focusing at the same time. And what we've found is when you go, okay, so what's on your mind, we get into the conversation that matters most. And, you know, for folks you're listening in, if you're, if you run a weekly one-to-one meet-up with somebody on your team, maybe you're on the receiving end, but maybe you're running this meeting as well. from what I can tell, most one-to-ones are just terrible. I mean, they're just, you know, it's hour long, you're obliged to do it. Somebody goes, okay, so what are you been doing this week? And Ryan goes, okay, well, let me read out all the things I've been doing.

Starting point is 00:31:21 And I nod my head and be encouraging and go, that's a nice list. And you're like, good, I've reported out. So we've both covered our asses here and we can go back and carry on. and it's honestly just a bit boring and it's not that productive for both sides you know there's other ways that you can kind of see what activities being done but if you come into my meeting we've got half an hour for one to one I go okay we only got half an hour I want to be really helpful for you what's on your mind you're like this project or this person or this issue or this sense of confusion I have and you're like great let's get into that so for me it's they got that focusing piece and then why of the best coaching questions in the world and what else? Well, let's get into that, but let me go to the seventh question. So the bookend, okay. Yeah, because I love people seeing how to start fast and how to finish strong.

Starting point is 00:32:18 Perfect. Because I found that they're two of the easiest habits to implement in your conversation. And we can talk about the habit formula perhaps as well as part of this. So the coach, the final question is the learning. question. And if you're a manager or a leader or an individual contributor, one of the ways you can add most value to the people with whom you work is to help them learn. You know, improve their capacity, improve their knowledge, improve their sense of self-sufficiency in autonomy. But to do that, you have to actually understand how people learn. And people don't learn when you

Starting point is 00:32:55 tell them stuff. And that's a blow because that's how most things work in organizations. I'm going to tell you stuff, but they don't learn when they tell stuff. They don't even really learn when they do stuff. I mean, they do eventually, but it's not a really, it's not a strong learning moment. They learn when there is a moment to reflect on what just happened. So the question that I think is most powerful here is, so we're at the end of this interaction between you and me. It might be by email, it might be by phone, it might be in person. I'll say, okay, Ryan, before you go, let me just ask, what was most useful or most valuable for you about this conversation? And if I'm feeling up for it, I'll also say, let me tell you what was most valuable for me.

Starting point is 00:33:43 And you have an exchange where you do this learning moment. And by me asking you, Ryan, what was most useful or most valuable? A couple of things happened. Well, maybe three. The first is, you go, huh, I didn't even realize this was a useful and valuable conversation. But now I'm working to figure out what was most useful and extract it and identify it and name it. So it's more likely to stick. I'm more likely to see the value.

Starting point is 00:34:11 Secondly, as the asker of the question, I now get some feedback on what was most useful and most valuable. So I get to go, I should do more of that next time. And thirdly, and kind of more cunningly, I'm now framing every conversation with you that you have with me as a valuable conversation. so that at the end of the year, when you're doing my annual appraisal, and you're asked, so, Ryan, is Michael a useful, valuable leader? You're like, you know what, every time I talk to him, it feels like I get something useful and valuable out of that conversation. So I'm framing, I'm helping you see the value in this conversation,

Starting point is 00:34:49 and I become more of a valued colleague to you. Wow. So start fast and finish strong. And if you just start building those interoperations, regular habits. You know, it sounds like this. At the start of every meeting, rather than me leaping into what I want to talk about, I'll ask the other person, what's on your mind?

Starting point is 00:35:09 It's as simple as that. Here's the wrap-up habit. At the end of my one-to-one meeting, before we all rush out the door, I'll ask Ryan, what was most useful or most valuable about that conversation. And now I'm just setting an intention. the first chapter of the book, The Coaching Habit, is all about habits. It's all about the new habit formula. It's all about the great work that's being done on habits.

