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Michael Bungay Stanier - #1 Coaching Expert | Why Smart People Give Terrible Advice · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  I've been playing in this world for many years now when I first got a taste of it
• 0:04
  when I was a teenager. I volunteered at my local crisis support helpline for kids. Your advice,
• 0:09
  my advice, is never as good as I think it is and it's often not the thing that is actually wanted
• 0:15
  in most interactions. Today's guest has changed the way leaders coach, mentor, and create impact.
• 0:20
  Michael Bungay-Stanier is the mine behind box of crayons, a global company that's taught
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  thousands to shift from being advice driven to curiosity led. Be the person who has the answer,
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  that's how you prove that you're the smart person, the good person, the valuable person.
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  Good advice has never been cheaper, faster, more accessible. We are kind of attached,
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  a good degree of our sense of importance in the world as to being the person who has the answer.
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  He wrote the coaching habit, a book that sold over a million copies and has now considered the
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  best-selling coaching book of this century. He's a Rhodes scholar, awarded Canadian coach of the year,
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  but his real gift isn't just the accolades, it's how he helps you ask better questions,
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  resist rushing into advice and find courage in the unknown. If you're attaching some sorts of
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  importance in the way you can be most helpful, the way you can add value, giving advice is probably
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  not the thing to be hanging your head on. Once you understand that this will be helpful for you
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  to be more coach-like, that's a good place to start. One of the challenges with coaching is there's
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  a lot of coaches in the world.
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  So Michael, I'm excited you're here. You've sold over a million copies of your book, The
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  Coaching Habit, which essentially tells people to stop doing the thing they love most,
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  giving advice. That's right. And you call people advice, giving maniacs. So tell me,
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  what made you realize that our desire to help might actually be hurting?
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  Yeah, you know, I've been playing in this world for many years now. When I first got a taste of it
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  when I was a teenager and I volunteered at my local crisis support helpline for kids. So you know,
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  young people ring up with with challenges and we got some basic training on how to deal with those
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  slightly, slightly scary phone calls. And one of the things I kept saying is like, first of all,
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  the first thing they're telling you is just the first thing. It's not the thing. So your job is
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  to stay present to them. Secondly, they're not actually looking for advice. I mean, sometimes they
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  might be, but almost never are they actually looking advice? They're looking to be seen. They're
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  looking to be heard. They're looking to be encouraged. They're looking for sympathy and empathy.
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  And it was it was an early seed. And as I've had a career and had a life, it's just become
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  increasingly obvious that your advice, my advice is never as good as I think it is. And it's
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  often not the thing that is actually wanted in most interactions. And you know, if you fast forward
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  to where we are in 2025, where we have amazing somewhat scary AI, which knows everything as far
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  as I can tell, good advice has never been cheaper, faster, more accessible. So if you're
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  attaching some sorts of importance in the way you can be most helpful or where you can add value,
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  the way that you can maintain your authority and your status, giving advice is probably not the
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  thing to be hanging your head on because that that if it was ever there, it's going away fast.
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  So building the muscle could be curious. Now that's something that's a little trickier and a
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  little more powerful. I think that is very tricky. I mean, I think the obvious question is why do
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  we default to something that really isn't that helpful? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's a couple of
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  levels to it. The first is we have been trained all our life to be good kids to have the answer.
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  I mean, you know, you're a six year old in school and the teacher goes, does anybody know and
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  every stick's their hand up going, it's me, me, me, pick me, pick me. And then we get a little
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  more cool when we're in high school, but we're still trying to pass tests and same if we go to
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  university, like there's this quest to say, be the person who has the answer. That's how you prove
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  that you're the smart person, the good person, the valuable person. So it's just to say, look, there's
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  a, we've had a lot of training to be told, you know, deliver the answer. But there's probably a
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  deeper level there as well. We kind of attach a good degree of our sense of importance in the world
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  as to being the person who has the answer. Now in one of my books, the advice trap, I talk about
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  the advice monster, the advice monster. As soon as somebody starts talking, it looms up out of the
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  dark and goes, oh, you're going to add some value here. Just just wait till you can interrupt and
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  start telling them stuff. And the advice monster actually has kind of three faces, three facets,
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  if you like, is the tell it, they're save it and there's control it. And these are kind of just
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  basically really core human drivers. So tell it is, you need to have all the answers. You need to
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  have all the answers to all the problems. If you don't, you're letting yourself down and you're
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  letting them down. Save it is, you need to protect everybody from everything. You need to make sure
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  that nobody has a hard time, a difficult time, has an unsure time. You need to make everybody as
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  absolutely safe as possible all the time. And control it is you need to control the world. You know,
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  you need to make sure nothing unusual unexpected happens is you need to fight off the future. You
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  need to keep your hands on the wheel. And of course, all of these are impossible. You can't
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  know everything. You can't save everybody. You can't control everything. But we've got deep
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  drivers and ways that those that believe has served us in the past. They keep showing up,
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  going, look, well, I know I should ask a question, but maybe I just tell them the stuff.
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  Maybe that will fix it faster. So first of all, I want you to just tell me for people that
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  sort of have ever wanted a mentor or a coach, what coaching should be? And why do they maybe get
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  this icky feeling about it? Why do we have to unweird coaching in the first place? Because people
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  are giving too much advice and not being curious enough, what's the issue with this industry?
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  Well, it's a big word that everybody's heard of and not everybody's entirely sure what it means
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  because it's actually changed and evolved over the years. So I think coaching does come with a
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  whole lot of baggage. I mean, first of all, it can show up and it can all sound a bit woo-woo and a
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  bit kind of like I'm wearing a caftan and I'm lighting incense and I'm going to talk about the
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  chakras and whatever else. And for a bunch of people, they're like, you know, there's a bunch of
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  people who go, I love that stuff. Bring it on. If that's what coaching is, I love that. But there's
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  a number of us and I'm one of them who are like, look, I'm not that much into the the woo-wooness of
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  it all. There's a second thing that baggage comes with is like, it's a bit of a black box. Like,
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  it's quite sure what we're what we're even talking about. Sometimes it's baggage because like I had a
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  really tough mean sports coach who just made me shout at it and made me do press ups and pushups
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  in the mud. So there's a whole bunch of this and they're like, well, what is coaching? What is
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  coaching? And I think there are two ways that coaching can be really helpful. There can be really
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  helpful in a formal sense, which is you bring somebody into your life, typically you're hiring
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  somebody and you're like, help yourself a problem. Help me move from A to B. And one of the
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  challenges with coaching is there's a lot of coaches in the world because there's no qualification.
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  Yeah, the barrier to entry is simply, can you say the phrase, I am a coach. If you can do that,
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  you can kind of say, I'm a coach now. So, you know, there's some really brilliant coaches out there,
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  but there's a certain amount of mediocrity in the profession. But if you get a great coach,
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  they can help you figure out this and figure out how you're getting in your own way and figure out
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  how to make progress on a project. And they figure out how to find a business model that will
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  scale your business or find a way of showing up to help you be a better parent. There's all sorts
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  of people who can say, I can help you solve a challenge. And if you can find a great coach,
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  that is really powerful. And that tends to be, you know, you show up on every on a regular basis,
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  you have a conversation with them and you're like, here's what I'm wrestling with. And they're like,
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  well, let me ask you some questions and let me teach you something and we can make some progress
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  on that. You know, I have coaches, I have a couple of coaches at the moment for different parts of
• 8:27
  the businesses that I run. But part of what I'm really trying to champion is this idea that we
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  can all be coach-like. Now, I don't want everybody who reads my book to become a coach. I mean,
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  if they do, okay, that's fine. But I'm like, look, if you interact with other human beings,
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  being more coach-like can be a helpful way of showing up because being more coach-like
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  stay curious a little bit longer, rush to action and advice, giving a little bit more slowly.
