26: Tame the Advice Monster with Michael Bungay Stanier

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In this podcast, I talk with peak performers to reverse engineer their most successful career. Pivots interview experts on what it takes to be agile in a rapidly evolving economy and open the kimono on what happens behind the scenes of my book and business. You can learn to capitalize on risk, fear and uncertainty as the doorways of opportunity. My promise is that you will leave every episode with practical tips, tools and tactics. For show notes from this episode, visit jennyblake Me Podcast.

If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Pivot Podcast. I am thrilled today to welcome a good friend and longtime mentor, Michael Bungay Stanier, to the show. Michael is the senior partner of Box of Crayons, a company that helps organizations do less good work and more great work, and today we have the honor of talking to him on his book launch day. He just launched a book called the Coaching say less, ask more and change the way you lead forever. We're going to talk about why this is a critical skill for everyone, not just coaches and managers, though certainly helpful for them as well. Michael has written a number of books, the best known of which are Do More Great Work and the Philanthropic project and Malaria. And he also does a lot of really fun training and blog videos. He has a podcast called the Great Work Podcast. He was the first Canadian Coach of the year and I would be remiss if I didn't embarrass him a little bit, but it's in his book bio, so Michael shares that he mastered stagecraft at law school when he appeared in a skit called Synchronized Nude Male Modeling, though his real success is becoming a Rhodes scholar and going to Oxford, or in doing those things, was meeting and marrying a Canadian woman who refuses to take him too seriously. Michael, welcome to the show, it is.

Awesome to be here. And as you say, it's book launch day. So I am not responsible for anything I say today because I'm in this state of complete depletion and exhaustion and exhilaration and I've been drinking tequila since 4am so who knows where this may go. I haven't been drinking tequila. Everything else is true though.

I know this is such an honor and I'm sure a whirlwind day. So thank you so much for being here.

Sure.

The part when I was preparing for this show, I laughed out loud. This morning when I was reading toward the back of the book, you say if this were a haiku rather than a book, it would read tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good as you think it is. And in saying that, that part of the goal of this book is to tame the advice monster that research shows, as you share in your book, that only 23% of people being coached, fewer than one in four thought that the coaching had a significant impact on their performance. And 10% even suggested the way they were getting coached was having a negative impact. So most people aren't getting effective coaching, nor are they coaching effectively. And as you and I, no, there's this tendency to default to the advice monster.

Right.

Why do people do that?

You know, it's a big question. I mean, in part, the simplest answer is, well, that's just the way they've been doing it for years. So it's a habit for them. But it can immediately get a little kind of juicier than that. But before we go there, let me just say one thing which is for everybody listening in, for some people, there's an immediate response about this whole word coaching which is like, ah, coaching. You know what, I'm just a normal person trying to get normal stuff done. So don't bother me with the whole touchy feely, Jenny Blake hugging everybody loving the world type of coaching stuff. And I'm like, here's how I want you to think about coaching. It is simply a little less advice and a little more curiosity. And it's not something for HR types and it's not something for life coachy types and it's not stuff for like Jenny and Michael types. It's just for everybody can be a little more coach like. And that's what we're talking about here. Really. Just how do we shift this behavior change from a little less advice giving and a little more curiosity? But to your point, Jenny, so why is that so hard? Because it sounds Easy. And of course, there's plenty of people who are kind of faking that change. This is what that sounds like. Have you thought of. Now, of course, that's not even a question. That's just advice with a question mark attached onto the end. Okay, it sounds slightly better, but it's still not real curiosity. So what we're talking about is trying to stay curious. And you've got this habit about giving advice that's probably even worse than you think. But here's where it gets really tricky. Here's why that behavior change can be harder than you might think when you're giving advice. Even though it's probably the wrong advice, even though it's probably advice that people aren't going to follow or aren't going to really understand, or aren't going to listen to that much. Even though all of that's true, it still feels pretty good to give advice because you're in control, right? You're the smart person in this conversation. You have the answer. You're controlling the conversation. It's not going to end in a weird way that you don't understand. You've got that kind of high status during that conversation. As soon as you ask a question, things get a little bit more ambiguous. You know, you immediately go, well, was that a good question? Was that the right question? Oh, wait, they've hesitated for more than half a second. Oh, I'm in real trouble now. Maybe they don't know the answer to this question. What if they give me an answer I don't understand? Or it's a crazy answ. I just don't know how to respond to the answer. So as soon as you ask a question, you're giving somebody else control of the conversation. You're giving them the power, you're giving them autonomy. Now that's brilliant for them. That's actually lifting their capacity, their autonomy, their sense of control and status and rank in the relationship. So you are serving them, but it is a less comfortable place for you to stand, to sit. So in some ways, asking a question becomes an act of servant leadership because you're willing to put them and their growth and maybe the organizational's growth in front of your immediate short term level of comfort.

