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300 Best Michael Bungay Stanier Quotes: Coaching Habit

1. Only having the knowledge and required elements for a certain thing is of no use. You have to act on it and make it happen.


2. “Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person’ who’s managing the fire.”


3. In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible. - Author: Ben Folds


4. “Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change”


5. “Many leaders told us they don’t have the time in this high-pressure economy for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow.”


6. “There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas. Susan Cain”


7. “B.J. Fogg’s work at tinyhabits.com”


8. “three vicious circles that plague our workplaces: creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed and becoming disconnected.”


9. “The Kickstart Question: “What’s on Your Mind?” An almost fail-safe way to start a chat that quickly turns into a real conversation is the question, “What’s on your mind?”


10. “That’s the point of quotations, you know: one can use another’s words to be insulting.”


11. “Coaching should be a daily, informal act, not an occasional, formal “It’s Coaching Time!” event.”


12. “Are you with me, or are you against me?”


13. “When you’re talking about people, though, you’re not really talking about them. You’re talking about a relationship and, specifically, about what your role is in this relationship that might currently be less than ideal.”


14. “Five times a second, at an unconscious level, your brain is scanning the environment around you and asking itself: Is it safe here? Or is it dangerous?”


15. “five types of triggers: location, time, emotional state, other people, and the immediately preceding action. You”


16. Your coaching technique must include the reality of your life.


17. Silence is often a measure of success. - Author: Michael Bungay Stanier


18. “You may also be overwhelmed by the quantity of work you have. It doesn’t matter if you’ve mastered all the productivity hacks in the world; the faster you dig, the faster the world keeps flooding in. As you’re pulled in different directions by proliferating priorities, distracted by the relentless ping of email and hustling from meeting to meeting, you lose focus. The more you lose focus, the more overwhelmed you feel. The more overwhelmed you feel, the more you lose focus.”


19. Your potential can do wonders, always believe this statement. It gives you a breakthrough to a new and impactful way of working.


20. “The Learning Question: “What Was Most Useful for You?”


21. “But the very nature of doing more Great Work means there will be times when you stumble, times you lose the path, times when you’re hacking through the jungle. You’ll ask yourself if this was the right path in the first place. As various military leaders have pointed out over the years, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”


22. “Find something bigger than you, that makes your heart flutter and gets you going.”


23. “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?”


24. “To build an effective new habit, you need five essential components: a reason, a trigger, a micro-habit, effective practice, and a plan.”


25. “we are what we give our attention to. If we’re mindful about our focus, so much the better. But if we’re unwittingly distracted or preoccupied, we pay a price.”


26. “The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.”


27. “The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are.”


28. “In either case, it means he’s thinking, searching for the answer. He’s creating new neural pathways, and in doing so literally increasing his potential and capacity.”


29. “But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.”


30. Your habits must be helpful to people you care about more than it helps you out.


31. “The key thing to know here is that you can coach only the person in front of you.”


32. One of the benefits of coaching includes that you do not have to work very hard and still have a great impact.


33. “Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question”


34. “Coaching is an essential skill and behavior of a leader.”


35. “You can use the 3P model you read about in the Kickstart Question chapter to make sure you cover all the bases. Projects What projects do you need to abandon or postpone? What meetings will you no longer attend? What resources do you need to divert to the Yes? People What expectations do you need to manage? From what Drama Triangle dynamics will you extract yourself? What relationships will you let wither? Patterns What habits do you need to break? What old stories or dated ambitions do you need to update? What beliefs about yourself do you need to let go of?”


36. “Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action”


37. “The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More, and Change the Way You Lead Forever” by Michael Bungay Stanier is a very inspirational book on leadership. It emphasizes the importance of coaching as an essential component of leadership.


38. “fifteen years ago in his Harvard Business Review article “Leadership That Gets Results.” He suggested that”


39. “If you can read just one book on being more helpful: Edgar Schein, Helping”


40. “Building a coaching habit will help your team be more self-sufficient by increasing their autonomy and sense of mastery and by reducing your need to jump in, take over and become the bottleneck.”


41. “Suppose that tonight, while you’re sleeping, a miracle happens. When you get up in the morning tomorrow, how will you know that things have suddenly got better?”


42. You can't totally rebel, otherwise you have to go live on your own, on a desert island. It's as simple as that. - Author: Patrick McGoohan


43. “Learn to use ten minutes intelligently. It will pay you huge dividends.”


44. “Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley’s Playing to Win.”


45. “thing done within organizations, as should The Answer to How Is Yes.”


46. “If you know what question to ask, get to the point and ask it.”


47. “If you’ve got an idea, wait. Ask, “And what else?” and you’ll often find that the person comes up with that very idea that’s burning a hole in your brain. And if she doesn’t, then offer your idea—as an idea, not disguised as a fake question.”


48. “Questions—“What was most useful here for you?”—so you create a learning moment for the person and for you.”


49. “When you build a coaching habit, you can more easily break out of three vicious circles that plague our workplaces: creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed and becoming disconnected.”


50. “there are just five types of triggers: location, time, emotional state, other people, and the immediately preceding action.”


51. “we pay a price. A 2010 study”


52. “Science has whittled that number down over time, so now it’s generally assumed that four is actually the ideal number at which we can chunk information.”


53. “Leo Babauta frames a helpful way of connecting to the big picture in his book Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change.”


