Something to readWorking with your manager
The Coaching Habit
A short book of seven questions for managers who reach for advice too fast
Why it’s worth your time
Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit is for the moment someone brings you a problem and you're tempted to solve it on the spot, which can leave you doing their thinking while they do less of it. Bungay Stanier, who has trained thousands of managers in everyday coaching skills, boils the alternative down to seven questions.
How to coach instead of giving advice
The book · About 3 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Read the seven questions.
The book is built around seven questions. Give the second, and what else, extra attention.
- Use the first two in your next one-on-one.
Open with: what's on your mind? When they answer, ask: and what else? Ask it at least twice before you offer a view. If they ask for advice, ask what kind of help they're looking for first.
Good moments for this: at the start of a one-on-onewhen someone on your team brings you a problemwhen you're asked to take on one more thing
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Bungay Stanier writes for managers and their teams, and the questions work with peers or with your own manager. Asking what the real challenge is for someone, before offering help, can change how a routine status meeting goes.
What might make this harder
Count to five before you fill it. Bungay Stanier's approach depends on letting the other person do the thinking, and the pause is often where it happens.
Questions people ask
What are the seven questions in The Coaching Habit?
The Kickstart Question asks what's on your mind. The AWE Question is and what else? The Focus Question asks what the real challenge is for the other person, the Foundation Question asks what they want, and the Lazy Question asks how you can help. The Strategic Question asks what a yes would mean saying no to, and the Learning Question asks what was most useful.
What is the AWE question?
And what else? Bungay Stanier's case for it is that it draws out more options, keeps you from jumping in with advice, and buys you time to think.
Is The Coaching Habit worth reading?
That depends on what you want from it. The questions themselves are easy to try before you commit to the whole book.
What it says, and how it holds up
A good question, in Bungay Stanier's view, often does more than good advice. Part of his reasoning is about memory: advice you hand someone tends to fade, while an answer they work out themselves is more likely to stick. Part is about time. A manager who solves every problem brought to them ends up doing the team's thinking and running short of hours, and the people bringing the problems learn less.
The questions are meant for ordinary conversations, a regular and informal part of the day, and they came out of years of training managers, more than 10,000 by his publisher's count. A few small tactics come with them. He suggests asking what instead of why, since why can sound like an accusation. Use the Strategic Question when someone wants a yes, so you know what the yes would cost. And close with the Learning Question, which asks the other person to name what helped and gives you a read on whether the conversation did.
When the issue is performance that keeps slipping, or behavior that's hurting the team, questions alone can be too soft. The person usually needs to hear clearly what isn't working and what's expected. Bungay Stanier's questions can open that conversation; they can't stand in for it. Kim Scott's Radical Candor is the obvious next read for saying it clearly and kindly.
Yevgeniy Brikman's verdict, in a review, was that it would have made a better blog post: valuable ideas, padded with business writing and repeated invitations to the author's site. If he's right, you can start with the seven questions and decide later whether the rest is worth your time.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.