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  I'll probably say this another nine times during this conversation. Because actually,
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  if you show up and you're a parent and you're trying to raise your kids, staying curious
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  is a really powerful way of being with them. If you're a manager or a leader and you're trying
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  to grow your team, not just grow them in terms of they get stuff done, but grow their sense of
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  confidence and confidence and autonomy and self-sufficiency, then asking questions can be a
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  really powerful way of doing that. It's not the only way of leading. One of the, it's part of
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  the baggage that comes with coaching is like, what does this mean I can never tell anybody
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  anything ever again? Because I can only ask questions. I'm like, no, no, no. Like, advice is really
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  powerful and useful in its place. Just most of us just lean on it a little too heavily.
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  And it means that when as a leader of a business for instance, you do give guidance and you give
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  advice, it's more likely to be useful and to the point if you've actually asked some questions
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  beforehand. I love that. And I think that that's actually, you know, if like you mentioned,
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  coach means different things to different people. And I think that like my sort of layman
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  interpretation of what you're saying is coach is synonymous with good leader. That's the way
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  that I look at it. And the reason why I say that is probably that maybe there is a nuance or
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  a difference. But the reason I say that is because a good leader, whether or not you look at them,
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  like for example, as a coach, because I don't want to say that a manager in a company, they don't
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  have the formal title of coach, but a good manager or a good leader in a company is asking questions
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  and is delaying advice giving and is being very curious and is enabling and empowering and letting
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  people sort of come to their own conclusions. That's your definition of a coach. Yeah, you know,
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  so I'd say I mean, I'm basically agreeing with you, but the nuance for me is I think a good leader,
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  a good manager, a good parent is almost always using coaching techniques and coaching skills as
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  part of what they do. Because it's not the whole thing. It's not the whole thing in parenting or
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  leading or managing people, but it's a key part and it's typically an underutilized part.
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  I mean, there's a guy called Daniel Goldman, who he kind of made the idea of emotional intelligence
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  popular and 25 years ago, he wrote an article for Harvard Business Review. It's called the six
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  styles of leadership. And he said, look, there are actually six different styles of leadership. And
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  each one has pros and cons, risks and rewards. Each one is appropriate in certain contexts,
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  depending on what's required. And what was interesting is he said, look, most leaders use one or
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  two, maybe three of these different styles. Great leaders know how to use or six of these different
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  styles. Because if there's an emergency, if the house is burning down, you don't want to be going,
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  how do people feel about smoke? You know, that's not that's not useful. What you need is clear
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  direction if the house is burning down. So what's also interesting in that article and I don't think
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  much has changed is that coaching was one of the least utilized forms of leadership, even though
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  you could see direct impact, not just on culture, but actually on bottom line as well. It actually
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  drove strategy and culture. I would assume that's because people don't actually know what coaching is.
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  I think that that's the thing they they assume the coaching because you've mentioned like
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  when you rush to give advice within like the first 10 to 15 seconds that we are actually
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  diminishing the person that we're trying to help. But if I was going to ask somebody,
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  okay, what is your definition of coaching to be like, well, when somebody's screwing up,
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  I'm going to I'm going to give them advice. Well, that would be the immediate answer to what
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  coach is not exactly to do. Well, I mean, that's the I mean, that's that coaching is a slippery
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  word. I mean, that's basically it gets used in all sorts of different contexts. So, you know,
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  you're not alone in going, I'm just using coaching as an updated version of just telling people
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  what to do. And that's why I love this kind of core behavior thing, which is like, can you stay
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  curious a little bit longer? If you can do that, everything changes. So, what does that mean staying
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  curious a little bit longer? So, let's put it into a framework for people because again, this can
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  this this kind of coaching behavior, the way that we're describing it right now, this can be used
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  for an employer hiring if you're an entrepreneur, if you are leading a department in a business,
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  I know that there's a lot of crossover in like family life, how you how do you coach and raise
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  your kids. So, what is the what is like the framework to do this properly? Well, in the coaching
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  heaven book, I basically offer up seven questions. And I say, look, if you can integrate
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  seven of these questions or even just some of the seven questions into the way that you work,
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  that's going to help you stay curious a little bit longer. But the the framework probably starts
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  not with the questions, just but with an understanding and a and a belief that it's like this would
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  be helpful. This would be helpful if I was doing that because if you don't think it's helpful,
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  it doesn't matter how good the seven questions are, you're not going to you're not going to use them.
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  So, what I'm talking to people in businesses in particular, I say, look, there are three
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  vicious circles that managers and leaders, whether a small company or a big company that they
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  typically face. And these are the three vicious circles. The first is an overdependent team.
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  Like the more they come to you for advice, the more you give them advice, the more you give them
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  advice, the more they come to you for advice, the more they come to you. And you just get into the
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  thing where you're like, I mean, I hired some good people, but they've lost all capacity to do
• 14:26
  anything without running it past me. It's really annoying. And of course, they're saying, I like,
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  I was really looking forward to working with this person, but now I have to run everything through
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  this other person is really annoying and a real bottleneck and there's like control issues.
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  And an overdependent team is a team that is not performing because you become a bottleneck,
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  they've lost some of their confidence, they've lost some of their sense of autonomy and everybody's
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  paying a price for that. So that's the first vicious circle. The second vicious circle is just a
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  sense of overwhelm. You know, the more that ends up on your plate, the more you lose focus on the
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  key stuff, the more you lose focus on the key stuff, the more ends up on your plate. And before
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  you know it, you're like, okay, I've got emails dating back to 1983. I've got texts. I have an
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  answer. I'm going to think from somebody the other day going, I've got 15,543 unanswered emails in
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  my inbox. Oh my god. Exactly. I was like, I feel physically ill thinking about that. But I mean,
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  it's a pretty common state of affairs for most people that they're like, I'm never going to
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  get to the end of all the stuff I have to do. You know, you go to bed, you've got that slight
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  tremor of anxiety around, okay, I'm behind, I'm behind, it's like the white rabbit and
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  Alice in Wonderland. I'm late, I'm late, I'm behind, I'm behind. And then the third vicious circle
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  is a sense of disconnect. You know, like someone's sending stuff, it's like, you've lost the
• 15:51
  connection to the why of the work. You know, the less impact you have, the more you kind of resign
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  yourself to being a small cog in the wheel, machine, the more you resign yourself, the less impact
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  you have. And if you're listening and you're like, yeah, one or two or three of those resonate for me,
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  the reason you might be interested in being more coach like is it can help you break through
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  these three vicious circles. It can help you have a team that's less dependent. It can help
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  you and those around you feel less overwhelmed. And it can help you find connection to the work
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  that matters most. So you're going to have a purpose for the coaching before you actually do that.
• 16:30
  Well, I think that that also, I was just going to say that sounds, I mean, like for
• 16:33
  anybody who's even hired one person, that sounds like a good outcome. Like I think that we all
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  fall into these traps. Exactly. And believe me, I'm teaching this because I have to learn it.
• 16:43
  I still have to learn it annoyingly enough. So part of that's, and I mean, people, I don't know if
• 16:47
  everybody knows, but you built a coaching company and then you actually exited this company. So this,
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  you've had like frontline exposure to like the best and the worst coaching in the world. Look,
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  I've done, I've played all the roles. You know, I've been an employee. I've started a business.
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  I've run a business. I've exited a business. I've started another business. I've consistently
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  make all the mistakes, but it means that I've got some scars and some stories to tell around that.
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  So once you understand that a, this will be helpful for you to be more coach like, that's a,
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  that's a good place to start. Secondly, there's a, perhaps a, a deep promise about being more
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  coach like is to realize that when people are in conversation with you, partly they want a solution
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  to a problem, but partly they want to be seen and they want to be heard. They want to be seen
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  and heard as human beings. And when you're in advice giving maniac mode, you're actually kind of
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  like, I'm just going to process this stuff and get the work off my plate and get you out of my
• 17:52
  office or off my zoom screen. And there's a way that being curious a little bit longer is actually
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  about human and humanity and about connection as well. So just to say those things as framework,
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  and then we get and get into the seven questions. So I'm going to rattle through them really fast
• 18:09
  and start, why don't you tell me which one you want to double click on and we can go deep on it.