54. “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. LOU HOLTZ”


55. “what you’re holding in your mind will unconsciously influence what you can notice and focus on. When you’re thinking of buying a red Mazda, you suddenly start noticing all the red Mazdas on the road. Whatever you’re thinking about can also influence the choices you make, so you might not, in fact, make the optimal choice.”


56. “Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We”


57. “Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao, Scaling Up Excellence”


58. “Research shows that if you spend too much time imagining the outcome, you’re less motivated to actually do the work to get there.”


59. Leadership comes with the technique of coaching. It is regarded as an important subject in the field of leadership.


60. “Are you more important or less important than I am?”


61. “Questions work just as well typed as they do spoken.”


62. “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. you can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. Naguib Mahfouz”


63. “You’ll be surprised and delighted at just how often these are exactly the right questions to ask. Open with: What’s on your mind? The perfect way to start; the question is open but focused. Check in: Is there anything else on your mind? Give the person an option to share additional concerns. Then begin to focus: So what’s the real challenge here for you? Already the conversation will deepen. Your job now is to find what’s most useful to look at.”


64. “Tim Ferriss drove the point home recently when he said, “Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”


65. We might have this question at times that why do we need to change. The answer to this is that changes are required to yield better results from your performance.


66. “Beware the Busy Manager,”


67. “a Duke University study says that at least 45 percent of our waking behaviour is habitual. Although”


68. When you are thinking of new ideas do not anything get to you and discourage you.


69. “Chip and Dan Heath, Switch”


70. “WITHOUT A GOOD QUESTION, A GOOD ANSWER HAS NO PLACE TO GO. Clayton Christensen”


71. “Your job as a manager and a leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments.”


72. “Too often, we kinda sorta half-heartedly agree to something, or more likely, there’s a complete misunderstanding in the room as to what’s been agreed to. (Have you ever heard or uttered the phrase, “I never said I was going to do that!”? Me too.) So to ask, “Let’s be clear: What exactly are you saying Yes to?” brings the commitment out of the shadows. If you then ask, “What could being fully committed to this idea look like?” it brings things into even sharper, bolder focus.”


73. Keep your focus on the actual problem, not the first problem that comes in front of your eyes.


74. “Chip and Dan Heath, in their excellent book Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work,”


75. Do not attach a question mark when you are giving a piece of advice. It seems like you are doubting your own advice.


76. “There are reasons why your ideas are often not that great. To start with, you don’t have the full picture. You’ve got a few facts, a delightful collection of baggage, a robust serving of opinion, and an ocean of assumption. You think you understand what’s happening. Your brain is designed to find patterns and make connections that reassure you that you know what’s going on. Trust me, you don’t. What you’ve got is one part truth and about six parts conjecture.”


77. “You want your people to feel that working with you is a place of reward, not risk.”


78. “I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.”


79. “Making Habits, Breaking Habits, Jeremy Dean”


80. “You’re a good person, and you’re doing your very best to let your people thrive. You want to “add value” and be useful. You like to feel that you’re contributing. However, there’s being helpful, and then there’s being “helpful,” as in stepping in and taking over. And way too often, you get suckered into doing the latter. Then everyone—you, the person you’re “helping,” the organization—pays a price for your attempted helpfulness. Your good intentions often end up contributing to a relentless cycle of exhaustion, frustration and, ironically, reduced impact.”


81. “And when you start jumping in to fix things, things go off the rails in three ways: you work on the wrong problem; you do the work your team should be doing; and the work doesn’t get done.”


82. “In Drive, Daniel H. Pink is clear on the three drivers that actually motivate people: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. If someone is constantly on the receiving end of advice, with no option to share their own ideas, their autonomy and mastery certainly decline, and most likely their purpose too. Being told what to do—even with the best of intentions—signals that the advice-receiver is not really here for their ability to think, but only for their ability to implement someone else’s ideas. They certainly do not feel encouraged to bring their best self to work, to bring their creativity and commitment and competency, to assume leadership and try something new. If you lead these people, you now find yourself with an over-dependent team, a group that come to you for everything and seem to have traded in their self-sufficiency and autonomy.”


83. Figure out what provokes your old habits because that provocation might never let you change.


84. “GREAT WORK IS ABOUT DOING WHAT’S MEANINGFUL. GREAT WORK ISN’T ABOUT DOING IT WELL. Here’s the irony: It’s often easy to deliver Bad Work and Good Work at an excellent level. (Just how many times have you revised that worthless Power Point presentation?) And Great Work? It’s often new work at the edge of your competence, work that tangles you up because it’s different and you haven’t done it a thousand times before. You’re unlikely to be able to do it perfectly. When I say “Great Work,” I’m not talking about a standard of delivery. I’m talking about a standard of impact and meaning.”


85. “What Do You Want?” Research.”


86. “And What Else?” Research”


87. “Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We live within our habits. So shape the way you want to lead, and build the right coaching habits.”


88. Knowing Charlie, she wouldn't have gotten a tattoo unless it really meant something to her. It had to be something she knew she would never grow tired of. Never stop loving. - Author: Colleen Hoover


89. “Ron Popeil is the grandfather of them all, and his stock phrase was “But wait, there’s more…”


90. “This situation is commonly found in standing meetings—same time, same people, same place, same agenda. It becomes a dreary recitation of facts and figures, a report that sheds little light and seems to drain energy from the room. The agenda might have been perfect a week, a month or a year ago, but now it’s putting process in front of what really matters.”


