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Partial book profile

The Coaching Habit Bungay Stanier

A busy manager's guide to working less hard and having more impact by making coaching a simple, daily habit built on seven essential questions.

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What it’s about

Are you a manager drowning in work, feeling like a bottleneck for a team that depends on you for every answer? "The Coaching Habit" offers a lifeline, arguing that your constant advice-giving is the problem, not the solution. This book demystifies coaching, transforming it from a time-consuming, formal chore into a quick, informal, and powerful daily habit. By mastering just seven essential questions—from "What's on your mind?" to "What was most useful for you?"—you can tame your 'Advice Monster,' empower your team to become more self-sufficient, and focus everyone's energy on the work that delivers real impact and meaning. It’s a practical, funny, and science-backed guide to changing your behavior, working less hard, and becoming the leader your team actually needs.

The through-line

Who it’s for
Busy, well-intentioned managers who feel overwhelmed by their workload and frustrated by their team's over-reliance on them. They want to be effective leaders who develop their people, but they believe they lack the time and formal skills for coaching.
The problem
They are caught in three vicious cycles: their team is over-reliant on them for answers (Overdependence), they are buried in an unsustainable amount of work (Overwhelm), and their work feels disconnected from what is truly meaningful and impactful (Disconnection). They feel exhausted, stressed, and ineffective. They are frustrated with their team's lack of initiative and anxious about their own inability to get to their 'real' work.
The plan
  1. Learn the New Habit Formula to understand the mechanics of effective behavior change.
  2. Master the Seven Essential Questions, the core tools for your coaching habit.
  3. Practice asking these questions in brief, daily interactions to make coaching a natural, informal act.
The payoff
The manager becomes a confident, effective leader who works less but has more impact. · Their team becomes more autonomous, engaged, resilient, and self-sufficient. · Work conversations are focused and productive, and everyone is clear on the work that truly matters.

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Additional reading

  • Drive · Daniel H. Pink

    Explains the science of motivation, focusing on autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which are core outcomes of effective coaching.

  • The Power of Habit · Charles Duhigg

    Provides the foundational science for the book's core premise: changing behavior requires understanding and re-engineering habits through the trigger-routine-reward loop.

  • Flawless Consulting · Peter Block

    Deepens the understanding of adult-to-adult relationships at work and the idea of 'responsibility for one's own freedom,' which underpins the Foundation Question ('What do you want?').

  • Playing to Win · Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley

    Offers a robust, question-based framework for strategy that directly informs the Strategic Question ('If you're saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?').

  • Helping · Edgar Schein

    Explores the paradox of why trying to be helpful often fails and creates resistance, providing the theoretical background for the Lazy Question ('How can I help?').

  • Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning · Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel

    Explains the cognitive science of learning and information retrieval, which is the basis for the Learning Question ('What was most useful for you?').

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