The Five Question Leader with Michael Bungay Stanier & Alex Osterwalder

Put down 1, 2, or 3, or you can write out the whole thing. I don't mind. The choice is yours. But Alan, as you think about how you're showing up with Strategizer at the moment, with the book launch coming, working remotely with the whole world topsy turvy right now, which of which of the three vicious circles feels most real for you right now?

Number two, 100%. As far as people in the chat. I'm watching the chat.

Yep.

Looks like a lot of people are saying number two. Number three. A couple people on one, but a lot of twos and a couple of threes.

Yeah. You know, experience Tendai also on the.

Call, he says 2.

Say it again, Alan.

Tendai Strategizer team members. He also says two. He's.

Yeah. You know, experience has taught me that two is the one that resonates for almost everybody. There's almost nobody these days who goes, you know, Friday afternoons, you know, I just play a game of Tetris to fill up the hours because I just got nothing else to do. No, Just play around. You're like, no. We've all got that constant sense of, there's incoming. There's always incoming. Here's what I also know to be true. Most people listening here kind of go, you know, honestly, I recognize all three of those vicious circles. They're all there in some part of my life. Even if you don't lead a team and you're just an independent contributor or just part of a bigger team, there's still a way that your team can be overly dependent on who you are and how you show up. So you're thinking to yourself, or these three vicious circles. I feel them, Michael. And I'm like, that's great. I'm glad you feel them. I'm glad you recognize them. Because these questions, these five questions will help you break the three vicious circles. And if you're thinking to yourself, I wouldn't mind less over dependent team, less overwhelm, less disconnect from the work that matters. I can help you. That's what these questions are all about. So I know you're thinking to yourself, all right, I was kind of interested before, but now I'm really interested. Show me the questions, Michael. And I'm like, you know, I'm excited to show you these questions, but not yet, because they're coming. They're coming. But before I show you the questions, I got something else to share with you. And actually, Ellen, it connects to that first book you talked about, the Do More Great workbook. Because I want to talk about three different types of work that show up. Three different types of work that show up. This is just a useful productivity tool, Focus tool. And there's a reason I'm showing you this, which I'll talk about in just a little bit. So three different works that show up. I'll give you the names of them right now. There's bad work, there's good work and there's great work. Bad work, good work and great work. Somebody once said all models are wrong, but some are useful. So what I've got for you here is a wrong but useful model. And I'm going to go through them one by one and you're going to see how it all works together. So the first thing is bad work. And before I tell you what I think bad work is, I want to see in the chat box what you think I'm talking about when I say bad work. So three types of work, your whole life is made up of those three different types of work. Bad, good and great. What do you think I'm talking about when I say bad work? Let's see your input in the chat box. I love all the input that's flowing in there. I can't read it, but I can see the number ticking up.

So that's okay. I'm going to read some off. Bad work. Low value, inefficient, PowerPoint, useless work reports, very specific. Something that's not your best effort. An interesting approach there. Low quality work. Anything that's job half done. Low value equals bad work. Bad work is something that's done with no care. Yeah, not moving the needle. You know, someone shared make work, low impact work.

All right, let me interrupt because you know what, people are on the right path here and I love that. I'm going to give you a blunter definition because you know, honestly you're being a bit polite at the moment. So let me give you the blunt definition of what bad work is. Bad work is the mind numbing, so soul sucking life crushing work that makes you want to pick up a pen and stab yourself in the eye. It's at work where you go, this is my one and precious life and I am doing this. What the hell happened here? So it's the meetings you go to where you come out going, well, that's two hours of my life I am never getting back again. You know, and I was even running that meeting. It's the email that is overwhelming. It's the processes that you follow. It's all that stuff where you go this is the bureaucracy that is slowly killing me. And I want to give you an easy way to remember bad work. Here it comes. It's that. Now, here's a question for the chat box. Who knows what type of animal that is? What are your guesses? What's coming through? Alan, what are you seeing?

A lot of people seem to think that's a wombat, and then they are right. Wombat or polar bear. One or the other.

Yeah. It's a pole. It's a polar bear with a suntan. Yeah. It's not a polar bear. It is in fact a wombat. There's a reason I'm showing you. There's two reasons I'm showing you a wombat. The first is, I am Australian and when travel is allowed again, I need you to book a ticket to go visit Australia because the weather's awesome, the men are very good looking and intelligent and charismatic. The wine is fantastic. But that's not really the reason I'm showing a wombat. I want to show you because it's an acronym that I think you'll find useful. A wombat stands for a waste of money, bandwidth and time. And that is not a terrible definition of what bad work is. So good, you got bad work. So mind numbing, soul sucking bureaucracy. Let's talk about good work. What do you think I'm talking about when I say good work? Bad, good and great. How would you define good work for me? Let's see it in the chat box. I know you guys are a smart group, I want to know what you think good work is. And Alan, what are you seeing rolling through there? What are people thinking about good work?

We've got something that's inspirational, gets the job done. Productive, enjoyable value creating, operating within your skill set, finding solutions.