Starting point is 00:35:36 If people are keen, they can actually download that first chapter at thecoachinghabit.com. So you can check it out if you want to see more about that. But it's an important piece that what we're trying to do here is not just give people knowledge, but change their behavior. and you know I want Ryan from people listening to us to know these seven questions or I can you know look them up on the web or whatever for what I really want is people to do something differently and unless you understand habits and habit building it's much harder for you to actually change your behavior well just the fact that you put thought behind us I think a lot of the one-to-one conversations that you're talking about they're they're not very good because

Starting point is 00:36:19 you you walk in and a lot of times you're just kind of being spoken to like do this, do that, do that, do that, do that. And you're like, oh, and you can try to catch everything. And then you walk out, you're like, wait, I have to do what now? And I mean, I think that that's unfortunate, but I think back to some of the best bosses and best managers and best coaches I've ever had. And they spend the bulk of those conversations asking me questions. And so I've tried to emulate that as I've progressed to say like, oh, I left that conversation

Starting point is 00:36:50 feeling like I learned something, feeling like he or she. really cared about me, which is so critical. Yeah. Um, and as the coach, you genuinely, if you don't genuinely care, like, all this stuff doesn't really even matter. I mean, I've, you know what I mean? You have to truly care. If you don't, it doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:37:07 This is all fake. And that's, that's, that's useless. So I think that's the point, too, of I just like, I love your approach and your book. And it is because of the fact that it's, you're approaching it differently than most. Mm-hmm. And the fact that you're approaching with a curious mind is, as, as my friend Lynn Wood told me, couple years ago on this podcast, approach each conversation with a curious mind.

Starting point is 00:37:28 And it's a very simple concept, but it's very useful and helpful. And the fact that it's based on questions and getting the other person to really share and the fact that you open it and close it so strong and having that process is helpful. And so we started with the first and we bookended it with the back.

Starting point is 00:37:47 So how we start strong and finish strong. Now we get on to the best coaching question in the world. Which is great. I'm actually going to go to question number three. So question number three is the focus question. Okay. So tell me what the best coaching question in the world is. I love that.

Starting point is 00:38:03 You're forcing people to like just hold on. We're going to get there. Hold on. Exactly. Howard Stern does this really well. So you're helping. Thank you, Michael. Perfect.

Starting point is 00:38:11 Keeping people's curiosity up. So if you know what on people's mind, that's fantastic. But here's what's going to happen in most organizations, most conversations. for most people. You're going to go, okay, so I've been practicing this question. All right, Ryan, what's on your mind? And Ryan's going to go, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then my advice monster is going to kick in.

Starting point is 00:38:34 The advice monster is this wiring that we all have, which is like the way I add value is by telling people what to do. I remember I said this definition of being more coach-like. Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice giving just a little bit more slowly? Most of us kind of get what I'm talking about here. All I'd say is to almost everybody listening, you have no idea how much you like to give advice.

Starting point is 00:39:00 I mean, you love it. You don't even know what the problem is, and you're still willing to go. I think I've got some initial ideas on how to fix this. So we're just trying to slow this down. And part of the challenge is twofold. The first is, actually, your advice typically isn't nearly as good as you think it is. Secondly, almost certainly you're solving the wrong problem because the first challenge that shows up is almost never the real challenge.

Starting point is 00:39:28 So one of the most powerful things you can do is to go, let's just spend a little bit of time figuring out what the real challenge is. So what's the focus question? Here it is. What's the real challenge here for you? Now, people who are maybe taking notes or writing their down, I'll say, say it again because I want you to hear how it's constructed because it's deliberate. What's the real challenge here for you? And I'll show you how that got built up. The starting point might be to ask, so what's the challenge here? And that's not a bad question. It's okay. But it's a bit

Starting point is 00:40:05 abstract. It's a bit high level. It's a bit non-proving. As soon as you add one word, what's the real challenge here for you? It becomes a better question. because now you're saying there's more than one thing going on here, what do you think the real challenges? So now they're having to work to figure it out. But I think the question becomes super powerful when you add for you on the end of it. What's the real challenge here for you? Because when you do that, the spotlight swings from being focused on the problem

Starting point is 00:40:38 to being focused on the person who's fixing the problem or who has to deal with the problem. And that's when coaching, to use some jargon, from coaching for performance, which is basically, let's get this done, to coaching for development, which is about let's grow the person. So they become more confident and more capable and more competent, more autonomous. So what's the real challenge here for you is a really powerful question to finish up. If you've asked somebody on their mind, they're like, oh, it's the blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, I can't get it. So out of curiosity, what's the real challenge here for you, do you think? And they will tell you.

Starting point is 00:41:16 but don't be seduced because that may still not be what the real challenge is. So here's where you use the best question in the world. And the question is, and Ryan said it, some of you will have heard it, and what else? Because the key insight around this question is the first challenge, the first answer is never the only answer and it's rarely the best answer. So here's the really powerful kind of script almost that can be really changed the way you get into a good conversation. You go, so what's the real challenge here for you? And whatever they say, nod your head, look interested. Then you go, great, I get it.

