Bookworm · Mike Schmitz and Cory Hixson

244: The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

March 13, 2026·1 hr 26 min·5 clips

The kickstart question is just four words: 'What's on your mind?'

1. Bookworm hosts Mike and Cory review Michael Bungay Stanier's 2016 leadership book 'The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever.' 2. Mike and Cory co-host the show; Cory has applied the book previously while serving as an integrator managing multiple teams at a digital marketing agency, and Mike runs the 'Library' PKM community referenced throughout. 3. The core question the episode asks is whether Bungay Stanier's seven short coaching questions genuinely change how a manager leads, beyond just being a book with good advice. 4. Before the book segment, Mike recaps the New Media Summit in Austin, Texas, describing speaker Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle, and closing speaker Cody Sanchez of Main Street Millionaire and Contrarian Thinking. 5. Mike mentions a speaker who builds an AI clone of himself to avoid making short-form video, contrasted with other speakers who argued content can't be fully automated. 6. Mike discusses his in-progress 'FeedDeck' app, a chronological read-later timeline pulling from Mastodon, Bluesky, subscribed subreddits, YouTube channels, and RSS feeds, built around his Supernote Nomad e-reader. 7. Cory reports he attempted to read Thoreau's 'Walden' as a follow-up action item but found the 90-page first chapter unrewarding enough that he plans to abandon it. 8. Mike announces a new 'life theme' cohort starting April 6th inside his Library community, priced at the Pro tier's $49-a-month rate billed quarterly at $147. 9. Turning to the book, the hosts note it comes from Bungay Stanier's consulting firm Box of Crayons and is structured around seven questions plus an introduction and conclusion. 10. The kickstart question, 'What's on your mind?', is designed to skip past what the book calls the 'small talk tango,' the 'ossified agenda,' and the 'default diagnosis.' 11. The hosts distinguish 'coaching for performance' (fixing a specific problem) from 'coaching for development' (creating a growth opportunity), plus Bungay Stanier's 'three P's' model of projects, people, and patterns. 12. The AWE question, 'And what else?', is framed as forcing more options before settling into problem-solving mode, since Cory notes first choices have a failure rate over 50 percent. 13. Mike says he plans to use the AWE question in new one-on-one and 'hot seat' coaching sessions he is launching inside the Library's Pro tier. 14. The focus question, 'What's the real challenge for you?', addresses what the book calls the 'coaching ghost,' where a coachee vents about a third party instead of their own issue. 15. Cory highlights that adding the two words 'for you' to that question is what turns a generic complaint into an actionable, person-specific answer. 16. The hosts start the foundation question, 'What do you want?', framing it around an 'adult-to-adult' relationship where a request can honestly be answered 'no.' 17. Both hosts keep noting that the book's cookie-cutter chapter structure, though repetitive, makes it fast to read and easy to apply one question at a time. 18. The format is a relaxed, back-and-forth two-host discussion mixing book analysis with personal application stories and side updates on Mike's tools and community. 19. Fits managers, coaches, and PKM or productivity listeners who want concrete questions to try in real conversations. 20. Skippable for listeners uninterested in business-coaching frameworks or tangents about apps, Obsidian, and PKM communities.

As heard by us

A clear, practical look at how one question can keep problem-solving focused on the real challenge.

Bookworm's review of The Coaching Habit centers on a useful discipline: ask the coaching question before rushing into the fix. The hosts focus on the book's third chapter and its key prompt, "What's the real challenge for you?" From there, the discussion follows how one…

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Want one coaching question that helps keep a pile of problems from taking over the conversation?

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