April 17, 2024 • 33 mins
Today Claire Pedrick MCC is talking with author Michael Bungay Stanier who, like Claire, is passionate about simplicity and clarity in his work. The conversation explores Michael's personal journey and experiences, the importance of self-management and facilitating conversations, and the power of asking questions.
Michael’s new book How To Work With Almost Anyone talks about 'keystone conversation' to discuss how to collaborate effectively before delving into the actual work. It’s like 3D’s rightsizing!
Contact Michael through https://www.mbs.works/
Contact claire@3dcoaching.com
If you like this episode, subscribe or follow The Coaching Inn on your podcast platform to hear new episodes as they drop.
Coming Up:
Next: Using Metaphor in Coaching, the ICF exam, and Neurodiversity with Lyssa de Hart MCC
Soon: Using Rhythm to Develop Teams - with Iris Clermont
Key Words:
coaching, conversations, deep listening, keystone conversations, working relationships, possibility virus, humility, authenticity, repairing relationships
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching'svirtual pub where we enjoy conversations
with people who engage in the world ofcoaching.
Welcome to this week's edition of TheCoaching In.
I'm Clare Pedrick and today it's mypleasure to have Michael Bungaistania with
(00:21):
me.
Welcome, Michael.
thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Well, our listeners are super excited tohave you here, as am I, because I only
recommend four books ever and one of themis yours.
that's so good.
What are the other three?
So we recommend Your Advice Trap.
(00:41):
Fantastic.
We recommend Listen.
by Catherine Monix.
Nice.
Catherine Monix is brilliant.
I have I've interviewed her in my pocket.
I've had a glass of wine with CatherineManic.
She was the first person who introducedthe CBT cognitive behavioral therapy into
palliative care.
And her book, The End in Mind isbrilliant.
(01:04):
So I love that you're recommending herstuff.
Well, I would love to live down the roadfrom Catherine Monix.
My dad died and Catherine's Ted Talk wasthe best thing that supported him and me
through that last thing.
So she's amazing.
So yes.
(01:24):
Yeah.
So this is by Catherine Manix.
Improv Your Life by Pippa Evans.
Okay.
I don't know that one, but I like, I'vedone, I've done improv trainings.
I probably know some of the basics.
So Pippa Evans is, isn't a coach.
Neither is Catherine, although I kind ofsuggest that she is.
And then I recommend mine.
(01:45):
Of course, that's great.
That's a good list.
Well, I'm flattered to be on it.
Thank you.
However, this morning I've just receivedfive copies of How to Listen by Oscar
Trimboli.
I love Oscar down in Melbourne inAustralia and I blurbed his book, I think,
somewhere.
Yeah, you did.
You blurbed the top of his book.
So I'm looking forward to reading that.
That might make it to number five.
(02:07):
He's very wise about the art of deeplistening.
That's where he's hung his hat and he'svery good at it.
Yeah.
So one of our listeners in Japan said, youmust interview Oscar Trimboli.
So I just contacted him and he went, yes,which is what you said.
So thank you very much for being here.
It's a pleasure.
So tell us a bit about the story that gotyou to recognizing how important
(02:33):
conversations would be.
Well, I am I live in Canada, Toronto, butI grew up in Australia and I grew up in a
very lovely household.
Good parents and two brothers I mostlyliked.
But we wouldn't I wouldn't call us aparticularly chatty family.
Like there's an inner joke about howStenia men tend to be a bit as a turn, a
(02:57):
bit quiet.
And on the hand, I've always loved to beI've always been a bit of a show off.
You know, apparently as a three year old,I
come up to strangers in a supermarket andgo, Hi, I'm Michael.
I can hop.
Would you like to see me hop?
So I kind of like the spotlight.
And I remember being in the universityclass.
(03:22):
So I was 18 or so 19.
And it was me and my friend back, MichaelBachelard and and eight other women.
It was an English literature class.
