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Things I Highlighted is a bulleted list of particular sentences in a book that stuck out to me. These cannot be viewed as general summaries of books, but rather parts of books that struck me in a way that demanded more of my attention. Typically I share one thing I highlighted from each chapter, so they will appear in the same order they appear in the book. This version of Things I Highlighted will cover The Coaching Habit, a book written by Michael Bungay Stanier that encourages leaders to ask more questions instead of rushing to give advice.

You Need A Coaching Habit

• Coaching should be a daily, informal act, not an occasional, formal "It's Coaching Time!" event.

How to Build a Habit

• This stuff is simple, but it's not easy. It's hard to change your behaviour, and it takes courage to have a go at doing something differently, and resilience to keep at it when it doesn't work perfectly the first time (which it won't).

1: The Kickstart Question

• Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge. Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue.

2: The Awe Question

• When you use "And what else?" you'll get more options and often better options. Better options lead to better decisions. Better decisions lead to greater success.

3: The Focus Question

• The simple act of adding "for you" to the end of as many questions as possible is an everyday technique for making conversations more development- than performance-oriented.

4: The Foundation Question

• George Bernard Shaw put it succinctly when he said, "The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that is has taken place."

5: The Lazy Question

• Too much of your day is spent doing things you think people want you to do. Most dangerous is when you're only slightly wrong. That's when you find yourself kind of doing what they want, but not enough so it's really useful, and not so wrong that someone tells you to stop.

6: The Strategic Question

• The first type of No applies to the options that are automatically eliminated by your saying Yes. If you say Yes to this meeting, you're saying No to something else that's happening at the same time as this meeting. Understanding this type of No helps you understand the implications of the decision.

7: The Learning Question

• People don't really learn when you tell them something. They don't even really learn when they do something. They start learning, start creating new neural pathways, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.

  • 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. If I can ask you a question and you generate the answer yourself, the odds increase substantially. 

Conclusion

• But the real secret sauce here is building a habit of curiosity. The change of behaviour that's going to serve you most powerfully is simply this: a little less advice, a little more curiosity. Find your own questions, find your own voice. And above all, build your own coaching habit.