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  All right. So the kickstart question is what's on your mind? One of my beliefs about coaching is
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  that if you can't coach somebody in 10 minutes or less, you don't have time to coach, which means you
• 18:24
  just got to get into what the real stuff is as fast as possible. And what's on your mind accelerates
• 18:30
  you into that. Then there's the focus question. The focus question is, what's the real challenge
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  here for you? This is really powerful because most organizations and in life, people are really
• 18:41
  busy trying to solve the wrong problems. And if actually, if you are in business, if you realize
• 18:49
  that the most or one of the most profound changes and identity you can have is moving from the
• 18:55
  person who has fast ideas to the person who figures out what the real problem is, that changes
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  everything. The third question of seven is the best coaching question in the world. And that's
• 19:07
  what I say. And it's a really simple one and it's and what else? And what else? Because the first
• 19:12
  answer is never their only answer and it's really their best answer. But your advice monster doesn't
• 19:18
  want you to believe that. So and what else? Honestly, if you had just one question to the mix,
• 19:23
  this might be it. The fourth question, the foundation question is what do you want? It's really
• 19:29
  profound. It's a it's of all the seven questions. It's probably the hardest one to answer
• 19:34
  because what do you want? I mean, what do you really want? It's kind of existential in some ways.
• 19:40
  But if you can help people figure out what they want, you can help them actually have a foundation
• 19:45
  for action. The sixth question, fifth question, the strategic question. If I'm saying yes to this,
• 19:54
  what must I say no to? Right? If you I mean strategy is saying no to the stuff you want to say
• 20:00
  yes to. So that's a really powerful question. The seventh question is that they're helping question
• 20:05
  which is like, how can I help? I actually call it the lazy question because it sounds contradictory
• 20:12
  because it's like, wait, how can I help? I'm just asking for more work. But one of the things that
• 20:18
  makes us overwork and jump in and try and fix things is we think we know what that other person
• 20:24
  wants and needs from us. But actually one of the most powerful things you can do is just ask them,
• 20:28
  hey, how can I help? What do you want from me? And then the final question is the teaching question
• 20:34
  which is what was most useful or most valuable for you here? With the key inside being,
• 20:40
  your job as a leader, as a parent, as a teacher, as a manager is to help people get smarter.
• 20:45
  And you've got to know how people get smarter and it's not by telling them stuff annoyingly enough.
• 20:51
  It's actually by helping them have a moment to reflect on what just happened and have them extract
• 20:56
  the value from the moment. So that's a kind of rapid fire kind of skip through the seven questions.
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  Clary terms and conditions apply if your hiring indeed is all you need. I think the question that a
• 23:48
  lot of people may have is, okay, I have these seven questions locked and loaded for the next time
• 23:52
  somebody walks into my office. But how do I get somebody to feel comfortable enough to open up
• 23:58
  and be truthful? And actually, because you mentioned there's one question and what else,
• 24:05
  which reminds me of almost like the five whys, right? You ask why five times and you you get pass all
• 24:10
  these sort of cognitive walls that people put up, these mental blockers. But is there a practice
• 24:18
  or is maybe one of the questions meant to do that just to get people to be honest about their answers.
• 24:22
  So because they could just like bullshit and give you whatever they think that you want to hear,
• 24:27
  which is not going to help you at all. Well, it's a big question. Let me talk about the seven whys
• 24:32
  and what else first and then come because I think it'll lead to a more expanded answer.
• 24:40
  Like the seven whys is a really a classic discipline, particularly in kind of the strategic thing
• 24:46
  to try and find root cause of stuff. Yeah, but why this? But why this? But why this? Oh, okay,
• 24:50
  we've found the essence of what's going on. But I actually recommend most people, most of the time,
• 24:56
  don't ask why questions. Because as soon as I start saying, hey, Scott, why did you do this?
• 25:03
  It's very easy for that to sound like, hey, Scott, why the hell did you do this? Why on earth did you do
• 25:09
  this? It's very hard to get the tone of why questions, right? In a way that doesn't sound like
• 25:15
  you're pointing a finger at them in some way. And also, the why in most conversations is actually
• 25:23
  not that interesting. It's not that useful to actually making progress on the conversation.
• 25:28
  So most of those questions that you heard me list start with what? Because it's a little more
• 25:33
  open and exploratory and neutral as a word. Now, the bigger question is around, so how do you get
• 25:39
  people to trust you? How do you get people to actually open up? And the answer is, well,
• 25:45
  it doesn't just happen. You know, if you've had a two-year relationship where you've just been
• 25:49
  telling people what to do and they're like, oh, I just heard this amazing podcast. So what's on
• 25:53
  your mind? You can imagine them going, have you been on a course? Have you been on a conference?
• 25:59
  You've been listening to that podcast again, haven't you? So it's one of those things that takes
• 26:03
  time. But the first thing I would say is context matters. So it depends a little bit whether you've
• 26:11
  someone, somebody into your office for a coaching session or whether you're just in conversation with
• 26:16
  them. And I think that one of the most powerful ways of framing coaching is not that it's an
• 26:25
  occasional one-off formalized event, but that it's an everyday way of working with people. And
• 26:31
  every day way of showing up with people. Because there's no doubt that if I said, hey, Scott,
• 26:39
  I'd like you to come into my office in half an hour, I'm going to coach you. That's like a vaguely
• 26:44
  terrifying offer. What am I doing? What am I being coached on? That sounds like I'm being punished for
• 26:50
  something. I don't know how this coaching ballad, you know, blocky works. What's going on here?
• 26:56
  Whereas if we're testing conversation and I'm like, hey, Scott, it's a one-to-one. What's in your
• 27:00
  mind? How can I help? And that person will meet you where they're at. So it's actually quite hard
• 27:11
  to resist somebody with genuine curiosity showing up with a kind of like I'm here to be helpful.
• 27:17
  What's on your mind? How can I help? So what do you think the real challenge is here for you? There's
• 27:21
  a kind of genuine curiosity in that. That is quite seductive, quite hard to resist.
• 27:29
  And there are times where people are like, yeah, I see what you're doing. I'm not falling for
• 27:33
  your games. I'm not going to be answering your questions. And then there's a conversation to be
• 27:38
  head around. Well, look, this is the way I want to be managing now. I want to be leading with a
• 27:41
  bit more coaching. Or you can even say, look, it feels like we're a little bit stuck in this
• 27:47
  conversation. What does it take for us to go deeper and be more useful for it? And there may be
• 27:52
  other and you can actually just ask that. You can ask that. One of my thoughts, I've got three
• 27:56
  principles around coaching. Be lazy, be curious, be often. Being lazy is like stop trying to do their
• 28:03
  work for them and solve their problems for them. But also it includes when you don't know what's
• 28:07
  happening, ask them. All those things that are in your head. Why try and figure it out? Because
• 28:13
  A, you'll be wrong and B, you could get them to tell you what's actually going on as much as
• 28:18
  they can. Being curious means taming your advice monster and being often is directionized at any
• 28:23
  interaction can be a bit more coach-like. I mean, you know, as we finish this podcast or even right
• 28:28
  now to the people who are listening, we can say, look, you know, we've been talking for 20 minutes
• 28:33
  or something like that, maybe half an hour by now. And I'm like, so we've covered quite a lot
• 28:39
  in a short time because Scott's a great ask your questions. But as a listener, what's been most
• 28:44
  useful or most valuable for you so far? Like, what do you want to remember from this podcast? Because
• 28:49
  we've got another 30 minutes at least to go. What are you taking away from it so far? And the reason
• 28:56
  I'm doing that, Scott, is I'm trying to clear people's cash. So they've got more room for what's
• 29:05
  coming to them because at a certain point, people's brains get full. You're pouring water into a full
• 29:10
  glass. And so having a break about now and going, hey, what's been most useful? What's been most
• 29:15
  valuable? And people might go, oh, the definition of coaching was great or the seven questions were
• 29:20
  great or the thing about trust was great. But what it's done is it's kind of processed, rework,
• 29:26
  rewired the insight. And we're now opening up to a deeper conversation because I can have my
• 29:31
  own curiosity. But because you've worked with this framework for so long, I would actually ask
• 29:35
  out of the seven questions, which is the one that is not brought up or not asked enough that is
• 29:42
  probably the most powerful that you wish people would ask organically more when they're trying to coach
• 29:47
  and help somebody. All of the questions can really unlock something powerful. You know, the strategic
• 29:53
  question is, is underutilized because almost everybody has too much stuff going on. And the,
• 30:05
  and it is quite scary to say no to the stuff that you want to do. So there's something quite
• 30:12
  powerful in the particular, particularly if you're running businesses where you're like, oh,
• 30:15
  you know, maybe I'll just keep my options open. But strategy, what am I going to say no to? And if
• 30:20
  I'm going to say, if I'm going to say yes to this, if I'm going to be fully committed to this,
• 30:25
  what must I say no to to make that actually a decision with some oomph to it? But actually,
• 30:31
  I think the one that shifts behavior the most is simply the question, how can I help
• 30:39
  or a variation on that, which is like, what do you want from me? And I'll rewind a few steps
• 30:44
  just to explain why I'm saying that. There's a model of human dynamics that I love. It's called
• 30:51
  the carbon drama triangle. And it says that look, whenever things get dysfunctional, and of course
• 30:57
  in relationships, things always get dysfunctional eventually, three different roles play out.