So I'm going to say that people are totally on the right path here, which I love. It is absolutely about getting the job done, operating within your skill set. The best snappiest definition I've come up for good work is it is your job description. It is productive, it is efficient, it's getting things done. But I know, because you are the strategizer fans here, you know the seductive danger of good work because good work just keeps you on the tracks. It's comfortable, it's familiar. I know you're busy, I know you're overwhelmed, I know you're slightly stressed. But when you're doing good work, you are not stepping out to the edge of who you are and, and who you can be. You're not testing new Business ideas. You're not developing an invincible company. You're kind of in a comfortable groove. It's like somebody once called it a mink hole. So a mink hole is like a rat hole, but more comfortable. So you're going through the same kind of familiar stuff. So that's good work. Let's talk about the final definition of great work. So if bad work is mind numbing, soul sucking bureaucracy and good work is your job description, what do you think I'm talking about when I say great work? What do you think that is? Let's see your answers in the chat box.

Yeah. And just to remind people there's a difference between the chat box and the Q and A. Share your questions for the end and vote up other people's in the Q and A. Answer Michael questions in the chat box. There's one that says chat and one that says Q and A. Perfect. They look pretty different.

And what are we seeing? Alan, what do you think? How are people talking about great work?

Momentum, flow, inspiring, purpose, changing the game, growing, setting the bar for themselves. Work that they'll remember. Something that's transformational, purposeful, really beautiful word there. Great work is. Wow, that's a nice one.

I like it.

Something that improves the planet. Pretty inspirational there. We don't feel like it's work from Jean Noel as an example. Are they on the right track?

I always go, it's the work you do for free. And then I go, but not for that long. You'd want to get paid eventually. But you're right, it's that work in that flow state. Mikhail Chick sent me Haichi, I think, is how you pronounce his name in that flow state where life speeds up and slows down. What I'm hearing though is people have got half the definition or half the experience of doing great work. Because it is true that there are times when you're doing great work where you're like, you're in that flow state. You're connected to your purpose, you've got meaning. You're thinking to yourself, this is why I signed up for this job in the first place, so I could do stuff like this. But it's not the whole story. Because when you're doing great work, there's also part of you that is anxious and uncertain. As you step out to the edge of what's unknown about yourself, about your team, about your organization. There's part of you going, I love this. There's part of you going, I hope nobody asked me what's going on here because I'm just making it up at this stage. I don't really know. And just to make the connection back to Alex and Alan and the whole. And Eve's and the whole team's work at Strategizer, their work is a call for you to do more great work. Because they are saying you just can't settle into the comfort and familiarity and predictability of good work. You need to be thinking structurally and courageously and with heart and with mind around how do you be bold? How do you reinvent yourself? And part of what's hard about their work is part of it's rational, part of it's exciting, part of it's like, oh, I'm so excited about testing my ideas, building an invincible company. And part of it, you just have this. You're just going, you know, I'm uncertain what's happening here. I don't know what I'm doing. And that's part of what they bring, which is this nurturing of both the experience of trying to figure this stuff out and kind of keeping the fires burned around your enthusiasm. Let me give you my best definition of great work. It is the work that has more impact, and it is a work that has more meaning. I think it's both of these things. You've got to have this combination. It's about impact. It's about trying to figure out where will you make the most difference, where is the opportunity? But for us as individuals, it's about meaning as well. Because it's about what lights me up, what do I care about? What makes me go, this is the best version of myself? Because in the end, organizations have two core metrics. One is, what difference are we making in the world? And the other is how engaged are our people and what we're actually got here is a call to say, you need both. You need your engaged people. You need your best people who are engaged and up for it and smart and courageous and bold, and they need to be focused on the right stuff so you're making a difference. And if you get both of those things, if everybody in your organization and your team did 10% more great work, things would get better. I mean, it doesn't always work all the time, but honestly, you can see it right away. 10% more great work, things would get better. So let's take this from theory to practice. Here's what I want you to do, wherever you are. Oh, actually, I'm going to give you another metaphor. Here's another metaphor. Before we do that little conversion practice, this is one way of thinking about what good work looks like, it's like mowing the lawn. Now, look, that is a fine looking lawn. I mean, look at it. It's very green. You got that stripe thing. However they do the stripe thing. I don't know how they do that. And if that was your year's work, you'd look at it and you go, you know what? They asked me to mow the lawn. There's my lawn. I'm feeling pretty good about myself. But here's what I can tell you. As you look back on that as your year's work, there's not one part of you going, oh, yeah, see that third green line from the bottom there? Yeah. We really had to pivot. We really had to invent, we really had to step up. We really had to overcome something amazing. And see that top green line there? That's when a global pandemic swept through and we had to kind of rethink everything. You're just going, you know what? I did a good job mowing the lawn, but it's a bit of a forgettable year. And here's what I want for all of you as an individual, in your teams, in your organizations, is I want you to look back on a year and go, this is what I worked on. I did that. I did an elephant. I mean, probably not literally an elephant, because if you're saying to your manager, I'm heading off just to do my hedge trimming at the moment, there's going to be a confused conversation happening there. But I want you to look back and be able to point to this and go, this is what I worked on this year. And you can see there's lawn here. And the lawn is fine, and the lawn is going to be okay. But I want you to go, what's my great work? What's my great work project? What's my elephant? So that I can look back on a year and go, I did work that mattered. I did work that lit me up, has meaning and has more impact. So there's your metaphor. Let's, like I said, move it from theory to practice. I want you to draw a circle, please, on paper, on pen, on your iPad, in the air, whatever. It works for you. And here's what I want you to do. Thinking about how you're spending your time right now, I want you to divide this circle into three segments that represent how much bad work, how much good work, and how much great work you're currently doing. How much bad work, how much good work, how much great work. You're currently doing. Take your best guess if you want to make this feel more useful for you. Write down an example of each type of work. What's bad work look like for you now? What's good work look like for you? What's an example of that? What's great work for you right now? Beautiful. 100%. Yeah, it's 100%. But is it bad work, good work or great work? We don't know. What I do know just from having asked thousands of people this is, it's unlikely to be one third, one third, one third. You probably got some sort of split going on there. And here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to ask you about your numbers in just a little bit. But immediately what I'd like you to do is this. And in the chat box, again, not the Q and A, but the chat box, I want you to write down what's useful or valuable for you in doing that really fast audit on how much bad, good and great work you've got going on your plate right now. What's useful or valuable for you in that exercise. And, Alan, let me look at you and say, as you did that exercise, what was useful or valuable for you? Around just doing that snapshot.