Starting point is 00:41:53 What else is a challenge here for you? And they're like, oh, okay. And they'll come up with something else. And you know, this is lovely. I love it. What else is a challenge here for you? And they'll go, oh, my goodness. Okay, so they'll come up with a third thing.

Starting point is 00:42:04 And they almost always will have a third thing. And then you go, okay, so what's the real challenge here for you? Knowing all of that, what's the real challenge? and you will find a couple of things. One is they will have gone a level deeper in understanding what's going on. Secondly, what they articulate as now the real challenge will be different almost always from the first answer they gave you to that question. Secondly, they'll have found that it will be more about how they're dealing with the issue

Starting point is 00:42:39 rather than the issue itself. You know, it's like, so what's the challenge for you? Oh, Mary on my team, she's a nightmare. You know, so what's on your, this is how am I go? So what's on your mind? Oh, my Mary, she's a nightmare. I hate her, but I have to manage her. You go, okay, I get it.

Starting point is 00:42:58 What's the real challenge here for you? Well, you know, my boss, you're my boss and you're expecting me to make sure Mary delivers and she's not really delivering. And what else is a challenge for you? well I have to give a feedback about how she's doing and I hate giving feedback and what else is the challenge here for you you know it's actually I'm just not that great with conflict okay so what's the real challenge here for you you know what I'm lacking a backbone at the moment to actually confront Mary and hold her accountable for the thing that she's meant to do and what's happened is it's gone from Mary underperforming to me not being willing to give Mary the feedback that she need

Starting point is 00:43:39 or that she needs to hear. And it's a completely different conversation. And I've now got new insight about myself. If you're coaching, if you're running that conversation, if you are going to give advice, now at least you're going to give advice to something that might be closer to what the real problem is, rather than, hey, how do we fix Mary?

Starting point is 00:43:59 There was a lot there, Ryan. Did that make sense to you? What I like best about Michael is the fact that it's always a good idea to create moments that force people to think. Right. Always. I can't think of a time when it's not a good idea to force people to think, especially in the world and a world where we are back to back to back to back meetings booked

Starting point is 00:44:26 and putting out fire, so to speak, as you hear in corporate speak, but where you're able to take a step back and you go a step deeper and then another step deeper and you keep progressing. I think I'm putting myself in both shoes as the coach and as the person being coached. And I think thinking of myself as the person being coached, as you're saying this, I'm role playing specific moments in my life and things that I've gone through if I would have had this type of coaching. And then I'm also putting myself in moments where I've certainly failed as a coach by not,

Starting point is 00:45:00 by not doing this. I think this is so useful and helpful to people that it's just inspiring. I mean, I really like it. I don't know a better way to put it other than I think. I think if everyone kind of tweak their process to this, it would be helpful. The one thing I was going to say, though, how frequent are, do you advise, and I don't know, this may be too broad a question, but how frequent do you advise coaches or managers or leaders having these types of conversations, these one-on-ones, where they're going, they're following this process.

Starting point is 00:45:32 and going this deep. Yeah. So the three principles we have at Boxer Crayons around coaching are be lazy, be curious, be often. Being lazy, a bit provocative, but it really means, well, everybody who's listening and knows that I just like to be a bit provocative and zig when others are zagging anyway, so you're just seeing my psyche playing out. But it means stop jumping in and doing everybody's work for them, giving them the answers

Starting point is 00:46:01 when they should be giving the answers themselves. being curious is to help acknowledge that you are you know you have an advice monster and you need to manage your advice monster and being often and this is the answer to your question is to say every interaction can be a bit more coach like because what we're saying is it's not coaching it's being a bit more coach like which is can you stay curious a little bit longer can you rush to action and advice a little bit more slowly so every interaction can just have a an extra question or two at the start of it. You don't have to make a big deal about it.

Starting point is 00:46:37 You don't have to plant a flag and go, we have officially done some coaching here. You don't have to kind of say, I'm awarding you a medal for surviving my coaching process. What you're going to do is say, look, when somebody sends me a long email, and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:46:53 God, normally I would try and answer this long email. I have to read it three times and then I have to go see my answers below and do this. Instead of doing that, You just write back going, this is a little email. There's a lot going on here. What's the real challenge here for you, Ryan?

