Focus Magazine - Fall 2016 - 54

5 QUESTIONS Tim Sosbe 5 Questions With... Michael Bungay Stanier A s the founder and senior partner of Box of Crayons, Michael Bungay Stanier's professional mission has been to do good work, with projects as diverse as helping to develop business leaders and helping to stamp out malaria. Training and education have been big parts of both those projects. I recently spoke with Michael about his newest book, e Coaching Habit, and about how coaching can be the start of something big. Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit Tim Sosbe (TS): What makes coaching important for life sciences sales training? Michael Bungay Stanier (MBS): As someone who self-identifies as a facilitator and organizational development person rather than as a coach, I'm delighted there's a strong connection between great training and great coaching. It's about how adults truly learn. ey don't learn much when you tell them something. ey don't even learn much when they do something. ey learn best when they're figuring stuﬀ out for themselves. TS: How can trainers make coaching a habit for themselves and their learners? MBS: It's simple and it's diﬃcult. e first thing is to understand how to build a habit. We start with the three-part New Habit Formula: 1. When this happens ...(at's when you define the trigger, the context that sets oﬀ the old habit) 2. Instead of ...(at's when you articulate the old habit that's not serving you so well.) 3. I will ...(When you define a new habit you can complete in 60 seconds or less.) TS: What are the 7 essential questions for successful coaching? MBS: You can guess that there are many, many great questions to ask. However, in the new book I say there are just seven questions that are essential. Here they are: 1. e Kickstart Question: What's on your mind? 2. e AWE Question: And what else? 3. e Focus Question: What's the real challenge here for you? 4. e Foundation Question: What do you want? 5. e Lazy Question: How can I help? 6. e Strategic Question: What will you say No to? 7. e Learning Question: What was most useful? TS: Does coaching work better as an informal act versus a formal event? MBS: It certainly does if you're driving for behavior change. e metaphor we use is you want "drip irrigation" rather than the occasional "flash flood." We want people to understand that being more coach-like is something you can integrate into your everyday way of working, rather than making a big deal out of it every now and then. TS: How time-consuming is a coaching habit? MBS: Our strong belief is that if you can't coach in 10 minutes or less, then you just don't have time to coach. And in fact, the best possible outcome is that you get to work less hard and have more impact ... and who doesn't want that? ■ Tim Sosbe is editor of Focus magazine and editorial director for LTEN. Email Tim at tsosbe@L-TEN.org. 54 FOCUS | FALL 2016 | www.L-TEN.org http://www.L-TEN.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Focus Magazine - Fall 2016