So for me, just taking a quick look at surprising how little great work it feels like I'm doing and just holding up the mirror, always powerful, Making something explicit, making it explicit, and everything you just said about great work, that being what we want to do, realizing I'm not doing enough, it's just sort of like. So that's more terrifying than it is useful to start. So maybe you can help me make use of this in a minute.

I will help make use of this in just a minute. But that's actually one of the reasons I want you to do this is for a number of people. And you'll probably see this coming through in the chat box out. And there are people going, you know what? It's cool to remember what my great work is. It feels like there's too much distance between me and that great work right now. I would want to be doing more great work. I'll tell you what I've seen over the years. First of all, I'd say there's no perfect answer for how you split your pie up. There's not like it's 5, 72 and 21 kind of split. It's. No, no. It's dependent on you, what lights you up and where you are in the moment. Some Years are more great work years. Some years are more good work years. But what I would say is that normally when I go with a bigger crowd and where it's interactive, more easily interactive, I'll go, who has more than 50% great work right now? And typically it's about 1 in 100. So maybe three or four people showing up at the moment on this webinar will go, yeah, I've got more than 50% great work right now. But then there's a bigger question, which is, who has too much great work right now? Who has too much great work right now? And I would say, having asked, like I say, north of 200,000 people, this question, less than 10 people have ever stuck up their hand. And to be honest, I don't think they fully understood the question. What I think for most people is going, you know what? I wouldn't mind a little bit more great work. Not 100% great work, because that's actually a bit overwhelming you. Your brain explodes if that's what you're up against. But I'm like, I'd like to rebalance this so I have more great work right now. Alan, before I move on, what are you seeing coming through the chat box? Anything we need to acknowledge there?

I think it's worth acknowledging that some people are struggling with the current situation, with working from home and having kids around, that their balance is different than it was say, a month ago. A lot of people mentioned that I'm seeing a lot of 20, 50, 30, and that seems like a thing. A lot of people feel like they're doing half good work, a bunch of bad work, and some people are saying, 50. Great. That's pretty solid. All over the map, really. It seems like everyone's got a pretty unique answer to this as far as their numbers go.