There's so much great stuff in there. One you say in the book, even an intriguing, albeit difficult exercise is to watch yourself and see how often you get triggered into wanting to give advice. And you're right. And you say, even when every fiber of your body is twitching with a desire to fix it, solve it, offer A solution to it. And I think we've all had the experience of wanting to talk something through with a friend or family member or loved one or manager, and they start giving advice, and it's the worst feeling. It's just not helpful. But when. Sometimes when we're on the other side, we think, oh, I know what the issue is, I know what's going on for them. And the advice couched in a question yet, well, what if you. Well, don't you think that you.

Exactly. And to be clear, people are doing this from a place of good intentions. Like, I'm trying to be helpful. But, you know, so often being helpful is like in inverted commas, being helpful. You know, you're actually not being that helpful after all. It can be so much more effective just to ask the good question and then shut up and actually listen to the answer.

You share the paradox of being helpful from the book Helping. Can you explain what that is?

Yeah. So one of the great thinkers in this space is a guy called Edgar Schein. He was a former MIT professor. I think he's retired now. But in his book, which is called Helping, he points to this kind of the dynamic of helping, the paradox of it, and it's kind of entangled in this neuroscience. And it says, as soon as you start offering help to somebody, you put yourself one up, you level up one, you put them one level down. And in doing so, you immediately create resistance to the very help that you're trying to offer. And what's cool is that Shine's second book on this kind of topic actually offers a solution in its title. And that second book is called Humble Inquiry. So, of course, Humble Inquiry takes us right back to this concept of staying curious.

I love that your book is framed around seven specific queries. These are incredibly powerful questions, and they're very simple, really, when you boil it down. So can you share the kickstart question, which is the first one? And then I think a second corollary to that is the best coaching question in the world, and it's only three words long.

So I'll tell you this before I get to that question. When I did my own coach training about 15 years ago now, that's because I've suddenly become an old man. I don't know how that happen. You know that saying, inside every old person is a young person going, what the hell just happened to me? I'm kind of becoming that person. But anyway, so 15 years ago, I did my coach training, life coach training, and we learned models and instructors and stuff but as I watched the master trainers who were training us, it just became obvious to me that they had at their disposal really great questions. And I just wrote down questions. When I heard a good question, I wrote it down. And at the end of my training I'd have 500, not 500, maybe 100 really good questions. And it occurred to me that the heart of coaching is often less about models and structures and kind of things that are really about intellectual property and more about going, what are the questions that really seem to land? And my company Box of Crayons is all about practical coaching, training for busy managers. And so we're all about, okay, how do we make this stuff simple and accessible that anybody can go, I can do this and I can do it in just a few minutes a day. And what we found is, and what we focused on is going, let's take it down to the smallest number of questions that we can think of that if you have those questions in their back pocket, can make a real difference to their leadership and the way that they manage people. And hence, we came down with these seven core questions. And the first one is the kickstart question. And here's the thing. So our standard is this, if you can't coach somebody in 10 minutes or less, you do not have time to coach them. So if you think that's true, and most people, one of their barriers for coaching is they go, I don't have time for that stuff. I've got stuff to do. I don't have time to go into my Office for a 45 minute chit chat about life. I've got to get into stuff. And I go, I agree. So one of the barriers is about how do you get started in this? It's a little bit like, I think back to my dating days, which were massively unsuccessful, and that whole moment of like, okay, I'm trying to approach somebody in a bar because this is before online dating, which is how everybody does it now. And I'm like, okay, in a bar you've actually got to have a good opening line. I never had a good opening line because I was like, I can get through the opening line, I'm going to be fine. But I was like, that never happened. But it's the same with coaching a little bit. It's like, you need a good opening line to get into the real conversation fast. Because most people do small talk or chit chat or kind of, here's what we talked about last time. Let's revise and refresh, go through that again. The kickstart question is simply this, what's on your mind? What's on your mind and why? I think it's so great is that it's both an open question. You know, it really invites people to go, tell me, talk to me about whatever you're thinking about what you think is important to you, but you're not saying to them, tell me anything you're saying. Tell me the thing that's most exciting fighting for you or most anxiety provoking for you or most overwhelming for you at the moment. Go somewhere that matters. So what's on your mind? It's both open but narrowing and focusing in terms of getting into a more kind of focused, deeper conversation faster. Does that make sense so far, Jenny?