• 31:02
  There's the victim, there's the persecutor, and there's the rescuer. So what I love about is
• 31:07
  you immediately know what these roles look like and sound like. You know, when somebody's playing
• 31:11
  the victim mode, a bit whiny, a bit complaining, a bit, oh, it's so hard, it's not fair.
• 31:17
  But there's a genius to the victim role is that they attract people trying to help them and fix
• 31:22
  them and save them. Then there's the persecutor mode. The persecutor mode, you know what that looks
• 31:27
  like? It's like the bullies, somebody shouting more subtly. It's like the micromanager kind of like,
• 31:33
  let me try, let me control everything. Basically, it's like, look, I'm good. I'm surrounded by
• 31:38
  turkeys. If anything breaks around here, it's because I've got idiots left right in the center.
• 31:42
  If anything works, it's because I've miraculously pulled something out of the fire.
• 31:47
  There's something that's great about playing the persecutor role, which is like, you feel better
• 31:51
  than everybody, you feel superior, you feel kind of like you're the best person there. But it's
• 31:58
  a lonely, overwhelmed place because nobody like you when the whipping stops, everybody goes home,
• 32:04
  and you feel like you have to do everybody's work for them because they're all useless.
• 32:08
  Just like with the victim, you know, for all of the, oh, this is great because everybody comes
• 32:12
  and rescues me, it's an utterly powerless place to be because you're like, I've got no control,
• 32:17
  no power, no influence. And then the third role is the rescuer, which I appreciate sounds better
• 32:24
  than the victim and the persecutor, but trust me, it's as equally as dysfunctional as the other two
• 32:30
  roles. And the rescuer is like, let me jump in, let me fix it, let me solve it, let me help,
• 32:34
  that does not fight, let me give it to me, I'll take it on. And the advantage of playing that role
• 32:39
  is it's quite controlling, you've got your fingers and everybody's pie, you feel helpful, you also
• 32:44
  feel like you're a martyr to the cause. Nobody appreciates how hard I work as I try and make everything
• 32:50
  work around here. But the price you pay is, you perpetuate the triangle because rescues create
• 32:58
  victims. Rescue is even great, but yeah, exactly. And also, you're like so busy doing everybody
• 33:04
  else's work, you know, you're exhausted, you're burned out, you never get to your own important work.
• 33:10
  So that's a helpful framework. I love it. And then if you ask that question, then it's shifting,
• 33:14
  it's so regardless of how dysfunctional this relationship is, it is shifting. If you want to be
• 33:20
  the rescuer, it just seems like a comfortable spot for people to fall into, it's not. So don't,
• 33:26
  don't buy the hype. So then shift, shift the, how can I help to something that's actually
• 33:32
  meaningful to the person as opposed to just, yeah, turning them into, I love that you're so fast
• 33:36
  because how can you help is a way of, it's a self-management question to control your rescuer
• 33:43
  tendencies because when I ask people, how, you know, of those three roles, which role do you
• 33:48
  identify with most? I've done this with lots of people. 90 to 95% of people will say,
• 33:55
  I identify as a rescuer, which I actually think is often the choice that a victim would make,
• 34:03
  but that's a whole other story. But if people go, look, I am a rescuer, that means I've got a tendency
• 34:10
  to jump in uninvited to try and fix things, then that question, how can I help or what you want
• 34:15
  for me is a way of slowing down the dynamic just enough so that you're not instantly pulled into the
• 34:22
  rescuer mode. And, you know, it comes with a key, key addition, which is when they tell you what
• 34:29
  they want, you don't have to say yes to it. You get to say yes, or you get to say no, or you get
• 34:36
  to say maybe, or you get to say not that, but I could do this instead. But it's like, at least you
• 34:42
  get to hear a clear request from them, and you get to decide what to do with that because if,
• 34:49
  at the heart of this is, how do we build adult to adult relationships in our workplaces
• 34:54
  and our lives? Well, what's an adult to adult relationship? It's being able to ask for what you want,
• 35:01
  knowing that the answer might be no, and being willing to negotiate the difference. And that's
• 35:06
  a true relationship. That's an, I call that an adult to adult relationship. And it turns out,
• 35:10
  as simple as it sounds, asking for what you want, knowing that the answer might be no,
• 35:14
  and negotiating the differences. They're all hard things to do. But if you can step into that,
• 35:20
  and asking that question, what do you want to, how can I help? Is part of the equation of that?
• 35:25
  You go through a framework. I've heard you speak about it before. It's, it's a, it's a philosopher's
• 35:31
  framework, Martin Boobers framework on I vow, and I it. And I think that this all comes in. I don't
• 35:38
  want to get too complicated on people who are listening, but I think this all comes down to
• 35:42
  building relationships with humans as opposed to like who they are as a human as opposed to
• 35:48
  just what their function is in the job or, or in life, right? And can you explain, can you explain
• 35:55
  that concept just at a very basic level and why it's important to use this concept to understand
• 35:59
  it for treating somebody like a human versus a job title? The greenie says, I only understand it at
• 36:04
  a very basic level. So that, that's the limit. And I'll be able to explain it, because me,
• 36:08
  a man who was a philosopher and a spiritualist, and I'm none of the above. But I think he just
• 36:14
  has this very simple, powerful, saying, look, your, your relationships just fall into two different
• 36:19
  categories. Many of them are, I it relationships, which is when, that other person is a bit
• 36:25
  objectified when you're trying to get something from them and you're trying to get something from
• 36:28
  you. And that's okay. But a more enlightened type of relationship is an I vow relationship,
• 36:37
  which is that sense of, you know, you feel seen, you both feel seen and you both feel heard and
• 36:42
  you feel present and you're both feel able to bring the best of who you are to that other person's
• 36:47
  presence. And, you know, it feels to me that that's, um, aspirational as much as, I don't know,
• 36:56
  43% of my relationships are I vow relationships. But we so often work in context, which kind of
• 37:04
  not just towards less humanity rather than more humanity. I mean, I think organizational work,
• 37:10
  you know, in many organizations that you can feel a little bit of a part of a cognitive machine,
• 37:15
  you know, there's a lot of transaction that is going on. And it's this very hard to forget your
• 37:20
  own and forget other people's humanity in the mix. And I think one of the, we touched on this
• 37:26
  right at the start, which is one of the, the, the less seen aspects of being more coach-like,
• 37:33
  staying curious a little bit longer is this sense of relational curiosity of connection to the other
• 37:39
  person. Is there, is there a way, because I think that, listen, we're talking about work, but I
• 37:43
  think that some people even in relationships, it starts to become transactional. And they forget
• 37:47
  the humanity when you've been married to somebody for 30 plus years. I'm not sure I'd go that far.