The power is not the numbers. The power is taking a moment to take a breath and go, how's my mix at the moment between bad, good, and great? And then to go, am I happy with that? Am I happy with how that's showing up right now, or am I willing to make a change? Am I willing to actually do something different as a result of that? And that's what we're going to spend the rest of this webinar actually looking at. So I know you're all going, okay, Michael, quite frankly, you've been amazing so far. The three vicious circles, super helpful. And this bad, good, great thing. Amazing. And I love the interactivity of the webinar and all this sort of good stuff. I'm getting A lot around it, but okay, enough's enough. Give me the damn five questions. And I'm like, I am so excited to give you these five questions. But not yet. We're so close. I mean, I promise you we're close. But before we go to the five questions, here's what I want to do. I just. Because what I do at Boxy Crayons and what I do outside Box of Crayons is I champion curiosity. And the way that shows up for bigger organizations is like, how do I help managers and leaders? Perhaps like you be more coach, like in the work that you do, how do you show up and make coaching part of your leadership behavior? And here's what I need to do. I need to talk about the five reasons why you secretly don't want to coach. We've got to acknowledge the resistance. We just got to acknowledge what's going on here. So it's going to take me two minutes. It's a bit of a rep, It's a bit of a kind of a performance piece. So here we go. First reason people look at me and they go, look, I don't want to do this coaching stuff is they go, I don't have enough time for this coaching stuff. And I say, you are absolutely right. You do not have enough time. If you think coaching is a long, drawn out, let's go into my office and have a 45 minute conversation or let's get a zoom chat going and have a no, no, no. My belief is this. If you can't coach somebody in 10 minutes or less, you do not have time to coach. And then people go, all right, Michael, here's my second reason why I'm not interested in this coaching thing. I still don't have time to coach. Even if I could coach in 10 minutes or less, I still don't have time to add coaching to my repertoire because I am over committed. I am overwhelmed. Right. So many of you chose number two as that vicious circle. And even if I thought coaching was important, and maybe I do, maybe I don't, I just, I have, I am busy from here to here because of how my day is going. I don't have time for this coaching stuff. And I say you are absolutely right. Again, if you are thinking of coaching as something you need to add to what you are currently doing, it's never going to happen. It's just never going to be important enough. You need to think about being more coach, like as a way of transforming what you currently do. And what I can tell you is the Skills I'm giving you and I'll teach you in just a minute. You can build into your everyday work. So it's not about, it's not about pouring more water into a full glass that just gets water all over your carpet. It's about transforming what's in the glass. From advice giving to being more coach. Like more curiosity led. Then people go, all right Michael, so you're removing the time thing. I like that. Here's the other thing. I don't want to be a coach. I mean honestly, I'm happy to be an HR leader, an engineer, a techie, an accountant, a CEO. I've met coaches and honestly most of them are a little weird. I don't want to be like that. I'm normal. I'm just trying to be me, doing my job, leading my team, making a difference in the work that I do. Don't turn me into a coach and I say deal. I don't want to turn you into a coach. There's a lot of coaches out there already. That's probably fine. I want you to be you. I want you to be the leader and the man or the woman you are right now. But I want you to be more coach like, so it's not trying to turn you into something that you're not. It's just adding a new skill, a new behavior to your repertoire. Be more coach like fourth reason people go, well, okay, that sounds better, but I don't even know what you're talking about. What do you even mean by being more coach like? Well, here's where we go back to that definition. From the start, it's simply this. Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice giving a little bit more slowly? Because here's what I know to be true. You're all advice giving maniacs. You love it. Honestly, somebody starts talking, you never even met them before and after about 10 seconds you're like, I've got something to tell you. Were about staying curious a little bit longer. And now people will say to me, okay Michael, you're making coaching feel less weird, more practical, more everyday, more for somebody like me. But what's in it for me in all of this? Why would I go through the hard work of changing my behavior? Well, here's what I think I can say. If you try and build in these five questions, try and be more coach like, there's a very good chance you will end up working less hard but having more impact because you break the three vicious circles, the over dependent team the sense of overwhelm and the sense of disconnect. You have a more autonomous team. You have more focus on the stuff that matters. You're more connected to the purpose of the work you're doing. And you can get access to all of that through just five questions. Five questions. They're coming. Here we go. Now, here's the thing. I'm not just going to tell you the five questions because A, that's boring, and B, I've just made a whole thing about don't tell people stuff. So it'd be ridiculous if I now just told you the five questions. It's just, you know, the medium has to be the message. So we're going to do a little bit of coaching. I'm going to coach Alan live. As we go through these five questions, I'm going to coach you as well. I want you to write your answers in the chat box. So this is you really stepping up and going, I'm going to be part of this. And it makes a difference. You'll get more out of this webinar if you participate like this. We're coaching on a real thing, and the real question is, how could you do more great work? If you could do more great work, what would you focus on? So look around you at the moment, knowing that this is a weird time and things are topsy turvy, and what was important a month ago may not feel important right now, but if you had to connect to that sense of what makes a difference, what has an impact, what has meaning for me, and you could do more great work, what would you focus on? And, Ellen, I'm asking you to bring that up as well. Knowing that as you did your little circle, you're like, it's not enough great work here. I'm like, okay, so where are there possibilities? If you look around going, if I had more time, less kids in the background, more money, more resource, more courage, what might you choose to do or do more of or commit more fully to? All right, here's how it's going to work. I'm going to go through these five questions. I'm going to want to ask what your answers are. We're going to. We are going to go to the first question first, which makes sense. Here we go. First question, the kickstart question. Before I get you to answer this, Alan, I'm just going to talk about why this is a really good opening question. What's on your mind? It is powerful because if you buy into this whole idea of, well, coaching in 10 minutes, or less matters. It means you don't have time for these long, rambling chats. You've got to get into the interesting stuff first, fast. And what's in your mind has this balance between saying, look, it's open. I'm giving you the choice, this is called empowerment and autonomy, to select where this conversation goes. But I'm not saying tell me anything or everything. I'm saying, tell me what matters. Tell me the thing you're excited about or anxious about or worried about. Let's talk about that. So here's what I would like you to do in the chat box, thinking about, how do you do more great work? Feel free to write your answer down on paper or wherever, your journal or whatever matters to you. And as much as you're willing, share your answer in the chat box. So there's a real shared communal learning here. This is how we connect as a community. And Alan, while people are doing that, let me ask you, thinking about, how do I do more great work? What's on your mind?

I think what's on my mind, it's the good work that I'm doing right now, maybe good to bad, and how much of my time that's taking up just based on where we are in this moment in time right now. There's a lot of small projects and little things that are kind of firefighting mode or little shifts here or there. And I'm involved in a bunch of those things, and I'm not sure I'm adding the most value to those things. Wondering, should I be continuing to work on those? Is that good and not great? And that's the thing that comes up first, is every day feels like it's full of a lot of things that are in the good category. And that's what's on my mind, Michael.

Perfect. All right, thank you, Alan. That's really helpful to hear. We'll come back to this. But what I'll say to everybody who's listening is like, okay, so I literally wrote a book 10 years, called Do More Great Work. So as Alan starts talking, he goes, I'm trying to balance good and great work. I'm trying to think about how I might have to deal with the good work stuff. And no, it's not even getting to here's a great work project that excites me. Can you guess that? I've got about a bazillion things in my head where I'm like, I could tell you stuff, Alan. I've got so much that I could tell you right now, but here's my learned discipline. It's like I'm shutting up because I'm staying curious just a little bit longer. Rushing to action and advice, giving a little bit more slowly. So thanks, Alan. We're going to move to the next questions and see how this conversation unfolds. But what are you noticing in the chat box? What's coming through there?