And I noticed in a moment.
that he and I were doing a lot of thetalking and I'm not sure we were
mansplaining exactly that term didn't evenexist back then, but we were certainly
(03:46):
consuming more than our share of theoxygen in part because we're like excited
and we like reading and we like literatureand we kind of liked ideas.
And it triggered something in me that thenext step for me was actually going and
training on a youth suicide hotline,something called Youthline.
in Australia.
(04:07):
And that was the first training for me tounderstand the power asking a question,
the power of understanding that theirfirst answer might not be their only
answer, their first answer might be at onelevel and there might be other stuff kind
of going on underneath.
It's kind of training based on CarlRogers' work, so Rogerian counseling.
(04:28):
And that was it for me.
I did that for a number of years inAustralia.
And then, you know,
By the time I finally left, I went toEngland to study.
By the time I finally left university,coaching was just becoming to become a
thing.
And I noticed that I was in England.
(04:50):
So it was a weird Californian thing.
So I don't know, Californians don't doanything.
But that first seed had really beenplanted with that youth crisis counseling
telephone training.
That's so interesting, isn't it?
Because I think we might be a reasonablesimilar ages.
(05:12):
And of course, my first job was coaching,but I didn't know it was coaching because
nobody called it coaching.
Right.
Right.
And then and then the Americans startedtalking about coaching.
I suspect where of that generation, wherewe're like, we remember a time when nobody
was a coach other than the person blownaway on the sports field.
And now, of course, almost everybody isthe coach.
(05:34):
Although I did a
podcast with Terry Belf, who in America,and she said that coaching started in
Europe.
Well, that's interesting.
I mean, I know Terry.
Well, I know.
I don't know particularly well, but I knowher from the very early days of coaching.
So, yeah, there we go.
That's possible.
(05:54):
Yes.
So when did you first realize you were acoach?
Well, I don't even call myself a coachnow.
I've.
I've always been I would have said thatfor a long time, I would call myself a
facilitator or a teacher, you know, whichare adjacent labels, I think, to coaching.
(06:17):
If you had to pin me down now, I wouldcall myself a teacher.
And then as a kind of core belief in termsof what I bring to the world.
And then there's different ways in which Ido that.
I, you know, I speak, I facilitate.
I.
You know, I don't have a coaching practicebecause I've discovered that my best work
(06:38):
is done creating content and writing booksand stuff rather than the one to one
stuff.
I do a certain amount of kind of informalad hoc coaching, I guess, because I'm just
naturally a curious person.
And, you know, I do ask a lot ofquestions.
So but certainly there was a moment when Ijust, you know, coaching became a thing
(07:02):
and I did my first coach training.
you know, early 2001 with CTI.
And, and being a coach felt like a helpfulphase to go through a useful confirmation
that the way I showed up in the world wasa useful way to show up.
(07:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the thing I really like about yourbooks, Michael, is that they are really
simple and straightforward.
Thanks.
And that is very opposite to the industryof coaching.
Yeah, well, it actually.
Part of the reason for writing the bookwas an irritation that there was a certain
(07:45):
amount of kind of woo abstraction, kind ofjazz hands, kind of black box around
coaching.
And so certainly for the coaching habitand the advice trap.
A key part of this was trying to unweirdcoaching for normal people so that it felt
like it was a tool that anybody could use.
(08:08):
You didn't have to be qualified as a coachto be more coach like.
So, you know, I know these books have beenhelpful and successful in the world of
coaching, but I really write them forpeople who weren't coaches, but for who
wanted to bring some of the power ofcoaching into their everyday life, whether
that's as a manager and a leader or as aparent or some other.
(08:29):
other role.
Because it's just a conversation, isn'tit?
Well, it's, it's a it's, it's just aconversation is a pretty loaded term,
because it's like, it's a conversationwhere it takes a certain amount of self
management and skill to make it work.
But indeed, in the end, it's at its best,it's a great conversation.
(08:53):
Yeah.