• 37:53
  I think even when you're in, I mean, because if I look at most of my relationships, most of the time,
• 37:59
  it's me aspiring to idol relationships, rather than me being in idol relationships. Even with
• 38:05
  my wife, who I love and, you know, it's been 30 pretty great years, there are times where I'm like,
• 38:13
  you know, snippy and this that and the other. And I'm like, is this an idol moment? It's not an
• 38:19
  idol moment. It's an it moment. So it feels as much as an orientation to say, keep remembering that
• 38:26
  that's what I'm trying to, what I'm trying to get to. And there's no doubt that some of these
• 38:31
  coaching techniques and leadership techniques, they work, they work just fine in, in IIT relationships.
• 38:38
  What I would notice is there are moments when you're coaching somebody or being more coach-like
• 38:43
  with them, the opportunity to kind of touch the eye thou becomes easier. Here comes a little,
• 38:49
  a little bit closer. You know, I get like, you know, one of the things that we talked about before
• 38:53
  we hit record was next year, 2026, the 10th anniversary of the coaching habit book. I'm really
• 39:00
  trying to figure out how to make it a better known resource for parents, particularly parents
• 39:05
  of teenagers because, you know, you want an IIT relationship? It's parents and teenagers. It's like
• 39:12
  teenagers, the brains are melting and they're, you know, they're like rebelling against everything
• 39:17
  and they're allergic to advice, even as they struggle with all the hard stuff that young people
• 39:22
  are up against and parents are like, what happened to my nice kid? You turned into this monster and,
• 39:27
  by the way, take my advice because I think you should, I know what you should be doing and it's like
• 39:32
  it's set up for this kind of tough, tough passage. And I get, I mean, and I don't even have kids
• 39:38
  of my own. Like these are the stories of their head. I'm happily child free, but cheering on all the
• 39:44
  parents. And I get emails regularly from parents saying, look, it turned out that me asking questions
• 39:50
  and then being quiet and being present and listening for an answer, they shifted something
• 39:55
  in the relationship. And you know, for a moment, perhaps it's just going a little closer to being
• 39:59
  an IITAL relationship with that kid. Talk about what transfer is over from these questions and
• 40:05
  sort of these frameworks into like a personal relationship. Maybe all of it does, but is there any
• 40:10
  nuance? Is there any way that you do it differently? Is there any way that you, because you can't be like,
• 40:14
  hey, come into my office to talk about our marriage? Talk about, or talk about, you know, the fact
• 40:21
  that you might be the end of your marriage. So what do you do differently? What do you do the same
• 40:26
  and carries over what doesn't? Well, I think the, what's the same is this principle, which is like,
• 40:33
  hey, can I stay curious about this person and what's going on? Can I resist the need to fix things?
• 40:40
  Because I mean, my best is this has been true for every single person listening to this podcast.
• 40:46
  You've had that moment when, you know, maybe the your spouse or your partner or that romantic
• 40:50
  person, you're like, well, maybe just a close friend, you're like, hey, this is what I'm up against.
• 40:54
  And they're like, oh, you know what you should do? And your heart sinks a little bit because you're
• 40:58
  like, you know, hey, I'm not really looking for advice. Be your advice is terrible. If I was looking
• 41:06
  for advice, it wasn't the advice you've just given me because this doesn't, doesn't feel helpful at
• 41:11
  all. And you know, often enough, people just want to have somebody listen to them and challenge
• 41:17
  them and provoke them. You know, there's a, there's a phrase I use and I think this works in all
• 41:23
  these relationships that you have that you can be more coach-like in, a way of showing up that
• 41:27
  is aspirational and it is this, it is fierce love. So the love part for me means I want the best
• 41:36
  for them. I want them to be the best version of who they are. You know, it's like part of,
• 41:41
  part of my role as your, as your husband, as your, your friend, as your boss, as your colleague,
• 41:49
  is to try and contribute to you being the best version of you. And a fierceness for me means
• 41:56
  a willingness to do and say what needs to be done as part of my commitment to that.
• 42:02
  And also a willingness to not do and not say the things that need to be not said and not done
• 42:08
  as part of my, my commitment to that. So a fierce love might manifest itself in you going,
• 42:15
  look, I'm going to ask the question and be present to whatever that person says and not correct
• 42:20
  them and not give them advice and not give them suggestions. Or it might be to say, hey, look,
• 42:27
  this is the pattern I'm noticing. Or it might be, and it doesn't feel like it's healthy or it might
• 42:32
  say, this is the impact your words have just had on me. And this is how I feel sad or angry or
• 42:38
  embarrassed or whatever it might be around that. Because there's like a fiercest to say, look, it's
• 42:42
  hard. This stuff is hard. But my commitment to that person being the best version of themselves
• 42:48
  and therefore me being the best version of myself with them. In other words, I vow relationships
• 42:53
  requires some of that. And if you've got that and you know that curiosity can take you a long
• 42:59
  way down the path for this, you can abandon the, I mean, the seven questions are great because they
• 43:04
  they work in many contexts. But actually it's that essence of stay curious, stay present,
• 43:11
  help them be seen, be heard, have a fierce heart and open love, fierce love. That works
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  to get your ticket today. For people that are adopting, they're listening to this. They want to
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  adopt this framework just so that they don't do things the wrong way. What is the number one thing
• 46:21
  that people screw up when they're trying to coach and they implement this framework? What do they
• 46:26
  do wrong? Well, I would, I would first of all invite people to say, look, you don't have to feel
• 46:31
  that you're coaching somebody. Just be more coach like with them. So as soon as you, as soon as
• 46:38
  you're coaching, you say, I'm coaching you, that can often come with that baggage we talked about
• 46:43
  right at the start, which is like, I'm trying to solve this. I'm trying to fix this. I'm trying
• 46:46
  to be valuable here. I'm trying to move you from A to B. And actually, more valuable is your presence
• 46:52
  and your curiosity in the conversation. So it's like, how do I be more coach like? And
• 47:02
  and so and you heard me say this before, but to say it again, which is like, so realize that you
• 47:06
  can be doing this all the time. You can be doing it at dinner around the table. You can be doing
• 47:11
  it as you drive them from A to B. You can do it on a walk together. This is a asking a question
• 47:16
  being present and listening to the answer. And I'd say if there's one thing that
• 47:23
  people could think about on and look at is like, just notice how fast you want to interrupt.
• 47:29
  And how fast do you want to offer ideas and opinions? I mean, there's a TED talk around this,
• 47:34
  a TEDx talk could have a 10 year advice monster where we get get into this a little bit if you want
• 47:39
  to kind of a, this is an aside spot. But my favorite comment on the TED on that TED video is I tried
• 47:47
  to watch this, but his trousers were too tight. So, you know, people can decide whether or not
• 47:54
  they want to risk seeing me in two tight trousers to kind of watch me talking about the advice monster.
