In The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier distills the essence of effective coaching into a practical, engaging, and deceptively simple framework that empowers leaders to unlock their team’s potential—without turning every interaction into a formal coaching session.

The gist of the book is that great coaching is about asking the right questions and NOT giving advice. What’s the adage? Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Here are seven powerful questions to ask:

  1. The Kickstart Question – “What’s on your mind?”
  2. The AWE Question – “And what else?”
  3. The Focus Question – “What’s the real challenge here for you?”
  4. The Foundation Question – “What do you want?”
  5. The Lazy Question – “How can I help?”
  6. The Strategic Question – “If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”
  7. The Learning Question – “What was most useful for you?”

Each chapter explores a single question through humor, real-life scenarios, and research backed by neuroscience. The author intersperses “habit-building” techniques to help readers apply what they’ve learned and, most importantly, make coaching a habit rather than an occasional event.

What sets this book apart is its practicality. It doesn’t just inspire you to be a better coach—it equips you with the tools to do it right now. You don’t need to schedule a coaching session to start applying these questions; you can use them in the next conversation you have with a colleague, friend, client, or even a family member.

That said, The Coaching Habit isn’t a comprehensive manual on coaching theory, nor does it delve into complex psychological models. Instead, it’s a compact, high-impact guide designed to help you escape the advice-giving trap and cultivate the habit of curiosity to help others move ahead, sometimes just to get unstuck.

I found The Coaching Habit to be an indispensable tool for fostering meaningful conversations, promoting deeper reflection, and cultivating more autonomous and capable teams. Simple and highly actionable—just what modern leadership needs.