Yeah, absolutely. I love it. Because what's on your mind? There is a quality to that that is something's not solved. You know, something's on someone's mind because they're thinking deeply about it. And so I really love that as.

An opener or it's just the thing that's absorbing their system at the moment. If somebody's asking me what's on my mind at the moment, I go, it's my book launch. Now honestly, at this stage I'm not thinking deeply about it because I've lost the capacity to think about anything at this stage because my head's been blown. But it's the thing that's on my mind. So if somebody wanted a conversation about it, that's the place that the conversation would go and it would be the interesting place to go. So you asked about the second question in the book, the best coaching question in the world. And I love this question. And one of the things I love about it is it's the acronym because there's only three words in the question. The acronym spells awe. So it is literally an awesome question. So that's really cool. And the AWE people are wondering what AWE stands for is. They stands for and what else and what else. Now if you listen closely, Jenny, you can almost hear the little anticlimactic, oh, is that it? I thought it was the best coaching question in the world and it's and what else? Come on, is that all you've got? But here's why and what else works so well. The first is the understanding that the first answer somebody gives you is never the only answer and it's rarely the best answer. So one way for you to supercharge any question that you ask is to follow it up with and what else? So it's like, Michael, what's On your mind? Great. And what else is on your mind? Okay, is there anything else on your mind? Right, Michael, what's the real challenge here for you? Okay, what else is a real challenge here for you? Great. Is there anything else that's a real challenge here for you? Great. So you can see how it's just a way of kind of deepening the inquiry around any question. But the other genius part of and what else is that it is a self management tool. When we go right back to the start of this conversation with Jenny and me, we're talking about this twitchy desire we all have to leap in and start offering advice, offering opinions, giving up our solutions, giving up and sharing our ideas. And the behavior you're trying to embody here is actually to become a little lazier. I know that sounds a bit contradictory, but we're trying to set you to slow down, stop your rush to action so the other person gets the benefit of doing the work. And what else? As well as deepening the question forces you to shut up and listen rather than leap in and offer suggestions, solutions, your opinion, whatever it might be. So that's why I think and what else is just as good as it is.

I love it.

Yeah.

I was so happy to see it in the book because I do coach training for managers. I often when I'm talking, telling them the magic of asking what else? I draw a tree on the whiteboard and I say, when you ask someone a question, we're right here at the ground level. And if you just pause for a moment and don't think of your next brilliant question, which I think a lot of times newer coaches think I better ask really smart questions, really the best coaching questions. So we're at ground level with the tree. And then when you say what else? You get deeper into the root. What else? And what's important to you about that? What else? What else? And as the manager or coach, it can feel really repetitive, like there somehow have become a robot. But to the person on the other side, it's fascinating. And you'll see as you get deeper and deeper into the roots, their head might turn. They start really deeply thinking and it sparks something at the core of the issue.

And what's brilliant about that is that builds on research in the field of creativity to say the strongest way to develop new ideas is to pursue a line of thought so you're not just bouncing around all over the place. But it's like, okay, so what if we paint the room brown? Okay, and what else could we do? Oh, okay. So as well as brown, what if we added orange highlights to it? And it actually allows a kind of a more organic growth around how ideas are generated, which tend to build more and stronger ideas as well. So there's some good research and creativity that backs that up as well.

Part of what you mentioned earlier was getting comfortable with silence. And I think that can be challenging. What's challenging about that for people and what's important about doing that?

This is my attempt at a joke. Sorry about that.

What's difficult about silence? Well, I think it connects back to that piece around ambiguity, which is as soon as there's silence, you begin doubting yourself. You start going, you know what? I've asked a bad question. Or they didn't understand the question, or maybe I should ask the question again maybe three or four times just to make sure they heard what the question. Or maybe they're going to go in some weird direction I haven't even thought about. So now I'm feeling even more uptight about it. And there's that sense that if the space isn't being filled, it's dangerous, okay? Because it's that place of ambiguity. Now, there's a couple of things. One is when you ask a question.