91. “Generous silence provides space for the other person to be with their own self, for you to be with them, for presence to show up. It allows them to take a breath. It whispers, “This is an interesting place to be. Let’s hang out here for a moment.”


92. “Small talk might be a useful way to warm up, but it's rarely the bridge that leads to a conversation that matters.”


93. “Bite your tongue, and don’t fill the silence. I know it will be uncomfortable, and I know it creates space for learning and insight.”


94. “Asking the Strategy Question shines a light on what we’re holding on to, so we might better weigh up what’s worth keeping and what might need to be set free.”


95. “No puts the spotlight on how to create the space and focus, energy and resources that you’ll need to truly do that Yes.”


96. “Charles Duhigg says that there are just five types of triggers: location, time, emotional state,”


97. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. LEONARD COHEN.”


98. 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. - Author: Michael Bungay Stanier


99. “even though we don’t really know what the issue is, or what’s going on for the person, we’re quite sure we’ve got the answer she needs.”


100. “What’s On Your Mind?” Research.”


101. “Do I get a say or don’t”


102. You can not complete a big action in one go. Instead of doing everything at once try doing smaller parts of the big action plan.


103. “Saying Yes more slowly means being willing to stay curious before committing.”


104. “Even Dilbert mocks coaching – and there’s no surer sign of mainstream success than that.”


105. “You already know it’s hard to change old ways of behaving, however good your intentions. Or is it just me who has: sworn not to check email first thing in the morning, and nonetheless found myself in the wee small hours, my face lit by that pale screen glow; intended to find inner peace through the discipline of meditation, yet couldn’t find five minutes to just sit and breathe, sit and breathe; committed to take a proper lunch break, and somehow found myself shaking the crumbs out of my keyboard, evidence of sandwich spillage; or decided to abstain from drinking for a while, and yet had a glass of good Australian shiraz mysteriously appear in my hand at the end of the day?”


106. “for you” to a question helps people figure out the answers faster and more accurately.”


107. “though it accounts for only about 2 percent of your body weight, your brain uses about 20 percent of your energy.”


108. A motive, a provoke, a small habit, lots of practice and a plan are all you need to make a new habit.


109. “So it seems that committing to an answer and then having a chance to reflect on it creates greater accuracy. More recent studies have found that follow-up questions that promote higher-level thinking (like “And what else?”) help deepen understanding and promote participation.”


110. “Here are the five questions: What is our winning aspiration? Framing the choice as “winning” rules out mediocrity as an option. If you want to win, you need to know what game you’re playing and with (and against) whom. What impact do you want to have in and on the world? Where will we play? “Boiling the ocean” is rarely successful. Choosing a sector, geography, product, channel and customer allows you to focus your resources. How will we win? What’s the defendable difference that will open up the gap between you and the others? What capabilities must be in place? Not just what do you need to do, but how will it become and stay a strength? What management systems are required? It’s easy enough to measure stuff. It’s much harder to figure out what you want to measure that actually matters.”


111. Your coaching ability lets you go out of your comfort zone and make things work out.


112. “wimping out by not making a choice but fudging things by saying Yes to everything”


113. “It likes safe, of course. When your brain feels safe, it can operate at its most sophisticated level. You’re more subtle in your thinking, better able to see and manage ambiguity. You assume positive intent of those around you, and you’re able to tap collective wisdom. You’re engaged and you’re moving forward.”


114. “when you offer to help someone, you “one up” yourself: you raise your status and you lower hers,”


115. “When your brain feels safe, it can operate at its most sophisticated level. You’re more subtle in your thinking, better able to see and manage ambiguity. You assume positive intent of those around you, and you’re able to tap collective wisdom. You’re engaged and you’re moving forward.”


116. “I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”


117. “you should define your new habit as a micro-habit that needs to take less than sixty seconds to complete.”


118. It was the product of a mind that was not merely twisted, but actually sprained. - Author: Douglas Adams


119. “Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything”


120. “I think I like Michael Porter’s best, when he said, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”


121. “The Coaching Habit” 66+ Inspiring Quotes


122. “The first bias is the planning fallacy, which can be summed up as saying that we’re lousy at figuring out how much time something will take us to complete. It’s a combination of overestimating our abilities and, to add insult to injury, underestimating the degree to which we are overestimating. We think we can do more than we can; the Strategy Question helps us be more realistic about what’s actually possible. The second bias, known as prospect theory, tells us that loss and gain are not measured equally.”


123. He beat into her swiftly and powerfully as his hardness overflowed in her burning canyon. - Author: Scarlet Chill


124. “Coyle calls it “Deep Practice.” The three components of Deep Practice are: Practicing small chunks of the bigger action (for instance, rather than practice the whole tennis serve, you practice just tossing the ball up). Repetition, repetition and repetition… and repetition. Do it fast, do it slow, do it differently. But keep repeating the action. And finally, being mindful and noticing when it goes well. When it does, celebrate success.”


125. An occasional and formal way of coaching seems wrong, instead of that coaching be a daily practice in an informal way.


126. “if you’re not sure about a situation, you’ll default to reading it as unsafe. And start backing away.”