Starting point is 00:47:09 And now I'm being lazy. I'm getting you to do the work to figure out what's really going on. And I'm being a little bit curious for a little bit longer. You know, I bump into one-to-one, sure, but I just walking on the corridor with you. I'm like, hey, Ryan, how are you doing? So what's in your mind? You're like, oh, well, actually, blah, blah, blah. You're like, okay, wow.

Starting point is 00:47:30 So what's the challenge for you? Okay, what's the real challenge for you though? Oh, okay, fantastic. So how can I help? It's one of the other questions. What do you want from me here? Oh, I don't need any help at all. Okay, that's great.

Starting point is 00:47:45 Just quickly, what was most useful about this chat? The fact that you just actually spent two minutes with me and ask me what the real challenge was. Perfect. Love it. Okay, we're good. Bang. It's not coaching. It's just losing, being more coach-like.

Starting point is 00:47:58 Do you find yourself in every day, life perhaps with your wife or kids or talking like this? I mean, it's your habit, right? It's your habit. It is. I do think that part of where this comes from is in my early days where, you know, I was an executive coach and I did kind of more formal, traditional, you know, coaching sessions. My wife turned to me and said, if I ever catch you coaching me, you are dead.

Starting point is 00:48:27 I was like, okay, it's really clear. She's very black and white about stuff like that, which is helpful. And I do think that part of me is starting to think about, you know, the metaphor I sometimes use Ryan is sometimes coaching can feel like a lump of spinach on the side of your plate. If you're trying to get your two-year-old to eat the spinach, you're going to have no luck whatsoever. But I don't have kids myself. I'm happily child-free, but I've watched other parents and my brothers do this.

Starting point is 00:48:55 And they're like, so at a certain age, the way you get your kids to eat their vegetables is you mix them in with the spaghetti sauce and they don't even know that they're eating the spinach. I think it's the same as with coaching, you know, and I think I don't always do it because, you know, the point of your family is to press your buttons more than anybody else in this entire planet. So they're there to wind you up. And so my wife does that and I do that to my wife a little bit. But we do get to practice trying to be present and curious with each other. And at our best, we definitely do that.

Starting point is 00:49:28 I want to make sure I highlight a key point. I took this note and you said it, which I love and you can expand if you'd like. But all of us here as leaders and people who strive to be better leaders, you said it's important to help them learn rather than teach them. Help them learn rather than teach them. Feel free to expand on that really important point. I like to think of things at a foundational level. Like how do we build this house, brick,

Starting point is 00:49:58 by brick from the foundation as opposed to just putting band-aids on problems. So one of the fathers of the coaching movement is a guy called Sir John Whitmore. He died just a couple of months ago. They're just in the US about to release the 25th edition of his book called Coaching for Performance. And that definition or that phrase, I think, comes from John Whitmore's way of talking about what coaching is, helping people to learn rather than teaching them. and you know honestly you can play with the semantics of that language because great teachers are all about helping people to learn but the way it falls out nicely for us is that helping people to learn

Starting point is 00:50:39 is about asking a great question and helping them find the path and have the aha moment teaching them tends to be let me download this content and we just it's really obvious from childhood up which is like downloading content has a pretty limited effect and people's growing their capacity, helping people learn, asking a great question. I mean, you can see this in fMRI scanners, you know, electrical activity in the brain. If you're just giving people advice and you're scanning their brains as to how they're receiving it, not that much changes in the electrical activity in their brain. If you ask a question that strikes a chord and I have that moment where their eyes look up

Starting point is 00:51:20 to the left and there's that moment of silence and you're like, don't interrupt because you can see the cogs are whirling here. Actually, what's happening is new neural pathways are being formed in that brain. You can actually see that. You can actually see that growing. So literally, asking a great question can increase somebody's potential. Because as soon as you make those new connections, that increases the potential of that system. Wow. Less advice, more curiosity. Exactly. That's what it boils down to. I mean, in the book somewhere, I don't have a copy to hand, which is foolish of me. In one of the early pages there is, I wrote a haiku.

Starting point is 00:52:01 It said something like, and I won't get it entirely right, but I can't even remember what it is, but it's embarrassing. I can't remember my own witty haiku haiku in the book, but it's effectively, your advice, ask more questions, your advice isn't as good as you think it is. Yeah. It really isn't. And you get to work less hard and have more impact. if you start asking better questions.