That gap, that thinking gap, is often so much shorter than you think it is. It's like in your mind you're going, this has been stretching on for hours. And actually it's like, you know, one and a half seconds so far since they have asked the question.

The other two things to add to this, the first is if you ask a good question, one of the measures of success is that they don't have a fast answer to it. If they have a quick, glib answer, then this is probably ground that they've walked before. So it's less fertile if they're actually having to kind of think about it. And you've got that classic physical maneuver if you're in person with them, where they'll start looking up at the ceiling as they try and access their brain to figure out what's going on here. Then you know you're onto something. So actually, when you see them working like that, that's when you kind of sit back in your chair and feel smug about yourself because you're making them do the work. And the third point is just to say, you know, ever since Susan Cain's book on quiet came out, just to kind of really make the point, is to say there's a lot of people who natural style of thinking involve some internal reflection before they come up with the answer, the so called intro. So a big part of this is to say give those people the respect and dignity to be able to give them some time to figure out the answer to the question that you just asked them. So, so much of this stuff, Jenny, it is simple but difficult to ask questions. Well, because.

The actual discipline is straightforward when you think about it. It's like you ask a question, then you be quiet, you ask it only once. You listen to the answer, you digest the answer, you ask another good question based on the answer. I mean, that's it. So that sounds easy enough, but because all of those actions takes a certain degree of self awareness and self discipline not to do the other stuff, it's actually much harder than you think. But the people listening in, you've probably had the experience of somebody being really present with you, asking a really great question, being really attendant to the answer that's coming out. And you know what a powerful impact that can have.

In the book, you call it black belt active listening mode.

That's right.

I love that.

Yeah, well, I mean in part because there's a.

Lots of people have had some form of coach training, particularly if you're managers and leaders and working in an organization. And one of the things that people tend to remember from coach training is the whole active listening piece. But the trickiness is lots of people have developed a kind of really good ability to do fake active listening. So they go through all the motions. So what they do is they ask the question and then they tip their head to the side a little bit and put that kind of furrowed, interested and yet curious and yet concerned slightly look on their face and then they nod their head and then they make small grunting noises of encouragement and approval. So they're going through all the motions of what active listening look like, which is great. But of course in their own head they're going, I don't know. This is so boring, this story. When's he going to finish? Did I put the chicken out last night? I can't remember if I had to dethaw the chicken or not. And you know, I really need to go and see that movie. I haven't seen that yet. That's going to be fantastic. You've got this whole other story going on in your own head as opposed to what does it say to stay really present with the person and actually listen to what they're talking about.

One of the things you mention in the book too is in addition to that really present active listening, sticking to questions that start with what and I smiled at that too because I had a manager give me that feedback early on in my career as well.

Yeah.

What is important about doing that?

So you're going to be, why should we do that then?

Yeah, I know. I thought about it and then I was like, yeah, I'm not even the one launching a book. And that silence joke took me a minute.

I know, I know.

So I skipped the why joke.

Okay, good, good. Why? Okay, so it's not a hard. None of these rules are hard and fast. It's not like this is the only way you're allowed to do anything. And there's a place for asking questions that start with different words. But if you have a default habit to build questions that start with what I think are most powerful, and here's why. If you start questions with the word why, a couple of things are at risk here. The first is you have to get the tone just right or it sounds like you're kind of questioning the other person, you're interrogating the other person and it's very easy for the other person to become quite defensive. That's particularly true if there's any kind of power gap between, you know, if you report to me and I go, so why did you do that? That's going to sound like why the hell did you do that? So tone is really tricky and slippery when you're asking the why question. The other thing about a why question is this. When you're asking a why question, you're getting somebody to explain or justify or kind of tell the story as to how we got here in the first place. So the first thing is they probably already know this story. So for whose sake are you asking this question? And often you're asking it for your own sake because you're going, if I get some more data about what happened, then I'll be able to offer up the really smart solution. So one of the things about asking why questions is it can sound like you're coaching them because you're asking questions, but truly you're gathering data for your sake so you can be the smart person with the answer. It's not really serving them to ask a why question. Now there's a well known model called the ladder of inference where you ask why five times to get to the heart of a challenge. And that can be useful as well, for sure. But for day to day coaching, I think trying to avoid why is a really powerful thing to do. And then the other word is how. And how questions can be really powerful as well. But as soon as you're into a how question, you're into the action phase. How are you going to do this? How might you take it on? How would be the creative way of doing this? So they're much more kind of action driven. And.