127. If your patterns are not bringing out any modification, maybe it is time to modify these patterns.


128. “Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations”


129. In the evening, I would tell my patients, sleep with the angels. In the morning, I would say to each as the French farmers still do, "Good morning to your and your companion" - meaning, of course, their angel. - Author: Eileen Elias Freeman


130. “So you’ve mastered the fake question. “Have you thought of…?” “What about…?” “Did you consider…?” Stop offering up advice with a question mark attached. That doesn’t count as asking a question.”


131. “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. ANNA QUINDLEN”


132. When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. LOU HOLTZ - Author: Michael Bungay Stanier


133. You build up resistance to different things as soon as you get new habits.


134. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”


135. “Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people’s laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.”


136. “Even Dilbert mocks coaching—and there’s no surer sign of mainstream success than that.”


137. “The Kickstart Question: “What’s on your mind?” A perfect way to start many conversations. Both open and focusing at the same time. The AWE Question: “And what else?” The best coaching question in the world—because their first answer is never their only answer, and rarely their best answer. The Focus Question: “What’s the real challenge here for you?” We’re all wasting too much time and effort solving the wrong problem because we were seduced into thinking the first challenge is the real challenge. The Foundation Question: “What do you want?” This is where motivated and informed action best begins. The Strategy Question: “If you’re saying Yes to this, what must you say No to?” Strategy is about courageous choice, and this question makes commitment and opportunity cost absolutely clear. The Lazy Question: “How can I help?” The most powerful question to stop us from “rescuing” the other person. An alternative is, “What do you want from me?” The Learning Question: “What was most useful or valuable here for you?” Learning doesn’t happen when you tell them something, it happens when they figure it out for themselves.”


138. “Coaching is no longer an event. It’s a way of being with each other.”


139. “WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF AS THE MOMENT OF DISCOVERY IS REALLY THE DISCOVERY OF THE QUESTION. Jonas Salk”


140. “help create the space for people to have those learning moments.”


141. “Great work has more impact and greater meaning.”


142. “The pattern we’re breaking here is overworking the wrong problem, so the trigger is any time you start to focus on a particular challenge. Coming up with ways to fix things feels more comfortable than sitting in the ambiguity of trying to figure out the challenge, but that’s where the power of this question lies.”


143. “a Duke University study says that at least 45 percent of our waking behaviour is habitual. Although we’d like to think we’re in charge, it turns out that we’re not so much controlling how we act with our conscious mind as we are being driven by our subconscious or unconscious mind. It’s amazing; also, it’s a little disturbing.”


144. “Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.”


145. Try and distinguish between what is a lie or a myth and what is the actual advice you should be following.


146. “If this were a haiku rather than a book, it would read: Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good As you think it is.”


147. “Hard Change: You don’t need a new app; you need a new operating system.”


148. It is not mandatory that simple things always come easy.


149. “We forgive when we give up attachment to…” (Great Work quote)


150. “Duke University study says that at least 45 percent of our waking behaviour is habitual. Although we’d like to think we’re in charge, it turns out that we’re not so much controlling how we act with our conscious mind as we are being driven by our subconscious or unconscious mind.”


151. “I get into some real detail about the latest research from authors such as Charles Duhigg, B.J. Fogg, Gretchen Rubin, Dan Coyle, Leo Babauta, Nir Eyal, Jeremy Dean and a mysterious “half a guru.”


152. “Many leaders told us they don’t have the time in this high-pressure economy for the slow and tedious work of teaching people and helping them grow.” And”


153. “One of the laws of change: As soon as you try something new, you’ll get resistance.”


154. “Block defined an adult-to-adult relationship as one in which you are “able to ask for what you want, knowing that the answer may be No.” That’s why at the heart of this book is this simple but potent question, “What do you want?”


155. “To build an effective new habit, you need five essential components: a reason, a trigger, a micro-habit, effective practice, and a p”


156. “Coaching can fuel the courage to step out beyond the comfortable and familiar, can help people learn from their experiences and can literally and metaphorically increase and help fulfil a person’s potential.”


157. “People Have you ever thought, Work would be easy if it weren’t for all these annoying people? Surely it’s not just me. Certainly, situations are always made more complex when you—in all your imperfect, not-always-rational, messy, biased, hasn’t-fully-obtained-enlightenment glory—have to work with others who, surprisingly, are also imperfect, not always rational, messy, biased, and a few steps short of full wisdom and compassion.”


158. “Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge. It’s putting out the fire or building up the fire or banking the fire. It’s everyday stuff, and it’s important and necessary. Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire. This conversation is more rare and significantly more powerful.”


159. Always start with something that is easy. Take on those things and gradually see how they will increase.


160. “Research shows that if you spend too much time imagining the outcome, you’re less motivated to actually do the work to get there. Leo”


161. Coach for your and your team’s development and growth more than you coach for your performance.


162. “If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news? DOUGLAS ADAMS.”


163. “The Talent Code, Dan Coyle”


164. “You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer? Exactly.”


165. “that the secret to saying No was to shift the focus and learn how to say Yes more slowly.”


166. “Your good intentions often end up contributing to a relentless cycle of exhaustion, frustration and, ironically, reduced impact.”


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


168. “This isn’t about judging people; it’s about encouraging them”


169. “well, you’re likely to encounter a nasty but predictable case of the SPOTS: Strategic Plans on Top Shelf.”


170. “If you’re not trying to fix things, you don’t need the backstory.”


171. “THE MINUTE WE BEGIN TO THINK WE HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, WE FORGET THE QUESTIONS.”


