After Reading The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier 10 Lessons I Learned About Asking Better Questions and Leading with Curiosity

After Reading The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier 10 Lessons I Learned About Asking Better Questions and Leading with Curiosity I've always considered myself someone who helps people. Whether it's with my students learning English, colleagues working through problems, or friends navigating tough decisions, I've been the person who jumps in with solutions. I thought that was what being helpful meant—having the answers and sharing them freely. Then I picked up Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit, and honestly, it felt like someone had quietly walked up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder to say, "Hey, you've been doing this all wrong." That sounds dramatic, I know. But there's something uncomfortable about realizing that your best intentions have sometimes created the opposite effect of what you wanted. Stanier's book isn't just about coaching in the formal sense—it's about how we interact with everyone in our lives, how we lead, how we listen, and most importantly, how we resist the urge to solve everyone's problems for them. The core message hit me right away. We think we're being helpful by giving advice, but what we're really doing is robbing people of the chance to think for themselves, to grow, to discover their own solutions. We create dependencies instead of capabilities. We become bottlenecks instead of enablers. And we exhaust ourselves in the process because everyone keeps coming back to us for answers instead of developing their own problem-solving muscles. Grab a copy of this book now!