So we've got a few different things. Delivering short and term, long, short versus long term value, and trying to balance those, especially right now. And honestly, at all times, let's be honest, unexpected stuff coming in each day, losing progress on the bigger picture, things on people's minds, not sacrificing the environment for economic necessity. A couple people are mentioning that, trying to focus more. They're looking to focus more, looking to reduce stress. Let's see what else really clearly. How can I become more mbs, like in my behavior?

Vast amounts of plastic surgery. You don't want to go there. I'm just going to intervene here with some advice. You do not want to go there. If you knew what was happening in my head. It's ugly, it's dark, it's messy. Anyway, that's great. So here's what I would notice from what you've told me, Alan. People have started off fairly high level and that's absolutely the natural place to go, which is like, okay, I don't know what this is about. I've got an inkling of what's going on here. We haven't got close to getting really gritty or real for most people about what the real challenge is that they're up against. And that's why it's important to stay curious. And that's how we're going to use the next two questions. We're going to combine them. Let me take you through the next two questions and then we'll do the same. We'll get you to answer them in the chat box and in your journal or wherever you're taking notes. And then I'll have a conversation with Alan about it. So the second question is the focus question. It has the assumption and the insight that most of the time we're busy working on the stuff that doesn't matter as much as you might think, because we get seduced into thinking that the first challenge is the real challenge and it almost never is. So this is the focus question. What's the real challenge here for you? What's the real challenge here for you? Let me break this down for you because how it's said, how you're asking it, how you're answering it actually really matters because I could just ask this, what's the challenge here? And if I asked Alan that, I'd probably get a bit of a restatement of what he's already told me. I'm busy, I've got too much going on. It's a crazy time. And you're likely to get a bit of a repetition. It's not likely to go far fast. But watch what happens as soon as I say this. What's the real challenge here? And can you feel how that question immediately becomes more pointed, better weighted, more interesting, harder for Alan to answer? And that's always a good sign because now I'm going, don't tell me everything, Alan. Tell me what the real challenge is. He's like, oh, wow, okay, where do. I don't know if you can see it, but I can see Alan starting to sweat slightly just by asking that. But, but here's where the real magic happens. I go, what's the real challenge here for you? What's the real challenge here for you? And what happens in this moment is the spotlight swings from the tasks to the person dealing with the tasks. You know, the jargon is it's moving from coaching for performance to coaching for development. And what's magical here is that the work will get done. But now you're inviting a moment of engagement and learning and self reflection. Because what's the real challenge here for you means that I'm now talking to Alan about what's hard about this for him, not what's a executive summary of what are the challenges of project prioritization at Strategizer, which is the danger of just stopping at what's the real challenge here? You'll go, look, I'm an executive at Strategizer Dispersed company, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I don't care. What's the real challenge here for you? Now that's the second question. Let me show you the third question, the best coaching question in the world. So I can tick off another one of those promises that Alan made at the start of the webinar. And the question is awe. It's an acronym, but I love these acronym because it's literally an awesome question. And the acronym stands for and what else? And what else? Because here's a key takeaway from this whole webinar. Their first answer is never their only answer and it's rarely their best answer. So if you're going to take one question honestly, if you're going to take one thing away from this webinar, you're not trying hard enough because I'm giving you gold dust the whole way through this webinar. But if you are going to just take one thing away from this webinar, then it might be. And what else? Because it is the question that you can most easily incorporate into your everyday work. What's magical about asking it is people don't even hear you asking it, they just hear you holding the space for curiosity a little bit longer. So here's how we're going to combine it and I want you to work through this and you can put your answers anywhere in the chat box you want. But, but here is a script that I just know works really well. You go, okay, I know what's on your mind, what's the real challenge here for you? And then they're going to answer it. And my job is to shut up and listen. And then even though I'm going to have opinions, I'm going to go, great, what else? And then I'm going to go, and what else? And then I'm going to go, okay, Alan, so what's the real challenge here for you? And we're going to see how that plays out. And I want you to work through this and it's a bit weird because you're self coaching but you can see the answers here. So I need you to write down 1, 2, 3 and then what's the real challenge here for you? And share what's useful or valuable for you in the chat box. But do the work while Alan and I do the work. Alan, mate, you got a lot going on. You've got too much good work going on. But as you think about all of that, what's the real challenge here for you?

So I've had a minute to think, which is nice. I didn't know I was going to be getting a coaching session out of this. So this is for me first. Thanks for that. Michael, what's the real challenge here for me? First thing I thought was there's a lot of things happening during the course of the day and a lot of things ending up on my to do list from people on the team and all the projects that are there. And then I've got my own list of important stuff and I put this list first and then the things that I'm responsible for first rather than the people ask me to be responsible for second end up suffering. And that's the choice that I'm making. I think the challenge for me is.

That I Hear you. It's so easy, isn't it? It's like other people's priorities feel that they're the ones that matter most. And it's always easy for you to come up with a reason not to follow your own key priorities. So I love that. What else? What else is a challenge here for you at the moment?