172. “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”


173. There is a lot of information around us that mislead us and we can never figure that out, so it is advisable to be very careful.


174. “Boiling the ocean” is rarely successful.”


175. “it seems that committing to an answer and then having a chance to reflect on it creates greater accuracy.”


176. “What will you say No to if you’re truly saying Yes to this?”


177. “And what else?” is the quickest and easiest way to uncover and create new possibilities.”


178. “A 2010 study started by making the point that any time we have something on our mind, it’s literally using up energy—even though it accounts for only about 2 percent of your body weight, your brain uses about 20 percent of your energy.”


179. “A Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.”


180. “The first bias is the planning fallacy, which can be summed up as saying that we’re lousy at figuring out how much time something will take us to complete. It’s a combination of overestimating our abilities and, to add insult to injury, underestimating the degree to which we are overestimating. We think we can do more than we can; the Strategy Question helps us be more realistic about what’s actually possible.”


181. “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.”


182. When you have a conversation with someone remember one thing, call them out to learn something and grow, rather than just getting things in order.


183. Have the habit of breaking the ice. Try to start the conversation yourself.


184. “I’m going to find someone who says Yes more quickly than you do.”


185. “Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit, is this: if you don’t know what triggers the old behaviour, you’ll never change it because you’ll already be doing it before you know it.”


186. “ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS IF YOU’RE GOING TO FIND THE RIGHT ANSWERS. Vanessa Redgrave”


187. “You create Victims.”


188. “What was most useful for you about this conversation”


189. “What Do You Want?” Research”


190. Sometimes we get disconnected from work and the world, give it some time but do come back with a greater influence.


191. “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it’s the only one you’ve got,”


192. “Charles Duhigg says that there are just five types of triggers: location, time, emotional state, other people, and the immediately preceding action.”


193. “What’s On Your Mind?” Research”


194. “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”


195. “The Power of Positive Deviance”


196. “Coaching is about you leading in a different way that will allow your people to feel more engaged, empowered and more focused on what matters.”


197. Always try to define something in a small and specific way, in that way you can convey what you want to and nobody gets bored of your long details.


198. Taking someone’s help when you require is not a bad thing to do.


199. “You are remembered for the rules you break. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR”


200. “Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover is obvious. Make your habit a resilient system.”


201. “Stop offering advice with a question mark attached. That doesn't count as asking a question”


202. “Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover”


203. “One of the disciplines I (mostly) follow at the end of my day is using an app called iDoneThis, and rather than just writing out what I did, I write down a sentence or two about what I learned and what I’m most proud of.”


204. “The Strategic Question: If You’re Saying Yes to This, What Are You Saying No To?”


205. “Dorothy Strachan, Making Questions Work”


206. “it boils down to the following: after the event, ask yourself some questions and capture the answers. You could take inspiration from the military’s After Action Review. There are three question clusters. First, “What was supposed to happen... what did happen... and why the gap?” Then, “What worked... and what didn’t work?” And finally, “What would you do differently next time?” Or you could make it simpler than that, and write down the one thing to do more of next time. Anything, so long as you create that moment of reflection. Feedback, fast and slow. It’s hard to change your behaviour without it.”


207. “Strong women leave big hickies.”


208. “the wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.*”


209. “Lisa Lahey and Bob Kegan, Immunity to Change”


210. In order to be efficient in coaching you have to acknowledge and utilize the techniques of learning and using new habits in your life.


211. “Finding the Right Moment “And what else?” is such a useful question that you can add it into almost every exchange. For example: When you’ve asked someone, “What’s on your mind?” and she answers, ask, “And what else?” When someone’s told you about a course of action she intends to take, challenge her with “And what else could you do?” When you’re trying to find the heart of the issue, and you ask, “What’s the real challenge here for you?” and he offers up a timid or vague or insipid first answer, push deeper by asking, “And what else is a challenge here for you?” When you start your weekly check-in meeting by asking, “What’s important right now?” keep the pressure on by asking, “And what else?” When someone’s nudging a new idea to the fore, exploring new boundaries of courage and possibility, hold the space and deepen the potential by asking, “And what else might be possible?” When you’re brainstorming new ideas and you don’t want to get bogged down, keep the energy up by firing out, “And what else?”


212. “Coaching is the act of staying curious. Feedback is when you need to share your point of view.”


213. “The more you lose focus, the more overwhelmed you feel. The more overwhelmed you feel, the more you lose focus.”


214. “You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning.”


215. “Stop offering advice with a question mark attached. That doesn’t count as asking a question.”


216. “Dan Pink talks about the importance of this in his excellent book Drive.”


217. “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”


218. “John. He’s a nightmare. Never before have I met someone who suffers more acutely from SOS: Shiny Object Syndrome. He’s so scattered that it’s like working with confetti.”


219. “You always have choices. The question is, ‘how do I make the bravest choice?’”


220. “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.”


221. “For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.”


222. “So think less about what your habit can do for you, and more about how this new habit will help a person or people you care about.”


223. Do not spend a long time and enormous effort on the wrong thing. It’s like you are the one pulling yourself back.


224. “Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit”


225. “making a vow that’s connected to serving others.”


226. “You may find that you’ve become part of an overdependent team. There’s a double whammy here. First, you’ve trained your people to become excessively reliant on you, a situation that turns out to be disempowering for them and frustrating for you. And then as an unwelcome bonus, because you’ve been so successful in creating this dependency that you now have too much work to do, you may also have become a bottleneck in the system. Everyone loses momentum and motivation. The more you help your people, the more they seem to need your help. The more they need your help, the more time you spend helping them.”