• 48:00
  But it's like, that's why if you're going to pick a question, it might be M1 else. Or it might
• 48:05
  even just be silence because actually we're so keen to be helpful and so keen to add value and so
• 48:12
  keen to just feel like we're part of it. We just so often jump in with stuff that you don't
• 48:18
  actually need. You can just hold the space for them. I don't know. It's just landing. I mean,
• 48:24
  you know, I'm worried a little bit that I'm getting a bit too woo woo for people here. So,
• 48:28
  I'm wondering how it's landing for you. You know, it's so funny because you just mentioned,
• 48:33
  like you were concerned that it was sort of like a two of an esoteric woo woo idea. I think that
• 48:38
  actually just shows how conditioned we are as humans to just jump in and give like this hard
• 48:42
  tactical advice because like we're talking about we're talking about creating space for people
• 48:48
  to to to be curious to talk about things that are actually important to them. That's how you
• 48:55
  build relationships. That's how that's how you just become a better leader, a better coach,
• 48:58
  a better human being. That that shouldn't be that shouldn't be woo woo. That should be the default
• 49:04
  operating system for most people. However, it isn't. And you know, when I say,
• 49:08
  stay curious a little bit longer. I'm not saying for a week and a half. I mean, honestly,
• 49:12
  if I get people to stay curious for another 75 seconds, that would be that would be a great wind.
• 49:18
  And for the everybody who's listening who's going, yeah, but how do I give advice? I mean,
• 49:22
  what if I want to give advice? Well, first of all, there are sometimes when giving advice
• 49:26
  immediately is the right thing to do. Like when somebody comes and says, hey, Michael, where's the
• 49:31
  folder? We don't want to have a coaching conversation around that. I want to say, look, the
• 49:35
  folders over there and the cubicle over there go get it. So there's a place. But if you're like,
• 49:40
  I've got some ideas. I want to share them. When do I best share them? Let me give everybody a
• 49:47
  script so they can use this exact script. Scott comes to me and goes, hey, Michael, how do I?
• 49:53
  How do I become a better podcaster? Now, Scott's done a thousand shows for this podcast.
• 49:59
  I've been doing it for six years. I've been podcasting for 20 years. I haven't actually done a
• 50:04
  thousand shows yet, but I've been like I'm older than he is. I've got, no, no, 20 years is like,
• 50:08
  you're one of the OGs. I had a podcast before anything called podcast existed. When the word
• 50:14
  podcasting came along, I had to rename my show to call it for something, something podcast.
• 50:20
  So when Scott comes to me and says, Michael, how do I be a better podcaster? Trust me, I've got
• 50:24
  a bunch of ideas just based on this interview alone where I can tell you a thousand, thousand things.
• 50:30
  But that's not the way to do it. So here's what I would say. Scott comes to me and goes, how do I?
• 50:35
  I go, Scott, great question. I've got some ideas that I'm going to share my best ones with you.
• 50:39
  But before I tell you what I'm thinking, what ideas do you already have?
• 50:45
  And you see, I'm just hitting the ball back over the net saying, tell me what ideas you've
• 50:49
  already had because they always come with at least one idea. And Scott will give me his first
• 50:54
  idea. I'm like, that's great. I like it. What else could you do? And what else could you do?
• 50:58
  And what else could you do? You see how I'm just using the M1 else question here just to
• 51:01
  carry the comments, I'm just keeping the curiosity space open longer. And if I feel like the
• 51:07
  energy is winding down a little bit, I'll go, is there anything else? Is there anything else
• 51:13
  as a variation on M1 else? And it's kind of a, should I shut the door or should I leave it open
• 51:18
  a little longer? Is there anything else? And Scott might go, well, no, that's about it. I'm like,
• 51:23
  I love all of those. Let me give you a couple of ideas of my own that I think can add and build
• 51:29
  onto, onto your ideas. And then I'll share my advice. So why this script works so well? Is
• 51:36
  A, you stay lazy. You help them figure out their own ideas because what's miraculous is when you go
• 51:43
  what ideas have you already got and what else, they won't even realize that they've got those
• 51:47
  ideas. Saying them out loud, they're like, I had more ideas than I realized to solve this problem.
• 51:53
  Secondly, it shows you what ideas you already had that aren't worth sharing because they already
• 52:00
  had them. So you don't kind of repeat redundant or obvious ideas. You're actually figuring out
• 52:05
  what they already know. And thirdly, it means that when you do share your ideas at the end, A,
• 52:11
  you're sharing something new and better. And you're suddenly saying, yeah, I still got it.
• 52:16
  I still have a few things at my sleeve that you don't, you don't know. So you're kind of
• 52:20
  reminding them that you've got some value and some wisdom and some perspective and all of that.
• 52:25
  So it's a much faster accelerated way to get their ideas out on the table and go, these are all
• 52:31
  great. I love all of them. Here are a couple from me. Now of all those ideas, which ones are you
• 52:36
  most excited about? It also, if you're in a working relationship in particular where you're the boss,
• 52:45
  it gets over the, the boss's idea is always the best idea, phenomena. You know, what normally
• 52:50
  happens is like when the boss says, well, I have an idea. I think we should do this. Everybody
• 52:54
  goes, that's a really good idea. Let's, well, I'm writing it down because I think we should do
• 52:58
  the boss's idea. And you know, obviously the boss's idea is not always the best idea.
• 53:04
  We sort of gone through a lot of different questions that can help someone else, but I know that
• 53:08
  you also have a daily practice where you ask yourself questions. So again, the questions are the
• 53:14
  of success, happiness, fulfillment. What? Yeah. Yeah. I'm just like, I love a good question.
• 53:20
  Like I've been collecting them. I do too. Listen, this is the good questions that change my life
• 53:26
  on the podcast and on. But you have a daily practice where you ask yourself five questions.
• 53:32
  So three questions in the morning, two questions at night. So what are these questions? And why
• 53:38
  are they so important? Because I'm, listen, I'm not naive. I'm assuming that some of the questions
• 53:42
  that you ask yourself, they're also uncovering the same things you're trying to figure out,
• 53:46
  and other people. Yeah, exactly. So the three questions I, I, I journal in the morning, two, and
• 53:52
  you know, some people journal for, you know, half an hour, I journal for five minutes, maybe
• 53:57
  some days a bit more, some days a bit less. But it's a way of me just kind of grounding myself
• 54:02
  in the moment. So the first question is, what do you notice? And that's trying to make me a
• 54:09
  little bit more present too. It's just what's going on in my life. So what's in my head? What's
• 54:14
  out my window? What's in my heart? What am I feeling? Just kind of what's the swirl of thing that's
• 54:19
  going around? Because I'm, I'm a bit of a heady guy and I'm a bit of a kind of living in the
• 54:25
  future guy. And what do you notice is asking me to be present in the moment right here, right now?
• 54:33
  So that's the first question. The second question is one from the coaching habit book, which is
• 54:37
  what do you want? And I tell you what, this question annoys me every morning because it is a,
• 54:44
  it is a hard question to answer. Like it, I mean, you can answer it in a really superficial level,
• 54:49
  like I want my coffee, but really it's trying to, it's inviting you to go a little deeper because
• 54:55
  I want you, what do you want? You know, what do you want in your life? What do you want in this day?
• 54:58
  What do you want in this week? What do you want in this, whatever? And what I find is I'm having
• 55:03
  to answer that question kind of on a, on a, for me anyway, five times a week basis.
• 55:10
  When the, when the same answer is keep coming up, I'm like, I, I probably need to do something
• 55:14
  about this. And then the third question is what's the one thing? So I, I still live a life of
• 55:22
  perpetual over commitment. I'm like, I'm trying to get a bit better at it, but it's, it's a long journey.
• 55:29
  And so, you know, I'll rock up to a day and I'll have somewhere between 10 and 40 different
• 55:34
  tasks to do, which are completely disconnected from the fact that my calendar is fully booked with
• 55:41
  other stuff that I've committed to do. And I'm like, I suspend, I can't tell you how many hours
• 55:45
  of my life I've spent redating to do tasks and move it from three days ago to five days in the
• 55:52
  future, hoping with some magical thinking that I'll get it done. So what's the one thing to do?
• 55:58
  Is an encouragement to say, look, don't do 93 tasks and avoid the most important task. Do the one
• 56:07
  thing that will move your worthy goal, your great work, the thing that matters most you. If you only
• 56:12
  do one thing today, what's the one thing that matters most? So those are the three morning questions.
• 56:18
  And then there's a question designed for the evening. It turns out that I also answer yesterday's
• 56:24
  question in the morning when I'm doing that. But it is, what made today a good day?