I'm feeling, I think, pressure each morning. The way that I've dealt with that in the past is to be really intentional at the beginning of each day and week about organizing the week. And I felt like things are on so much fire recently, or the list is so big, I haven't been taking the time to do that work, I'm realizing. And that was where I would usually make the space for my priorities, and I'd prioritize ahead of time rather than in the moment as much. And that was really helpful for me. And I realized I stopped doing that completely.

Beautiful.

Because of the pressure of the situation that we're in at the moment.

I love it. Yeah, that's powerful. What else? What else is a challenge here for you?

I think it's the feeling of not wanting to let people on the team down, wanting to be there and like, oh, yeah, there's this thing that I'm really working hard to try to make happen. I just need your help with this. Okay, sure.

No problem.

I'm there for you. Right, Right.

A hard time for everybody. So you're like, I'm trying to show up as a full hearted, supportive leader, and there's a price that gets paid for that. So you know what I'm going to ask, because you can see it on the screen there. So there's a lot going on there, and I appreciate just how much you're sharing and being vulnerable, particularly in front of this group and Alex and the like. When you think about all of that, what's the real challenge here for you?

The real challenge for me is giving myself permission to put the priorities that I agreed on a long time ago with other people in the company that were things that I needed to move the needle on. Permission to put those things first and give myself permission to take the time to do the organization work that I know that is going to make things better and get great work done, rather than a bunch of good work and. And some bad work. I think it's a permission problem for me because of the feeling of the pressure and because of the feeling of not wanting to let people down.

Yeah, I hear you, man. So thank you. I mean, for everybody there, you've Just role modeled so many good things in that conversation. And you're helping other people be more courageous about what they're seeing in themselves and what the challenge is for themselves. Let me ask you if I can, what was useful about that? You know, 90 seconds of coaching that we did together?

Well, one, you know, just coming to the. What's the, the answer to the last question. So what's the real challenge? You know, getting there past the first problem that was identified. It's, it's. You can identify a problem and then going deeper to define it better. You know, the, the whole thing of, you know, if you, what was it? Einstein, he said if he had to save the world, he spent 55 minutes defining the problem and then 5 minutes solving it. Or Abe Lincoln was sharpening the axe before chopping down the tree. Like, we're sharpening the axe and we're defining the problem. And that is really useful.

Yeah, fantastic. And what was really beautifully. Role model. And this happens often is two things. One is first of all a shift from the external problem to being the internal problem. Because, like, I need to, you know, from I've got too much on my plate to I need to give myself permission. And there's also a sense that as you came up with that insight, you kind of know what needs to be done. So I don't have to come up with answers and we don't even have to have a conversation about it because my senses, you're like, you're, you're like, I'm actually ready to act from this. And this is the power of this, being more coach, like, which is in a couple of minutes we've got to a place where you're like, I've got insight and I feel empowered and I feel seen and I feel heard and I'm ready to do something different as a result of that. So that was really powerful. What are you seeing in the chat, Alan? I know I'm kind of pulling you around from being in a coaching session to reflecting on the coaching to reflecting on other people's stuff. So thank you for hanging in there.

No, my pleasure. And thanks for not giving me any advice.

Exactly. It's a gift of mine.

Thanks for your lack of advice. Yeah, it was great. I think so some people being very, very vulnerable in a chat. We've got people dealing with imposter syndrome, telling their story, gaining back confidence, aligning their passions, being considerate with others and their time trying to figure out how to cope with the new world that we're seeing. You know, as Taking a moment to just pause. Actually, there's a few people who said about, like, slowing down at this moment, managing anxiety, you know, being, you know, one of the real problems. Fear, Fear of failure, questioning if they're even qualified to answer the call that they're feeling today. Man, that's heavy.