227. “in a way that’s both focused and open. The AWE Question—the best coaching question in the world—works as a self-management tool for you, and as a boost for the other six questions here. The Focus Question and the Foundation Question are about getting to the heart of the challenge, so you’ve got your attention on what really matters. The Lazy Question will save you hours, while the Strategic Question will save hours for those you’re working with. And the Learning Question, which pairs with the Kickstart Question to make the Coaching Bookends, will ensure that everyone finds their interactions with you more useful.”


228. “Samuel Beckett put it best: “Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.”


229. Whenever you talk about someone, it is not them you are talking about. You talk about the bond you have with them and what role you have in that bond.


230. “Victim mode (when you feel you have no choice but to say Yes),”


231. “Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge. It’s putting out the fire or building up the fire or banking the fire. It’s everyday stuff, and it’s important and necessary. Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire. This conversation is more rare and significantly more powerful. If”


232. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. LEONARD COHEN”


233. Everyone has a tendency of losing their encouragement and motivation to go ahead, but do


234. “Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We.”


235. “there’s a time and a place for giving advice. The goal here isn’t to avoid ever providing an answer. But it is to get better at having people find their own answers.”


236. “Thinking, Fast and Slow,”


237. “What’s freedom?” and Block would probably respond by saying that it is being able to show up as an adult in our work and being able to deal with those around us as adults, too.”


238. “How Can I Help?” Research”


239. “Winston Churchill said that people “occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”


240. “I’ve finished that chapel I was painting. The Pope is quite satisfied.


241. “if you don’t know what triggers the old behaviour, you’ll never change it because you’ll already be doing it before you know it.”


242. “You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning. The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are.”


243. “Bạn không thực sự học được gì khi một ai đó nói cho bạn một điều gì đó. Bạn cũng không thực sự học được gì khi bạn làm một điều gì đó. Bạn chỉ bắt đầu học, bắt đầu tạo ra những kết nối thần kinh mới, khi bạn nhớ lại và suy ngẫm về những việc đã xảy ra.”


244. “Edgar Schein has untangled the paradox of being helpful in his excellent book Helping. At its”


245. “What Was Most Useful for You?” Research”


246. In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen shares a crucial insight: "You can't do a project. You can only do the next step. - Author: Michael Bungay Stanier


247. “Focus on the real problem, not the first problem.”


248. “It’s a question that says, Let’s talk about the thing that matters most. It’s a question that dissolves ossified agendas, sidesteps small talk and defeats the default diagnosis”


249. “Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover is obvious.”


250. “Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything.”


251. Celebrate your success, you deserve it. You worked hard to achieve it so go ahead and celebrate.


252. “known as a micromanager. People do the minimum for you and no more. And no one likes a bully.”


253. “Edgar Schein has untangled the paradox of being helpful in his excellent book Helping. At its crux is the insight that when you offer to help someone, you “one up” yourself: you raise your status and you lower hers, whether you mean to or not. This idea seems counterintuitive, I know, because so often our desire to help comes from genuine caring. But the insight rings true when you put yourself in the shoes of the person who is being offered help.”


254. “the process “forces the tough trade-offs.”


255. “people in organizations like yours around the world are working very hard and coming up with decent solutions to problems that just don’t matter, and why the real challenges often go unaddressed. When people start talking to you about the challenge at hand, what’s essential to remember is that what they’re laying out for you is rarely the actual problem. And when you start jumping in to fix things, things go off the rails in three ways: you work on the wrong problem; you do the work your team should be doing; and the work doesn’t get done.”


256. “Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.”


257. “Saying Yes more slowly means being willing to stay curious before committing. Which means asking more questions:”


258. “What’s on your mind?” you ask. “The [insert name of thing they’re working on],” they say. “So there are three different facets of that we could look at,” you offer. “The project side—any challenges around the actual content. The people side—any issues with team members/colleagues/other departments/bosses/customers/clients. And patterns—if there’s a way that you’re getting in your own way, and not showing up in the best possible way. Where should we start?”


259. “It takes courage to…” (Great Work quote)


260. “What is our winning aspiration? Framing the choice as “winning” rules out mediocrity as an option. If you want to win, you need to know what game you’re playing and with (and against) whom. What impact do you want to have in and on the world? Where will we play? “Boiling the ocean” is rarely successful. Choosing a sector, geography, product, channel and customer allows you to focus your resources. How will we win? What’s the defendable difference that will open up the gap between you and the others? What capabilities must be in place? Not just what do you need to do, but how will it become and stay a strength? What management systems are required? It’s easy enough to measure stuff. It’s much harder to figure out what you want to measure that actually matters.”


261. “ANSWERS ARE CLOSED ROOMS; AND QUESTIONS ARE OPEN DOORS THAT INVITE US IN. Nancy Willard”


262. “Don’t think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success. ROBERT ORBEN”


263. “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.


264. “The three components of Deep Practice are: Practicing small chunks of the bigger action (for instance, rather than practice the whole tennis serve, you practice just tossing the ball up). Repetition, repetition and repetition… and repetition. Do it fast, do it slow, do it differently. But keep repeating the action. And finally, being mindful and noticing when it goes well. When it does, celebrate success. You don’t have to go buy the bottle of Möet, although you can if you wish. A small fist pump will do just fine.”