If one of the behavior changes we have with this book is around a little less advice giving and a little more curiosity, the second one is fundamentally stop the rush to action. Stop the rush to getting things done. Because that's how organizations are wired. We're so busy, we're so overwhelmed, we're all like, if we're doing stuff, it must be right. So again, there's a place for how. But I think it's there mostly when you've explored the what questions and the real challenge becomes apparent, then you can move into the how questions.

So in a 10 minute quick power coaching session, what proportion would you dedicate toward that open curiosity versus then moving into the how?

Well, my bias is to say.

The practice that people should be trying out is 100% what questions, because honestly, there's so much ingrained behavior on moving to action that we have no problems about that being, that kind of being left behind. That's just going to keep showing up regardless. So for me, I'd say put your whole focus on staying curious using the what questions. And here's one of the kind of the benefits that you might get. Now, the third question in the book is called the focus question. And the focus question is what's the real challenge here for you? And it speaks a little bit to what we've just been talking about, Jenny and I, which is in most organizations, people are really busy solving the wrong problems. And just spending a few minutes staying curious about what's at the heart of the real challenge can make a real difference as to where you end up focusing. And if you're looking for the simplest of scripts, here's a four question script that you can use that will immediately make your questions more effective. Somebody comes into your office or your cubicle or calls you or pings you or something and goes blah, blah, blah, blah, my challenge, blah blah, blah. And you go, okay, understood. So what's the real challenge here for you? And they'll give you an answer and you go, great, what else is a challenge here for you? And they'll give you another answer and you're good. Okay, what else is a challenge here for you? Now they're working a bit harder, but they're going to give you another answer and then you're going to lean in. You're going to say, okay, so what's the real challenge here for you? And you're going to find yourself at a deeper level of the conversation and for almost everybody, you're going to find yourself with a different real challenge than when you started. So that's important for a couple of reasons. The first is it means that if you're offering ideas and solutions to the first challenge that showed up, you'd be solving the wrong problem. But here's the real benefit and bonus here. If you spend time getting to the heart of what the real challenge is, at least half the time, as soon as somebody gets that insight, oh, that's the real challenge. They actually know what to do. They don't need any advice around action and solutions. They know what to do. Their struggle has been not the action, but actually getting to the heart of the real challenge.

Even the other day I was talking to someone about email management, and you're absolutely right that at first brush, if that's where we stopped, she would have probably recommended some tools. Oh, you should try this tool or that tool. That wasn't the heart of the issue. The heart of the issue was my indecision or my overwhelm or something much deeper than a tool was going to fix. And you're absolutely right.

And here's what happened. And there's something in that way that question is written that makes a difference. So the focus question again, what's the real challenge here for you? So listen, as I build that up, you could ask, what's the challenge here? And if Jenny was talking about started off on productivity, she goes, I've got my email, I hate it, blah, blah, blah.

Then I go, so what's the real challenge? Okay, that immediately gets a little deeper into things. She's like, ah, you know, it's not about productivity. It's about I'm spending four hours a day on my email, even though I'm writing blog posts about avoid your email at all costs. Okay, so that's interesting. But then you go, what's the real challenge here for you? And the focus shifts from the thing to the person dealing with the thing. So it's no longer about Jenny's inbox. It's about Jenny and what she's up against. And that starts for greater insights about herself and about the situation. And that's where the real learning happens. So then it gets into a, you know.

I'm overwhelmed because I get constant requests for help and I'm not confident about saying no to people. So that is so different from how Do I manage an inbox? It's around, how do I create more personal boundaries so that I can clearly say yes and clearly say no to requests that come in? And it becomes a much more profound conversation. It becomes one that changes behavior, and it actually helps people elevate their game and lift the level at which they perform.

It's so true what you said, that I think sometimes there's a feeling of pressure. Oh, we have to solve this issue in the conversation. But just by framing it up as you just did, that then leads to the solution even outside of the coaching conversation, because that awareness itself is so powerful.