Starting point is 00:52:27 It's typically different than other ways. And that will make people think that will get their brain waves moving and that will create a potential change for the better. Michael, this is awesome, man. I really appreciate it. Let me ask one more. It's been fun. The hour's gone really quickly. Yeah, it has.

Starting point is 00:52:44 One more question, though. So I was in pursuit of doing this for a long time and you were traveling all over the world, I know. Because when I saw your book in the way I'm a huge proponent of good coaches, I've been 14. and have some incredible coaches, both in athletics and business my life. But when you saw a guy with the, and I know you get asked through a lot of podcasts, a lot of shows, all this stuff, but when you saw one from someone who had a show called The Learning Leader Show, when you saw that phrase, what did you think about learning leader?

Starting point is 00:53:12 Well, I mean, I think you can probably guess from the conversation we've had around what a great coach is in the end is, and what great managers and leaders are in the end, I think are teachers. You know, and my brother as a teacher, three of my four grandparents were teachers. That teaching thing runs deep in my veins. And, of course, I'm using teaching in that bigger version of helping people learn. So it is the essence of what it means to be a leader is to help people learn. And the essence of helping people learn, part of that is you must yourself be committed to learning.

Starting point is 00:53:52 Perfect. I love it. We didn't even rehearse. That was so good. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online? Well, I'll give them three places they can go. If they're interested in our coach training programs, boxof crayons.com. I'm sometime in the next little while launching my own website where it would be kind of stuff that I developed but not about coaching.

Starting point is 00:54:16 That's my full name, Michael Bungaystania.com. There's a free download there at the moment on how to be more courageous. And then if you just want to jump onto the book, thecoachinghabit.com has a ton of free resources. So you're welcome to download all chapters and maps and podcast, all sorts of stuff. So videos. So if you want just more stuff about this coaching stuff on a personal level, the coaching habit. Yeah, the coaching habit.com. Thanks again.

Starting point is 00:54:45 Mike, I highly encourage people to get that book. The coaching habit, it's certainly helped me. And this conversation just cements it and reinforces it. I'd love to continue this dialogue as we both progress. Yeah. Let me ask a favor for the folks listening in. Okay. This is me doing a moment of shameless begging.

Starting point is 00:55:03 Okay. My goal with this book, because I want it to be a classic, is to nudge it over a thousand reviews on Amazon. So if you have the book and you've had a chance to read it or you're going to pick it up, if you consider giving me a review on Amazon.com, that would be an added gift and added bonus for me. So as of right now, it's at 781 reviews. By the time we release this, there'll be more, obviously.

Starting point is 00:55:22 It might even be over that number, but depending on how quickly. So I would encourage people to do that. I will do it myself as well, Michael. So thanks again, man, for being on. A pleasure. All right. It's been a real pleasure. All right.

Starting point is 00:55:34 See later. Thanks. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan Direct.

Starting point is 00:55:52 by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show. All right, man. You still there? I am. Thank you so much. That was really good. I mean, that was really good.

Starting point is 00:56:14 I love your work. And just to see you bring it home, it was impressive and helpful and useful. So I'm very appreciative, man. My pleasure. I really enjoyed, like I say, I was completely genuine, because that was a quick hour. not every podcast is a quick conversation. You're like, wow, this is the longest 30 minutes of my entire life. But I do think it's a reflection of the fact that you're really well prepared, but you're

Starting point is 00:56:40 also present and showing up with what's getting talked about, which I think is that's what I try and do as an interviewer as well. So I like that style. I respond well to it. Thank you. Thank you. It means a lot coming from you. So I appreciate that.

Starting point is 00:56:53 And I'll be sure to let you and your team know when this thing is ready to go live. Cool. Do you have a rough time of date? Probably a few weeks. A few weeks. Okay, perfect. Yeah, we have a, I have some travel come up, so I have a little bit of a, I try to get ahead of it when I have travel, but yeah, probably probably around then. I'll make sure to shoot you a note.

Starting point is 00:57:10 Cool. That'd be great. Awesome. Thank you. All right, thanks, Mike. All right. You too. Take care.

Starting point is 00:57:14 Bye, bye-bye.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 231: Michael Bungay Stanier - Say Less, Ask More, & Change The Way You Lead Forever

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