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1-Page Summary of The Coaching Habit

Overview

When was the last time you helped someone else learn a new skill? How did it turn out? If you’re a manager, have you ever had to teach an employee something or help them complete an important task? If so, how did it go? On the other hand, if your boss isn’t good at teaching you skills and strategies that are necessary for completing your work effectively, then how do you feel about that situation?

Michael Bungay Stanier has news for you. The bad news is that most people aren’t very good at receiving or delivering coaching. In fact, according to a 2006 survey by the leadership development firm BlessingWhite, 73% of managers have had some form of training for effective coaching but only 23% thought it was effective. 10% said they were confused and less motivated after the training than before it occurred.

There are three vicious circles of bad coaching. First, the coach is unqualified. Second, he or she doesn’t have enough time to spend on each individual player. And third, the coach’s message isn’t clear and effective because it wasn’t created by the player him- or herself. There are essential questions for good coaching conversations such as: “What do you want?” “How can I help?” and “What would success look like?”. To be a better coach, you should build habits that stick with your players so they don’t abandon them before achieving their goals. The most important thing is to shift from telling others what to do to listening to their perspectives and ideas about how they can reach their goals themselves.

Three Vicious Circles of Bad Coaching

Circle 1: Creating overdependence

If you’re like most people, at some point, you’ve probably given up on teaching someone how to perform a task and just done it yourself. However, if you don’t empower your employees to solve problems themselves, they’ll become dependent on you. This vicious cycle starts with good intentions: managers roll up their sleeves and put in a lot of work into programs or projects rather than teach their team members to do the work themselves. Perhaps it’s easier for them to do the work themselves than teach others how to do it properly.

Circle 2: Getting overwhelmed

However, it can be a problem if you’re too invested in the project. If that happens, your team will depend on you to make all the decisions for them. That’s not good because if anything were to happen and you weren’t there (if you got sick or took vacation), then they would have no idea what to do next. It’s like when you had so much work piled up that your only option was to sit at your desk with your head down hoping people wouldn’t bother you because it was impossible for anyone else to take over those responsibilities.

Circle 3: Becoming disconnected

But that only works for so long. Every time you get a promotion, your workload will increase, and you’ll need to find better ways of managing it. Building a coaching habit helps you protect your focus, time, energy and resources by empowering others to optimize their contributions. As you get more overwhelmed with work, the less efficient and motivated you’ll be at doing pointless busywork that doesn’t really help anyone.

Your team members will also be more effective if you coach them. If they spend a significant amount of time compensating for your bad coaching, it’ll take away from the value and meaning of their work. It’s important to build a habit of coaching so that everyone can learn from their mistakes and appreciate the value in every task. This improves quality and makes everyone more effective at what they do.