• 56:30
  What made today a good day? And it's a kind of a gratitude question. You know, and I'm sure lots of
• 56:39
  people have heard that kind of gratitude is that silver bullet. If you can have a gratitude practice
• 56:44
  in general, your life is going to go to get better. And there are questions related to it. Like,
• 56:50
  what did I make progress on today? There's a book by a Harvard professor Tareza Ramabale
• 56:55
  called The Progress Principle. They said, look at work people feel good about work if they make
• 57:01
  regular daily progress on something that matters to them. So I was like, you could make it
• 57:08
  what progress did you make? But I wanted it to not just be about progress or productivity or
• 57:14
  efficiency. I'm like, of all the things that happen in the day, what are you celebrating? What are
• 57:19
  you grateful for? Because sometimes it's like, you know, the bin men came and I didn't think they
• 57:25
  were going to come. And it means that we're actually going to have trash cleared away. Or sometimes
• 57:29
  it's like, my wife baked a peach pie. I only get one peach pie a year. And it was it was yesterday.
• 57:36
  So that was what made yesterday a great day. And so that that point of reflection for the day.
• 57:43
  So if we talk about if we talk about sort of daily practices and the goal setting,
• 57:48
  something else that you you help people with, what is an actual goal or what is a worthy goal?
• 57:54
  Because I think that's something that I think eludes people a lot. They don't I've thought about
• 57:58
  this a lot actually. How many people just sort of meander through life. And they don't really even
• 58:04
  know whether doing the things they're doing. And I see it a lot with entrepreneurs who are just
• 58:09
  trying to build a company because that's what Instagram said they should do or they work a job
• 58:14
  because that's what their parents said they should do or their guidance counselor. So what is a
• 58:19
  worthy goal? How do we how do we quantify that? You're right. I mean, it's it's a bit of a
• 58:23
  mind field walking into this whole goal setting thing because there's there's a thousand things around
• 58:28
  it. Everything from a corporate level, we can start talking about okay hours and kind of all
• 58:32
  that sort of stuff. People have been talking about smart goals forever. Nobody can ever quite remember
• 58:38
  what smart stands for. They're like I think I can guess but there's like two or three or four
• 58:44
  options for every one of those letters. And I'm trying I'm talking about the bigger goals. They
• 58:50
  kind of the bigger game that you want to be playing. And it's rooted with an article I read from
• 58:56
  Kevin Kelly many years ago. In the context of something he causes death clock. So it's
• 59:02
  suddenly everything turns a bit dark here, which is like you can calculate statistically your
• 59:07
  date of death. It's like he gives a bunch of kind of actuary tables in a way of kind of like
• 59:12
  plugging in who you are, how old you are, how tall you are, how what your body mass indexes,
• 59:18
  a bunch of other things. And it will give you an estimated date of death. So for me, it's
• 59:24
  like 2037. I can't be right. That feels too soon.
• 59:32
  That's 12 years. Exactly. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's going to be longer
• 59:35
  than that because I'm in 57. I'm sure I'm alive into my 70s, but it doesn't matter. I forgot
• 59:39
  my date of death. But I thought it was really powerful as Kevin goes. After you've figured out
• 59:43
  your date of death, here's the thing to say, it takes about five years to do a major project,
• 59:49
  whether that's a book or a move or a family or something, something significant. Really,
• 59:54
  if you think of the whole thing, work in five block, five year blocks. And that felt really powerful
• 1:00:00
  because I know, looking at that, I was like, I've got about five big projects left in me.
• 1:00:06
  What are those five projects going to be? And that's what I've given the language in the book,
• 1:00:10
  how to begin worthy goals. It's like how do you do something that makes a difference? And so
• 1:00:15
  the three pillars of a worthy goal is it needs to be thrilling, important, and daunting.
• 1:00:21
  And I think this one might be useful for people. So thrilling means, does it actually light you up?
• 1:00:27
  Does it actually get you excited? Does it actually feel like it speaks to the values you have,
• 1:00:33
  the things that you care about? Does it make your pulse go a little faster? Does it make you rub your
• 1:00:38
  hands? You go, I'd be totally up for that. Because as you said, I think it's so true. So often,
• 1:00:45
  we inherit goals that we're like, oh, I should be doing this. But actually, there's no real thrill
• 1:00:51
  on that. There's just an obligation. So one of the tests of any goal you're setting yourself
• 1:00:56
  is, you know, on scale of one to seven, how thrilling is this for me? The second test for me,
• 1:01:02
  anyways, it's important, meaning it contributes to the world. It gives more to the world than it
• 1:01:08
  takes. Because like I'm all for people setting goals that are good for them. But for me, this world
• 1:01:16
  needs all the help it can get. And I'm trying to encourage people to take on goals that
• 1:01:21
  that make their world a better place. It doesn't have to, you know, you don't have to liberate
• 1:01:25
  India like Gandhi. It can be, you know, your family, it can be your neighborhood, it can be your
• 1:01:29
  work team, it can be your workplace, whatever your defining your world is. But it's like, does it
• 1:01:34
  add to the general good? And I do love that quote from Jacqueline Novigratz. She has a TED talk on
• 1:01:40
  this, which is like, can you give more to the world than you take? That feels like a really powerful
• 1:01:45
  place to stand. And then the third element is, is it daunting? In other words, is this going to
• 1:01:50
  stretch you and grow you? Is this going to take you to the edge of who you are today and crack that
• 1:01:56
  open so you can become the person you want to be tomorrow? You know, this is the, this is future you
• 1:02:03
  calling you. And so daunting is like, you know, I know kind of how to, I know how to take the first
• 1:02:08
  few steps on this, but I don't really know how to get to the end goal. And we have a, we have a
• 1:02:15
  little community called the conspiracy, which is people working on their worthy goals. It's like
• 1:02:19
  books, it's going back to universities, it's recalibating themselves as parents, it's
• 1:02:26
  building a home halfway house for a murdered son. There's all sorts of really powerful projects
• 1:02:32
  working on, but they've all got these different three drivers, which is it is thrilling for them.
• 1:02:38
  They care about it as a flame. It's important. It contributes to the world. And it's daunting. It
• 1:02:43
  is stretching them and growing them to make them the next best version of who they might be.
• 1:02:49
  There's a little bit, a little bit of like self coaching involved in this, to be honest,
• 1:02:55
  because you can, you can coach other people all day, but if you're not helping yourself sort of
• 1:02:58
  guide you and put you on the right path for your life, I mean, you're just going to, you're
• 1:03:03
  going to be wondering, so this is, this is about figuring out like really like, why are we here?
• 1:03:07
  What are we doing? What are we working on? It's, it's, it's, it's that really big question,
• 1:03:11
  why are we here? What am I doing? What is, what does a life of significance look like?
• 1:03:16
  And what can I do to have a little more of that significance? Because you know, there's a lot going
• 1:03:22
  on for everybody. There's ever got a lot on their plate. But somebody once said, you know,
• 1:03:28
  many of us live lives of quiet desperation and one of the ways to move beyond that is to start
• 1:03:34
  going, what's the worthy goal for me? You ask yourself these questions. How do you know when your
• 1:03:40
  answers are right and you should make it and you should take action on them? Oh, that's great.
• 1:03:45
  Well, what I, here's how I'd suggest you do it. First of all, I think it takes a number of
• 1:03:53
  drafts for you to get closer to what your worthy goal might be. So the first thing you put
• 1:03:58
  down is probably a great start and it's probably not your final answer. So one of the things
• 1:04:04
  that I suggest is like you keep going, how do I keep tweaking this to make it closer more resonant
• 1:04:10
  on thrilling, important daunting. But at a certain point, you're like, all right, this feels like it
• 1:04:15
  might be pretty good. And then you reach this moment where you're like, okay, I've declared this
• 1:04:21
  as a worthy goal. Do I do it or do I not do it? And what I suggest is that people look at both
• 1:04:30
  of those options because those are both two real options and ask yourself, what are the prizes
• 1:04:35
  and punishments of choosing this option? What are the prizes and punishments of not doing this?