265. “Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, Playing to Win”


266. “The change of behaviour 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.”


267. “Peace is not won by those who fiercely guard their differences but by those who with open minds and hearts seek out connections.”


268. “The Drama Triangle, a practical interpretation of TA developed by Stephen Karpman M.D., is one way to make TA practical and useful. The Drama Triangle starts by assuming that, at least some of the time, we’re playing less-than-fantastic versions of ourselves with most of the people with whom we interact. If you’ve ever found yourself playing one of the Seven Dysfunctional Dwarfs (Sulky, Moany, Shouty, Crabby, Martyr-y, Touchy and Petulant), even when you know you should know better, you get the point. When this happens, Karpman says, we’re bouncing around between three archetypal roles—Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer—each one as unhelpful and dysfunctional as the other.”


269. “What Are You Saying No To?” Research”


270. “Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We live within our habits.”


271. “Coming up with ways to fix things feels more comfortable than sitting in the ambiguity of trying to figure out the challenge...”


272. “a little more asking people questions and a little less telling people what to do.”


273. “Silence is often a measure of success.”


274. It is of the utmost importance to fix things up before they go out of your hand.


275. “Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge.”


276. “Michael Porter’s best, when he said, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”


277. “Edgar Schein has untangled the paradox of being helpful in his excellent book Helping.”


278. You might be receiving very productive coaching but what makes the difference is how you deliver it, how you coach other people.


279. “you do want to remember that the first answer someone gives you is almost never the only answer, and it’s rarely the best answer. You may think that’s obvious, but it’s less so than you realize.”


280. “What’s the Real Challenge for You Here?” Research”


281. “Kickstart Question: “What’s on Your Mind?” An almost fail-safe way to start a chat that quickly turns into a real conversation is the question, “What’s on your mind?”


282. “THE MINUTE WE BEGIN TO THINK WE HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS, WE FORGET THE QUESTIONS. Madeleine L’Engle”


283. “WHEN WILL THE RHETORICAL QUESTIONS END?”


284. “An almost fail-safe way to start a chat that quickly turns into a real conversation is the question, “What’s on your mind?”


285. “Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, Make It Stick”


286. “the organization—pays a price for your attempted helpfulness.”


287. “T is for tribe. The brain is asking, “Are you with me, or are you against me?” If it believes that you’re on its side, it increases the TERA Quotient. If you’re seen as the opposition, the TERA Quotient goes down. E is for expectation. The brain is figuring out, “Do I know the future or don’t I?” If what’s going to happen next is clear, the situation feels safe. If not, it feels dangerous. R is for rank. It’s a relative thing, and it depends not on your formal title but on how power is being played out in the moment. “Are you more important or less important than I am?” is the question the brain is asking, and if you’ve diminished my status, the situation feels less secure. A is for autonomy. Dan Pink talks about the importance of this in his excellent book Drive. “Do I get a say or don’t I?” That’s the question the brain is asking as it gauges the degree of autonomy you have in any situation. If you believe you do have a choice, then this environment is more likely to be a place of reward and therefore engagement. If you believe you don’t have a choice so much, then it becomes less safe for you.”


288. “You are remembered for the rules you break. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR.”


289. Durable systems build safety towards any kind of fail so that when something breaks down, the next step is to recover automatically. Make your habit a durable system.


290. “The Kickstart Question: “What’s on Your Mind?” An almost fail-safe way to start a chat that quickly turns into a real conversation is the question, “What’s on your mind?” It’s something of a Goldilocks question, walking a fine line so it is neither too open and broad nor too narrow and confining.”


291. “When people start talking to you about the challenge at hand, what’s essential to remember is that what they’re laying out for you is rarely the actual problem. And when you start jumping in to fix things, things go off the rails in three ways: you work on the wrong problem; you do the work your team should be doing; and the work doesn’t get done.”


292. “Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good As you think it is.”


293. “What gets us into trouble is how quickly we commit, without fully understanding what we’re getting ourselves into or even why we’re being asked. Saying Yes more slowly means being willing to stay curious before committing. Which means asking more questions: Why are you asking me? Whom else have you asked? When you say this is urgent, what do you mean? According to what standard does this need to be completed? By when? If I couldn’t do all of this, but could do just a part, what part would you have me do? What do you want me to take off my plate so I can do this?”


294. Never fear asking questions when you have a doubt. That is what gives in depth knowledge you require in the specific subject.


295. “Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto”


296. “The challenge is that with the years of conditioning you’ve had, as soon as you start hearing what a doctor might call “the presenting challenge,” every fibre of your body is twitching with a desire to fix it, solve it, offer a solution to it. It’s Pavlovian. Which is why people in organizations like yours around the world are working very hard and coming up with decent solutions to problems that just don’t matter, and why the real challenges often go unaddressed.”


297. “George Bernard Shaw was on to something years ago when one of his maxims for revolutionaries stated, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”


298. “Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person' who's managing the fire.”


299. “Eisenhower who said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,”


300. “WITHOUT A GOOD QUESTION, A GOOD ANSWER HAS NO PLACE TO GO.”


301. “What was most useful for you?”


302. Five times a second, at an unconscious level, your brain is scanning the environment around you and asking itself: Is it safe here? Or is it dangerous? - Author: Michael Bungay Stanier


303. “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.”