It is heavy. So thank you to everybody who is willing to show up and role model vulnerability like this, because actually, it gives us all permission to own up to some of the messy, hard stuff that is going on for us right now. So, you know, above and beyond what you might be taking away about coaching and questions and the like, know that you have other people who are walking the same hard path of you right now, and you're not alone in that. And that might be the most important thing to know and to hear from this webinar with us all. Let me take us on to some of the other questions. We've got about five minutes left, so I'm going to have to rattle through them a little bit. So forgive me for speeding up just a bit. Fourth question, foundation question. So what do you want? What do you want? And you want to make sure that you get the tone right when you ask that question, because you can go, what the hell do you want? And that's not so useful. But this is a very grounding question to ask. When people know what they want, they have a foundation that allows them to act. So if you know what the real challenge is here for you, that's really powerful. And now that you know that, what I love to see in the chat box is knowing that, what do you want? And you can see, I've added and what else there? Because I'm like, and what else do you want? What else? And what do you really want? And I expect this to be a hard question. I think this is the hardest of the of the five questions to answer, because you're like, I don't. What do I want? You know, and it could be different. And I'm actually not going to coach Alan on this just in the interest of time. So I'm going to speculate about Alan. I'm like, I want 10 minutes to have a time to organize my thoughts in the morning. I want to have the courage to tell people, no. I want to have a reset session with Alex and the leadership team to go, what are our priorities now? And how do we cope with all the fires that are burning and springing up? I want an exercise regime that gets me into my body in the morning so that I can kind of Go, I've got a physical groundedness so I can be more mentally calm. Who knows where Ellen might go with that? Who knows where you're going with that? But here's what's powerful. Once you get clear on what you want, you have an opportunity, if you wanted to, to start recycling some of the questions. I'm like, okay, so if that's what you want, what's the real challenge here for you? And you can see how that test drops you down to a deeper level of inquiry if it's useful, if you wanted to do that. So let me tell you quickly what I want, my little piece. The first thing I want you to do is, if you haven't done it already, go pre order the Invincible Company, the new book from Strategizer. It is a difficult time to launch a book. I mean, who knew, who knew that a pandemic was hard time to launch a book? But apparently that's true. And I know how hard this team have been working on it and I think you know how good this is going to be. So if you've got any benefit from Strategiza over the years, one of the ways of showing them love right now is to go order their book and support them like that and encouraging them like that. Encourage them like that. I don't need to talk about that. I'm going to say this here's an offer for you. It's a resource, if you like it. At MBS Works, which is kind of the hub site for me, there's a course called the Year of living brilliantly. 52 teachers, 52 weeks, a short video every week. Alex is one of the teachers of that thing. We filmed a little video together in Lisbon which was amazing. People are really loving it so far. It's diverse, it's practical, it's provocative and you just might find something useful there for you. So the Year of living brilliantly. BS.works is totally free. What else have I got here? Oh yeah, the advice trap. So there's information there. I'm not going to linger on that. I'm going to get to this question, the learning question. Really powerful. Really powerful for you to add to the end of almost any conversation you have with your team or with your boss, with your vendors, with your customers, with yourself. Thinking about what we covered in this webinar over the hour together. And we covered the check in questions, we covered the three vicious circles. We covered bad work, good work, great work. We went through the five questions. You went through the experience of being coached. You see Me running a webinar in a certain way. So there might be something useful in how I facilitate online. But if you had to pick one thing that was most useful or most valuable for you, what would that be? Write that in the chat box. And I'm doing that mostly to stroke my own ego. No, I'm kidding. I'm doing this because I want you to remember the learning and you've invested an hour with me. If you actually want that learning to stick, doing this exercise, writing this down will help better make that, that cognitive connection in your brain. Alan, let me check in with you. What was most useful and most valuable for you from this session?

It's tough. There was gold dust throughout, so it's really, really tough to choose. I'm going to say, you know, the coaching session with you and just having a minute to, you know, there's one thing to think about this stuff and let it like go through your mind all the time. But to take pen to paper or, you know, thought to voice with another person on the other end was extremely valuable. And you know, being on the other end of these coaching questions was really great. I want to just point out extra value to this question. What was most useful for you? It seems like a throwaway and kind of like, you know, not as powerful as the other ones, but I can assure you it definitely is. I get made fun of at Strategizer for this all the time because I'm asking at the end of so many session, I asked at the end of a meeting often what was most useful for this about this meeting for you and I'll get everyone to share and people can tell as soon as they start to ask it and there's like a, like a little bit of an eye roll. But as soon as everyone's done sharing what was most useful for you, either if it was a one on one or in a group session, there's an incredible moment of wow, I'm glad we took the time for that. Yeah, it sort of brought everything back together.

There's that kind of Gartner cycle of uptake which is like the first time you do it they're like, oh, that's amazing. The third through eighth time you do it, you're like, he's doing that thing again and there's a bit of an eye roll. And then the 9th onwards you're like, actually this is really useful. It actually helps me and the team and everybody be smarter here. So there's a cycle of adoption that happens for sure.

That's right.

So I know we're at the top of the hour. We probably got some questions. We've got a ton of comments that we didn't get to acknowledge. Like, almost 1,000 comments, which is amazing. So thank you for the interactiv. I'm going to give it to you to go. Where do you want to take us from here?

Okay, so I'd love to take care of a little bit of housekeeping, and then if you can stick around for a couple minutes to answer questions. Is that possible?

Yes, for sure.

All right. Are you guys seeing my.

I am.

It's the right one.

That's it. Your last advice, would you still have given it?

Yeah. So at the top of the hour, I asked, when was the last time you gave advice? I would just ask, knowing what you've learned here today, did that advice still actually make sense? Would you still have given it knowing what Michael has shared so you can share that in the chat?

Yeah. And here's what I would want to say, Ellen. This is not me saying never give advice because advice is critical. I mean, this whole webinar has just been me giving you advice. So I'm really pro advice. I'm anti advice giving being your default response, where just that's what you do all the time, every time. And remember, I'm saying slow down the rush to action and advice giving, not don't give advice. So, like, give advice. Just wait a little bit, and then when you do give it, make it really count.

