The Best Coaching Book for Managers

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What is the best coaching tool out there for managers?

It’s Michael Bungay Stanier’s book, “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever.”

Why? Because it is practical, simple, and actionable which means you can easily implement it in your one-on-ones with your team starting this week to shift less from telling your team what they need to do and more to empowering them to figure out what they should do. The Coaching Habit is a quick 2 hour read and endorsed by both Brené Brown and Daniel Pink.

Here’s the secret behind coaching, it’s not about giving advice but rather about asking powerful questions. Michael Bungay Stanier has come up with a simple list of powerful questions that I have found to work quite well when I managed a team.

If you are a manager, perhaps you are wondering, why do I need to learn about coaching? Because it will increase the chances that your team will commit to taking positive actions that lead to successful outcomes. You may find that the approach they come up with is better than what you would have suggested and when it is their idea, they will be much more likely to follow through on it.

You may be thinking, but I’m really busy and it’s much easier for me to tell them what to do rather than coach. There is a time and place for providing direction, e.g., when you have a new employee. It may be slightly faster in the short term; however, this approach will wear you down and may cause your team to lose motivation, especially if you are managing professionals.

It will also increase your leverage ratio and decrease the amount of time you need to spend with your team. Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, writes in his book Principles, that he can work at a leverage ratio of 50:1, which means that for each hour he spends with someone that works for him, they are able to spend about 50 hours working on their own. His direct reports typically have leverage ratios of between 20:1 and 10:1. The better you become at coaching, the higher your leverage ratio.

What are the seven questions in the Coaching Habit?

As you read these, imagine using the first 3-5 questions in your one-on-one meetings with a team member. How would that meeting feel like?

1.      “What’s on your mind?” - The Kickstart Question

2.      “And what else (is on your mind)?” – The AWE Question

3.      “What’s the real challenge here for you?” – The Focus Question

·        The “for you” in this question is important because it puts the focus back on them instead of simply allowing them to complain about a situation/issue.

4.      “What do you want?” – The Foundation Question

·        Alternatives would be “What are you looking for?” or “What is your objective?”

·        As a manager, when you understand what your employee really wants, this can help you motivate them to reach their goals.

·        People often have a hard time (1) figuring out what they really want and (2) asking for what they really want. Give them a safe space to do this.

5.      “How can I help?” – The Lazy Question

·        This question leans into your role as a manager, which is to support and enable your team. It also places responsibility on them to raise their needs.

·        I have been fortunate to have had many good managers. I once had a manager tell me that if I came to him with an issue ahead of time, he would do his best to support me and find the resources I needed. However, if I came to him with the issue after the fact, then that was simply an excuse.

6.      “If you are saying Yes to this, what are you saying No to?” – the Strategic Question

·        This question is particularly helpful when someone is overwhelmed or comes to you asking for help with prioritizing their assignments.

·        It is also a very useful question for the extroverts and people pleasers (high I or high S on the DISC profile) on your team that might find it more challenging to say no to requests that come their way because they don’t want to offend or let someone down.

7.      “What was most useful to you?” – the Learning Question

·        Alternative: “What was most useful to you about our conversation?”

·        This is a good question to end certain meetings including one-on-ones. It tells you what their main takeaway was. It gives you feedback on what worked well and what you might want to do less of next time. And it also ends the meeting on a positive note.

If you are a manager and would like to develop your coaching skills, please contact Claritas Consulting & Coaching at 470-931-0818 or by scheduling a complimentary consultation using this link. .

More and more companies are seeing the business ROI of coaching and are equipping their managers with coaching skills and/or providing external coaching to their employees, not only their executives. The median ROI is 7x the investment (2009 ICF Global Coaching Study).

If you enjoyed this article, please check out my earlier blog post that has a shortlist of 3 other useful books for managers, subscribe below, and share this article with others.