Right, right.

One of the things I thought was interesting is when you talk about, once the focus shifts to the person and not so much the surface level issues, the drama triangle tends to come in. Can you explain how that might enter a coaching conversation and how the coach or the person guiding the conversation can work around?

Yeah, I mean, I love the drama triangle.

When we run our live programs, it's probably one of the juiciest pieces that we teach because it really gets to.

Help people understand about why they would want to change their behavior and be more curious and offer less advice. Because, you know, I haven't made a really good case for it so far. I go, look, giving advice, it feels good. You feel in control. You feel like you're the boss, you feel like you're the smart person. Sure, your advice may not be very good and nobody will follow it, and it doesn't actually solve anything, but you feel good. Ask a question, it's like, oh, ambiguity, uncertainty, you're giving up control and power. So there's a whole bunch of people going, okay, Michael, you're making a really poor case of being more coach, like, so far. But the drama triangle, and this is one of the kind of the essential parts of the book, I think, starts unpacking some of that. So here's the quick background on the drama triangle. It's got its roots in something called transactional analysis, which is a slightly dated, 70s therapeutic model. And it gives us things like the adult to adult relationships and parent child relationships, which is quite interesting. It doesn't really work at all in organizational life. It's too therapy. But a guy called Stephen Kaufman came up with this drama triangle that says, look, when things get dysfunctional, three different roles play out. There's the victim, the persecutor, and the rescuer. Victim, persecutor, rescuer. Now, they're all equally dysfunctional as roles. But partly why I like this model so much is you kind of immediately get what the roles are about, you know, the victim. You can imagine what somebody playing the victim role is like. They're kind of whiny, complainy. It's not fair. My life's so hard. It's not my fault. There are advantages to playing that role. You feel you have no responsibility, you have no accountability. You attract people who try and help you. But you can also guess what the price is you pay for playing that role, which is it's a career limiting label to have you feel stuck, you feel powerless, you have no ability to shift yourself out of the situation.

The persecutor role, the classic bully is, you know, what that person's like, that shouty person, or more subtly, things like the micromanager. The advantages to playing that role, you feel better than anybody else, you feel superior, you feel like you're in control. But the disadvantages are pretty significant. You know, you're isolated, you're lonely, you're sad.

You don't trust anybody, and it means that you feel like you have to do everybody else's work for them. And then the third role is the rescuer role, which although it sounds slightly better than the others, don't be fooled. It's equally as dysfunctional as all of them. And the rescuer role, you know, it's about the, oh, I'll fix this. I'll take this on. I'll sort that out. Give it to me, hand it over to me. Don't worry about it. I'll just get it done. And the advantages are you feel in control. You feel like you've got your finger in every pie. You feel like you're important. You think that people like you. They don't, by the way. But you think you do. But the price you pay is really big. A, you don't get to do your own work because you're busy doing everybody else's work. B, you perpetuate the drama triangle. I mean, rescuers create victims, rescuers create persecutors. And, you know, it's exhausting and overwhelming. And, you know, we play all three of these roles all the time. As soon as things get dysfunctional, we can bounce around all three of these roles. But we do. I'm sorry, Jenny, I've got a. Just recovering from bronchitis, which is why I'm still coughing a bit.

We do tend to have a default role, which we play. Great. So everybody listening in goes, okay, I got the three roles. Persecuted victim, rescuer. Okay, now that you know that you're at a default role Just imagine in your mind or write it down if you'd like. What's the default role that you think you play most often? Everybody's writing it down and I'm going to read everybody's mind and everybody has written down rescuer.

And you know, that's not entirely true. I mean, generally when I ask a Group this, probably 90 to 95% of people self identify as a rescuer. And, and that's fine. Although I sometimes think that identifying as a rescuer is actually the act of a victim. But the key thing is that once you're in the drama triangle, once you're in rescuer mode, what you start finding out is your attempts to be helpful aren't helpful at all. What you're doing is you're perpetuating the drama triangle. You're exhausted, you're overwhelmed, you're burnt out. You don't seem to be having the impact you want to be with the advice and solutions that you're offering up. Actually, it's just deeply frustrating. And what's brilliant about this is that seeing the drama triangle gives you permission to stop trying to be so helpful to so many people. It allows you to back away from that. And one of the key ways to pull yourself out of the drama triangle is actually become much better at asking questions because curiosity immediately starts breaking down. The drama triangle, that's quite a lot. Jenny, did that all make sense or was it a bit overwhelming? Yeah, okay.

