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The Coaching Habit: Seven Questions to Be More Coach-Like

Seven questions that make you more useful than advice — and why they work

What are the seven questions in The Coaching Habit?

The Coaching Habit is Michael Bungay Stanier’s book built around seven questions: the Kickstart ("What’s on your mind?"), the AWE question ("And what else?"), the Focus question ("What’s the real challenge here for you?"), the Foundation question ("What do you want?"), the Lazy question ("How can I help?"), the Strategic question ("If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?"), and the Learning question ("What was most useful for you?"). Together they are a practical system for coaching conversations that takes less than a minute to learn and a career to master. The framework is practitioner-derived from behavioral coaching practice rather than from controlled trials; its mechanisms are grounded in autonomy support, self-determination, and the generation effect. The questions work because they shift the cognitive labor back to the person who owns the problem — you stay curious slightly longer, and rush to advice slightly less.

Most managers who want to coach more end up coaching less because they do not know what to say when they stop advising. The Coaching Habit answers that directly: Michael Bungay Stanier’s seven-question system gives you the words. The book’s core argument is that the obstacle is not willingness but reflex — the advice-monster answer arrives before the better question does — so the fix is a small, memorized set of questions you can reach for under pressure. Each question is designed to do specific work: to open the conversation without framing it (Kickstart), to exhaust the first answer (AWE), to surface the real issue rather than the first-stated one (Focus), to name the actual want (Foundation), to stop you assuming what help means (Lazy), to expose the trade-off a yes commits to (Strategic), and to embed the learning before the conversation ends (Learning). It is a practitioner framework, not a trialled protocol — worth knowing before you weigh it. Below are the seven questions as distinct practices, each with the mechanism behind it and an honest read on the evidence.

Practices

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Frequently asked questions

What are the seven questions in The Coaching Habit?

The Coaching Habit is Michael Bungay Stanier’s book built around seven questions: the Kickstart ("What’s on your mind?"), the AWE question ("And what else?"), the Focus question ("What’s the real challenge here for you?"), the Foundation question ("What do you want?"), the Lazy question ("How can I help?"), the Strategic question ("If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?"), and the Learning question ("What was most useful for you?"). Together they are a practical system for coaching conversations that takes less than a minute to learn and a career to master. The framework is practitioner-derived from behavioral coaching practice rather than from controlled trials; its mechanisms are grounded in autonomy support, self-determination, and the generation effect. The questions work because they shift the cognitive labor back to the person who owns the problem — you stay curious slightly longer, and rush to advice slightly less.

How do you open with "What’s on your mind?"?

"What’s on your mind?" has no built-in agenda. Unlike "How can I help?" or "What’s the problem?", it places no prior frame on the conversation and signals genuine openness. That openness reduces the social pressure to present a polished, manager-ready issue and invites what is actually preoccupying the person — which is usually the more important conversation. The absence of a frame is the frame.

How do you ask "And what else?"?

The first thing someone says is usually the most available answer, not the deepest one. "And what else?" (AWE) creates a second and third round of processing: the person has to reach past the obvious and often arrives at something more surprising or more accurate. It is also a signal of genuine curiosity — that you want their full thinking, not just enough to start advising. Repeated use conditions the other person to keep exploring rather than waiting for your response.

How do you ask "What’s the real challenge here for you?"?

People often present the problem that is easiest to articulate, not the one that is hardest to solve. Adding "for you" is critical — it personalizes the question and moves from the objective situation to the person’s actual experience of it. The subjective challenge (fear, uncertainty, interpersonal tension) is often where the real coaching leverage exists, while the stated challenge (the project, the deadline) is just the surface.

How do you ask "What do you want?"?

Many conversations circle around problems without naming what the person actually wants as an outcome. Asking "What do you want?" moves from problem-orientation to goal-orientation and activates approach motivation — focus on a desired end state — rather than avoidance motivation — focus on the problem. It also reveals whether what the person says they want matches what they actually want, which is frequently a productive discrepancy to explore.

How do you ask "How can I help?" instead of assuming?

Different people need different things at different moments: sometimes advice, sometimes listening, sometimes a resource, sometimes simply to be heard. When a manager assumes what help is needed — usually because advice is what the manager does best — they routinely provide the wrong kind of support. "How can I help?" is autonomy-supportive: it puts the person in charge of defining the support structure, which increases their ownership of the next step.

How do you ask "If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?"?

The instinct to say yes is often driven by the positive pull of the opportunity rather than a clear reckoning of what it costs. Making the implicit trade-off explicit — what does this crowd out? — activates a more complete evaluation. This is related to opportunity-cost thinking and to essentialism: every commitment displaces something else, and if you do not name the displacement, you end up overcommitted by default.

How do you close with "What was most useful for you?"?

Asking what was most useful at the end of a conversation activates retrieval practice: the person has to identify and articulate what they are taking away, which strengthens the encoding of that learning. It also shifts the evaluation from the manager’s assessment to the person’s — their answer reveals whether the conversation provided what they actually needed, which is more accurate feedback than a polite thank-you. Over time, the pattern of answers teaches you which kinds of coaching conversations actually help.