304. “WHAT PEOPLE THINK OF AS THE MOMENT OF DISCOVERY IS REALLY THE DISCOVERY OF THE QUESTION.”


305. In today’s busy world you should be able to coach anyone in a very short period of time. Be time efficient.


306. Ask questions to yourself too. Ask at times what you are doing? What do you think to do when everything fails? Do not worry, these answers will come to you and speak to you.


307. When you seek the right answers to come up all you can do is ask the correct question.


308. It is good to ask more questions and it is also advisable to have a habit of telling less to people what they should or should not be doing.


309. “If you can’t stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well” (Great Work quote)


310. “To build an effective new habit, you need five essential components: a reason, a trigger, a micro-habit, effective practice, and a p.”


311. “Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”


312. “it’s not enough just to get things done. You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning. The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are. The less engaged we are, the less likely we are to find and create Great Work.”


313. “When you think back to times when “help” has been thrust upon you, you’ll probably notice a curious mixture of reactions that include resistance, frustration, disempowerment and annoyance.”


314. “Science has whittled that number down over time, so now it’s generally assumed that four is actually the ideal number at which we can chunk information. In some ways, it’s as if our unconscious brain counts like this: one, two, three, four… lots.”


315. Do not lose your focus by getting overwhelmed. Keep your focus intact to make things work and create an impact on everyone.


316. “I know they seem innocuous. Three little words. But “And What Else?”—the AWE Question—has magical properties. With seemingly no effort, it creates more—more wisdom, more insights, more self-awareness, more possibilities—out of thin air.”


317. “Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover.”


318. “It was Eisenhower who said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable,”


319. “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. LOU HOLTZ.”


320. “The second type of No you’re uncovering—which will likely take the conversation another level deeper—is what you now need to say to make the Yes happen. It’s all too easy to shove another Yes into the bag of our overcommitted lives, hoping that in a Harry Potter magical sort of way it will somehow all be accommodated. This second type of No puts the spotlight on how to create the space and focus, energy and resources that you’ll need to truly do that Yes.”


321. “Part of what makes the Focus Question work so well are those two final words, “for you.” A 1997 study involving a fairly convoluted series of math problems focused on the impact of having the word “you” as part of a math problem’s description. The researchers found that when the word “you” was present, the questions needed to be repeated fewer times, and the problems were solved in a shorter amount of time and with more accuracy.”


322. No matter how good your purpose is, we have to agree that it is very tough to change your old habits.


323. “We’re slowly waking up to the fact that being busy is no measure of success. George Bernard Shaw was on to something years ago when one of his maxims for revolutionaries stated, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”


324. “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown,”


325. “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. Yes, the problems still get sorted out. But with “for you” there’s often additional personal insight, and with personal insight comes increased growth and capability.”


326. “being busy is no measure of success.”


327. “Don’t think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success. ROBERT ORBEN.”


328. “Bill “Mr. Simplicity” Jensen taught me that the secret to saying No was to shift the focus and learn how to say Yes more slowly. What gets us into trouble is how quickly we commit, without fully understanding what we’re getting ourselves into or even why we’re being asked.”


329. “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel.”


330. “WE LIVE IN THE WORLD OUR QUESTIONS CREATE. David Cooperrider”


331. “WHEN THIS HAPPENS… When I’m tempted to ask them why… INSTEAD OF… Beginning the question with “Why… ” I WILL… Reframe the question so it starts with “What.” So, as some examples, instead of “Why did you do that?” ask “What were you hoping for here?” Instead of “Why did you think this was a good idea?” ask “What made you choose this course of action?” Instead of “Why are you bothering with this?” ask “What’s important for you here?”


332. “Peter Block is a brilliant thinker about how we behave at work. His book Flawless Consulting should be on the”


333. Enhancing your coaching habit will help your team become more self sufficient by building their independence and their capability.


334. “If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news? DOUGLAS ADAMS”


335. “defy the laws of physics and just keep adding more stuff to your capacity.”


336. “Check in: Is there anything else on your mind? Give the person an option to share additional concerns. Then begin to focus: So what’s the real challenge here for you? Already the conversation will deepen. Your job now is to find what’s most useful to look at. Ask: And what else (is the real challenge here for you)? Trust me, the person will have something. And there may be more.”


337. “WHEN THIS HAPPENS… After I’ve asked a question… INSTEAD OF… Adding another question. And then maybe another question, and then another, because after all, they’re all good questions and I’m really curious as to what their answers are… I WILL… Ask just one question. (And then be quiet while I wait for the answer.)”


338. “In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen shares a crucial insight: “You can’t do a project. You can only do the next step.”


339. “WHEN THIS HAPPENS… When I’ve got a question to ask… INSTEAD OF… Setting it up, framing it, explaining it, warming up to it and generally taking forever to get to the moment… I WILL… Ask the question. (And then shut up to listen to the answer.)”


340. “I put a dollar in a change machine. Nothing changed.”


341. “If you had to pick one of these to focus on, which one here would be the real challenge for you?”


342. “Peter Block, Flawless Consulting”


343. “The second bias, known as prospect theory, tells us that loss and gain are not measured equally. Losing $100, say, feels worse than gaining $100 feels good. One result of the bias is that once we’ve got something, not only do we not want to let it go, but we also tend to overvalue its worth. Asking the Strategy Question shines a light on what we’re holding on to, so we might better weigh up what’s worth keeping and what might need to be set free. Question”

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