No, really helpful. It's fascinating. I'd heard of it before, but seeing it in your book in this context was very helpful and I think it can help position how both people are showing up in a conversation. And even just to have the awareness of these three roles is helpful in itself.

It is. Although the key thing to remember with this is the drama triangle is a self management tool. So it's not really about trying to fix other people because that never really works particularly well. And in fact, as soon as you go, oh, oh, that Jenny Blake, she is such a victim, I am going to absolutely let her know where she is in the drama triangle and explain that she's a victim. You can see you're just actually in the drama triangle again. Now you're in persecutor mode and whatever. So it's all about going.

If you're in the drama triangle, your behavior is reactive. And I know this is an important part of your philosophy journey around mindfulness. And.

What you want to do is get out of the drama triangle by being at choice in terms of how you respond and how you react. And that's the power of the drama triangle is it makes you more mindful about your behavior, it makes you more insightful about your role in a dysfunctional relationship, and it allows you to start shifting some of that.

Did they come up with a name for what they would call it, what the role is when it's a health relationship or conversation?

Well, Kapman didn't do that, but there's a book called the Power of Ted T E D and then with an asterisk after it by a guy called David Emerald. And what David does in that book is he actually proposes three alternative roles, the coach, the creator, and the challenger, as alternatives to the three drama triangle roles. Now, his model doesn't work quite as well because the drama triangle reacts to each other, so they kind of trigger each other as different roles. David's three roles, coach, challenger, creator, are more like doorways out of the drama triangle. They don't really have a kind of reactivity amongst themselves.

Shifting gears a little bit, after you talk about the drama triangle, one thing you say toward the end of the book is we should stop humble bragging about being good business and working smarter, not harder. And that also made me chuckle. How does that relate to these seven powerful questions?

Well, I mean, you know, I'm as guilty as anybody here. You know, I work hard, I work too hard.

You launched a new book today.

Exactly. They do say that you teach what you most need to learn. So I'm going to just keep talking about this stuff until I figure it out myself.

But I want people to work less hard and have more impact.

When you're in the drama triangle, you're working really hard, you're just not working in a really smart way, in a way that makes a difference. So with so much of this kind of connecting to the sense of being lazy, which is like, be lazy because that's going to serve you and it's going to serve the people you manage and lead and influence so that you can all be more focused on the stuff that matters, you can work less hard, and you can go home and have a life outside work.

That comes from the question, the strategic question, which is, if you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to? Establishing that is a really important part of this portion.

Well, that's totally true and thanks for making the connection because.

It'S funny. I've got this because I'm talking, I'm doing this at my stand up desk and we're having this conversation and in front of my stand up desk. I got all these little things to try and remind me to get better at saying.

I got this quote from Steve Jobs. Focus means saying no to the hundreds of other good ideas that are out there. And we call it the strategic question. Because in many ways, being strategic can be boiled down to how good are you at saying no to the stuff you really want to say yes to?

Because we're so overwhelmed.

A yes these days is almost worthless unless it comes with a strong no that supports it in some way. It's like.

Your commitment to doing something doesn't really ring true unless you're prepared to show me what you will give up to make this a real commitment rather than a token commitment. And that's hard because not only you're saying yes to a thing, you're saying you have to say no to people. It's not just no to, I'm not doing a thing, you're saying to this person. I'm saying no to you and the thing that you care about. And that is tricky and that is difficult. And actually, there's a nice kind of link back to the drama triangle, which is okay. So if you can feel your anxiety rising about that and going, wow, it's probably better if I just let that slide and I'll just see if I can get it done to help them out and I'll put my stuff on the. On the side and maybe I'll get to it. You can see, actually, there's a way you could see yourself in the drama triangle there. Both playing the rescuer. Oh, I won't make this harder for anybody. I'll just sacrifice myself and a degree of victimhood as well around that.