• 1:04:42
  I mean, I've done a lot of work to define it, but what are the prizes and punishments if I didn't
• 1:04:45
  at the prize is that the status quo maintains the same. You know, you don't disrupt anything. You
• 1:04:51
  don't actually have people going, what the hell are you doing, Michael? Why are you doing this now?
• 1:04:56
  You risk very little. The punishment is pretty much the same. The status quo remains the same.
• 1:05:03
  You remain the same. No reason expectations of you shift. You continue on the plateau plateau that
• 1:05:10
  you're at. And then you look at the chance of doing it. What are the prizes and punishments of
• 1:05:16
  that? Well, the prizes are you become the next best version of you. You achieve this thing. You
• 1:05:23
  stretch and grow. You do things you don't even think you can do right now. The punishment is you
• 1:05:29
  fail. You know, that what's at risk is that this might not work. You might annoy people. You might
• 1:05:36
  be ostracized from your current community. This might cost you time and money and it may not get
• 1:05:41
  your result. There is risk involved in taking on a worthy goal. And you have to weigh up those
• 1:05:47
  prizes and punishments and go, I've looked at it as clearly as I can knowing that. What's the choice
• 1:05:54
  I want to make? And then once you make the choice, find your people to do it with because it's
• 1:06:01
  really hard to do this by yourself. So you need to find your, you need to find travelers with
• 1:06:06
  you, people who, who bring different energies, you know, you know, you need, you need, you know,
• 1:06:13
  this, this draws on kind of Native American wisdom and calling in the four energies. You know,
• 1:06:18
  you need warrior energy. You need healer energy. You need teacher energy. You need visionary energy.
• 1:06:24
  And you will have some of that yourself, but you need other people to help you with that. And
• 1:06:29
  whether it's a coach or whether it's a community or whether it's your friends, whatever it might be,
• 1:06:34
  start the journey knowing that whatever you think is your worthy goal is going to change and
• 1:06:39
  evolve and morph a little bit as you begin the journey because it's just your best guess for now.
• 1:06:43
  Of course, but you still have the caveat is you have to start. You're going to start. It's like
• 1:06:48
  classic heroes journey stuff, which is like, you know what? You hear the call. You have a choice.
• 1:06:54
  You cross over the threshold. Do you not cross over the threshold? As soon as you cross the
• 1:06:58
  threshold and the hero's journey, which of course is not a gender thing. It's a male, female,
• 1:07:03
  whatever, you are changed as the hero. You know, and the adventure continues. By the time you return,
• 1:07:09
  you'll be a different person. And the question is, do you answer the call? And to answer the call,
• 1:07:14
  you have to cross the threshold. I think that's the, I think that's the meaning of life at the end
• 1:07:19
  of the day. You're not supposed to, you're not supposed to, you will never die of the same person
• 1:07:23
  you were born. I hope you have to go on these. Exactly. Okay. You have how to begin the advice
• 1:07:29
  trap, the coaching habit, which has over a million copies sold. You have written other books on
• 1:07:34
  coaching and leadership. But next year is a 10 year anniversary of the coaching habit,
• 1:07:40
  which is first of all, congratulations. I'm still on my first book journey. So I'm going to
• 1:07:45
  probably ask you some, maybe some, maybe, maybe we'll do a coaching session another time on,
• 1:07:50
  on the podcast and on how to write a book. I've got opinions about that for sure. One of which is,
• 1:07:56
  you should almost certainly not write a book unless you really, really want to write a book.
• 1:08:01
  It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And it almost never works. I mean, like the coaching
• 1:08:05
  habit is an anomaly because not only has it sold more than a million copies, but I self-published it
• 1:08:10
  because they got turned down by a publisher. Yeah. Oh, bringing, bringing good stuff to the world
• 1:08:17
  is really wonderful, like you do with this podcast. Writing a book is just another channel for
• 1:08:22
  content. And it's worth thinking is the book the right format of all that. But that's for another
• 1:08:27
  time, perhaps. Maybe, maybe, maybe for your 10 year anniversary, you can talk about the life of
• 1:08:33
  a self-published object. That's not easy. I know how difficult that is. But my question was,
• 1:08:39
  was first of all, what can people look forward to for the 10 year anniversary? But also,
• 1:08:44
  so let's let's go through all listed all the things that I want you to drop for the audience.
• 1:08:48
  And then you can go through them because I want you to drop a website and social so people can
• 1:08:51
  go follow. It'll be in the show notes too. 10th year anniversary, what can people look forward to
• 1:08:56
  for the coaching habit? And then after you just give some people some information to where to go
• 1:09:02
  and what to look forward to, I want you to just give people one last sort of, just if they could
• 1:09:09
  only take away one thing from the coaching habit, the most important lesson, what would it be?
• 1:09:16
  Great. Okay, so next year is the 10 year anniversary of the coaching habit. I'm stoked about it.
• 1:09:22
  So it's a miracle that a book stays relevant for 10 years. So we're doing a hard back version,
• 1:09:28
  a funky kind of tweak on the cover design. I'm really interested in excited by the fact that it's
• 1:09:35
  going to become an illustrated book. So there's going to be kind of a graphic novel experience as
• 1:09:39
  you read through the book. And my friend, my friend Eric has designed this and it's just delightful.
• 1:09:45
  So that's going to be great. And I've also written a new chapter about it and I'll talk about
• 1:09:51
  what that is in just a minute. If you want more about me and the stuff I do, the kind of umbrella
• 1:09:57
  website is mbs.works. So mbs.works. And if you pursue the book tab, each of the books have like a
• 1:10:05
  ton of additional resources, video teaching and downloads and other bits and pieces and
• 1:10:10
  that's all free. So you're welcome to go and pillage any of the resources from the books.
• 1:10:15
  I'm on LinkedIn, an Instagram mbs underscore works at insta. That's the main other social I'm on.
• 1:10:25
  And you know, you perhaps is the thing to leave folks with Scott. When I was writing the
• 1:10:33
  the 10 year anniversary edition, I was writing a new chapter for I wanted to add a little bit new
• 1:10:38
  content. I didn't want to wreck it by doing a direct as kind of a book and make it worse.
• 1:10:43
  But I wanted to add a chapter. And in the end, the chapter, the new chapter is about the
• 1:10:48
  being of coaching. And we've touched on this a little bit. But one of the things that's become
• 1:10:53
  really clear to me over the last 10 years, which wasn't clear to me when I first wrote the
• 1:10:56
  book is a lot of this idea of coaching is showing up and staying curious longer and using the
• 1:11:02
  seven questions and all of that good stuff. But when you're in that type of conversation with
• 1:11:08
  somebody, you're role modeling away of being with that person, which is heart forward, heart
• 1:11:15
  centered, fierce love, curious, present. People remember the conversations with you really,
• 1:11:24
  not for the questions are asking them, but for the way you're showing up for them. So,
• 1:11:33
  we can get a little wrapped around the axel thinking about techniques of this stuff.
• 1:11:37
  But the real core for all of this work is how do you keep showing up as this best version of who
• 1:11:44
  you are generous and present with fierce love? The last question I like to ask, you've given a lot
• 1:11:50
  of advice. But if you could only pass on one piece of advice after all of your work and your
• 1:11:56
  life's work, if you only pass on one piece of advice to your kids, what would that piece of advice
• 1:12:00
  be and why? Here's what comes to me. Before you ask, before you tell people what you think,
• 1:12:08
  ask almost always, before I tell you, I'm just curious to know what do you think about this?
• 1:12:14
  And just always to hear their point of view first, because it is such a generous invitation,
• 1:12:21
  it gives you more context and understanding of what's going on, and it invites them into the spotlight
• 1:12:27
  to be the kind of the hero of the conversation.