Absolutely. And, yeah, your answer to this shouldn't necessarily be, no, we weren't trying to convert everyone on that. It was to just be more thoughtful about the default mode. I think that's the key that really helps people tap into when they're giving advice at the wrong time, when it's a default. So housekeeping, Q and A. Go check out Michael's work at MBS Works, and you can follow him on Twitter as well. Beyond that, as Michael mentioned, order one of these books. What a sweet guy. Who comes on your webinar to promote our stuff, right? He's promoting our book. This is great. We never get that. So thank you, Michael. That's amazing. Michael's the best upcoming. You know, we've got our virtual masterclass. We can't do masterclasses for you in person anymore. We can't train this stuff in person. But we wanted to. We've launched a virtual masterclass that's coming up May 26th with Alex, Oscar, Wilder, Tendai, Vicky, Fred at tion, and Yves Pinot. You're gonna learn about managing innovation and portfolios. You're gonna learn about testing and de risking innovation. You'll learn about value proposition design and business model innovation. If you want to go to that, Matt is going to post a link in the description of this video as well as on the webinar chat. And let's go to some Q and A. So I'm going to jump into the Q and A box. Usually there's a little voting button and people are able to vote up and down, but we weren't able to do that today. And I'm going to go back to just full screen. I'm going to take away the share for a minute so we can just see Michael chat. All right, so, Michael, some questions from the team, from the group that was here. Someone had a hard time understanding the third vicious cycle. Specifically. If you could just share those again really quick and dive into the third one. That idea of disconnect.

So we, we get lit up. We should. What I hope for everybody is they are lit up by the work they're doing. They're like, I'm doing this work not just because I get a paycheck, but because I feel like it speaks to who I am, my values and the impact I want to have in this world. I mean, you know the classic story which is Steve Jobs going to whoever, the CEO of Pepsi, you know, don't just make sugared water. Make come and make a dent in the universe. Now, it didn't work out so well for him, so there's a degree of irony in that. But is that core to going, are you doing work that you care about that lights you up, that you can boast about? You know, if you ever had that question when you used to hang out with people and they're like, so what do you do? And for some of us, you know, our heart sinks a little bit when we get asked that question because you're like, oh, well, okay. And you try and wind up your internal PR agent to make your job sound more interesting than it actually is. Whereas I want you to be like Alex, when you go, alex, what are you up to? And he kind of like pursues you around the room like a kind of rabid Swiss something or other. I don't know. Because he's like, I care about this work. I'm making a difference in the world. So I think for that third vicious circle, it's about finding that sense of meaning and purpose in the work that you do.

Brilliant. And with that, as a co host, it comes with some benefits. So I want to give Alex a chance to ask a question. Question here as well. Alex, you want to jump in with one for Michael?

Yeah, maybe.

You know, you've been writing and working on this topic of coaching and, you know, not giving advice for very long time. What would you say over the last decade or two was your biggest insight? The thing that just, you know, you said, wow, I didn't know that, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, when I started doing this work. And this is, you know, this was big for you.

Yeah. I'd say I'm going to combine two things and the paradox of them. The first is that coaching is actually much simpler than everybody seems to be making out, which is like, you know what? Honestly, show up, care about the person, stay curious a bit longer, and you can make a great difference in their life. The second thing connected to that is that for many of us, changing our behavior to stay curious is actually pretty difficult. There are some people that maybe like Alan, who goes, look, I printed out the questions. I love them. I build them into my stuff, and they've just incorporated those tools into the way that they work. But there's lots of other people who go, I've seen the webinar. I've read the book. I printed out the questions. I'm still not using them that much. I'm still defaulting to advice and then just going, right, there's another level of behavior change that we have to think about and tackle and wrestle with. And that's hard. And honestly, nobody's cracked easy, ongoing, consistent behavior change. I mean, even James Clear putting out Atomic Habits, and he solved millions. And it's like, you know what? Most people who've read Atomic Habits aren't doing the atomic habits. The metaphor I talk about is if you're Alan, the seven questions has been like downloading a new app onto his phone. It's like, here's an additional resource that I can use with what I've currently got. And for others, it's like, actually, I need a new operating system. And it just takes longer and it takes more rewiring to try and figure that out. It's kind of like it's a personal version of your work at Strategizer, which is, no, we need to reinvent a company to do this now. That's the hard thing.

I think there's. So I've got one question, which is if you can answer it real quick. And then. So actually, let's ask this one. It's really quick, and I think it's really Useful as far as how is the new book different from the previous, previous one from Vivek Antonio? I would say just buy both and then see for yourself. But Michael, if you could help us out, what's the difference between the two?

So the coaching habit goes. Look, here's how to build a habit. Here are the seven questions. Here's how you ask the seven questions. The second one goes, let me talk to you about behavior change. And if you've struggled to change your behavior, here's a process to actually be more coach like and to tame your advice monster. Tame your advice monster is a one sentence throwaway line in the first book. It's the heart of the second book, which is like, here's how you wrestle with it. Here's how you access a deeper, more profound way of showing up as a leader.

Brilliant. You know what, guys, let's leave it there for the day. We're 10 minutes past our time. There's a lot of questions in here about it seems like there's a lot of people are really excited about coaching and even becoming more of a coach. Not just necessarily more coach like as well. So I'm going to point you to Michael's website and to find him on Twitter to pester him about that. I've just given you permission, so please go ahead. I can give other people permission to do stuff, no problem. It's just myself.

There you go.

All right, Michael, thanks so much for taking the time.

Yeah. Alan, thank you. Alex, thank you. Tyndaya. Thank you. Matt, thank you. Thanks to the whole Strategizer team. Buy their book.

Likewise.

Don't forget that you got this webinar for free. So you need to buy all of Michael's books.

Thank you, everybody. It's nice to meet you all.

Bye. Bye. Bye, everyone.