You're so right that sometimes it's hard to even recognize that by saying yes to this, I'm going to have to identify a no somewhere else. So it can be really slippery, this saying no thing. And. And then I was listening to a podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert, I'll add it in the show notes. And she said, I wish people would start being more honest about what saying no entails, which is that you might piss some people off. She said, I've had to say no a lot, and some people think I'm a bitch. And she's like, and that's a consequence. And it's not just what we see in productivity articles like say no, there are consequences to it. And it means that not everyone is going to like you or understand your no. And you have to learn to be okay with that.

Well, that's the choice you have which is what's more important for you to do something that matters to you or to be liked by everybody or to think you're liked by people who you don't even really know that well? I mean, I bet Elizabeth Gilbert has said no to a whole bunch of people who she's never met, who know nothing about her, who has no relationship with. So when they go, oh, she's a bitch, it's like, well, well, sure, whatever you want to call me. I don't really care. I've just got a real clarity about what matters to me. And we've all met people who have that degree of clarity. And it's so powerful because you're like, huh, okay, there we go. That's the really clear decision about why they can't do that. Well, I know when that happens to me because I ask people a lot and I get no's a lot.

I go, I appreciate the clarity of choice you have around that.

How do you say no to people.

Jenny, what you said. I try and focus on my truth of the moment and position it in a way that's just very as honest and direct as I can make it without apologizing too much for my choices. But similar to you, this is a muscle I have to continue building. And it's complex because, you know, anyone who listens to this show or reads my blog knows that I love systems and rules. And the tricky thing with no's is that when things fall in the gray area, that's where I get. That's where I get stuck. Of where I'm not sure, maybe I do kind of want to say yes. Or when it's not a clear no, that's where I run into trouble.

I mean, with the clear nos, I actually just have a standard phrase that I tend to use, which is to say I have to respectfully decline because of other commitments. Thanks for thinking of me.

I like that.

And I don't have to think too hard about it. It's become a habit. You know, just around. Here's my standard response.

The advantage I have around the kind of ambiguous stuff is that my team has basically forbid me to say yes to anything. So I have to then.

Well, I have to then go and talk to my team and make a case for it. And honestly, my team's a bit scary. So most of the time I go, it's not even worth it. I'll just say no to them. Because I'm like, I can't. Even if I can't make a case that would make a case for them or at least give me a chance. I'm like, it's not even worth the effort. So.

If you forbid, if you're not allowed to say yes yourself, you have to get permission to do. Can be a really nice little structure to help you have that discipline to not default to the yes.

I love that you have your own gatekeepers. It's a nice system of checks and balances too, that they are less emotionally involved or attached and so they can be more objective when evaluating these requests. And I like that you then have to make a case for the yes.

Yeah. Because, you know, I honestly, I would like everybody to love me and I'm like, I'm so weak. I'm so needy. What's wrong with me? And you know a bunch of people who I think don't like me very much because I've said no to them in one way or another. But.

You know, it's worth it to serve the bigger goal.

I agree and I think so many of us can relate. Michael, this has been incredibly helpful and I loved your book. I laughed out loud at so many different parts, as I did in this interview. Where can people find you and keep in touch and buy the book to help celebrate your life?

Well, thank you. So this week. So this is the week of February 29th. We've got some small specials running with the book. So TheCoachingHabit.com is the place to go for all of that. If you want to find out a little bit more about my company, BoxofCrayons Biz, B I Z or B I Z, depending on where you live in this world, there's a place to go for that. And if you're into social media, the two places I tend to hang out. One is LinkedIn, where I am in fact the only Michael Bungay stanier on the entire higher of LinkedIn or Twitter where I'm oxofcreons.

Amazing. When you close the book. I love how you say, the real secret sauce here is building a habit of curiosity. Find your own questions, find your own voice, and above all, build your own coaching habit.

That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah, I've forgotten I've finished it like that. But I'm like, yeah, I've just opened that paragraph. I'm like, nicely said, Michael. I like it.

That's right.

High five.

Dust off that shoulder.

High five.

It's awesome. And I think the message. There's so many great things from today's. But to implement your double loop learning, if I would it's that we can all listen deeply and that it's not about smart questions, it's about present listening. And actually, the more simple the questions, the more space we create for the other person. So, Michael, thank you again for this wonderful book and message and conversation. We really appreciate it and feel better.

Thank you Jenny. It's lovely to be here.

Sam.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. To learn more and get in touch, visit JennyBlake me where I blog about systems at the intersection of mind, body, and business. Or find me on Twitter ennyblake. And remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.