One of the things that I noticed thatpeople really like about your books,
is that it helps them to see underneathand it helps them to see the least that
they need to do to be able to have thesegreat conversations.
Yeah, you know, my design philosophy, notjust in my books, but in the programs I
design and all the stuff I do is what'sthe least I can teach that would be the
(09:14):
most useful.
So one of the.
ways we seek to reassure ourselves thatwe're adding value is by pumping more
stuff in.
So this is true, whether you're coachingor teaching or writing, I'll just add this
extra bit.
And, you know, at the heart offacilitation and coaching is creating
(09:38):
space for the other person to be able toengage in what's there.
And that often means you needing to stepout of the spotlight, remove some of the
content.
make it about them rather than about you.
And so often, the reason content is thereis a look at me and I'm adding value.
Look at me and I've got a safety net.
(09:59):
Look at me and this silence isn't awkward.
So I it's taken a while to figure thisout.
But I do do a lot of work trying to stripcontent away.
So there's space for people to really getit.
And also, it makes me go, what is the mostessential thing for me to talk about or to
teach?
(10:21):
I absolutely agree with you because that'salso my philosophy, which was why it was
such a delight to suddenly come acrossyour work and think, I'm not completely
bonkers after all.
Well, you might be completely bonkers, butmaybe we both are.
At least we agree on this designprinciple.
Yeah.
Yeah, because complexity.
In fact, I was talking to a coach of theStates this morning and she was saying
(10:43):
that she'd found out about me and she alsoread your stuff she was telling me.
because she was looking around the worldand going, surely it can't be this hard.
Yeah, some of my favorite moments are whenpeople go through a one day program I've
created, which we typically sell into bigcompanies.
(11:05):
And they're like, I think I just spentnine months in a coach training school to
learn what you've just taught in a day.
And I'm like, coaching is simple, butdifficult.
Yeah.
You know, it's like just a conversationthat's simple but difficult to have just a
conversation.
It's difficult to.
(11:26):
manage your own anxiety about theambiguity and the silences and the
uncertainty of what's going on.
It's difficult to stay fully present tothe other person.
It's difficult to really see them in theirfull catastrophe, the excellence and the
messiness of who they are.
It's difficult to not finish conversationswith a neat bow and a ta -da.
(11:52):
It's difficult to not...
avoid some of that, the more challengingthings you might say to somebody, all of
these things are simple enough in terms oftechnique, but they're difficult to do for
all sorts of other reasons.
Yeah, you can see what you need to do.
But doing it is the harder step, isn't it?
(12:13):
Yeah.
So you were on Gary Krotos's podcast theother day.
True.
Yeah.
And he said to me, talk to Michael aboutKeystone Conversations.
So I have a new book out or a relativelynew book called How to Work with Almost
Anyone, which I think is probably the bestbook title I've ever come up with.
(12:33):
It's like it's just a good book title.
I love it.
And, you know, it's a you call it a sisterbook, I think, or a cousin book to the
advice trap and the coaching habit.
Because the primary people I wrote thosetwo books for were busy managers and
leaders.
You know, that was my imagined.
(12:54):
avatar, if you like, as I wrote that.
And, you know, in the context of work,although I think it goes broader than
that, you know, your your happiness andyour success so often depend on the
quality of your working relationships.
And this is true whether you're in a bigcompany or whether you run your own
coaching practice or whatever it might be.
(13:14):
And most of the time, we don't do muchabout that.
We just hope for the best.
And the key insight around this book is
you can actively shape the workingrelationships you have to be the best
possible versions of those relationships.
BPRs, the best possible relationship.
(13:35):
So it doesn't mean every relationshipturns into this wonderful, you know,
perfect thing.
It means that when you're A, if you're Aand you're working with B, there's
potential between you.
How do you fulfill as much of thatpotential as possible?
How do you bring out the best?
of each other as much as you can.
How do you avoid the worst of each otheras much as you can?
(13:57):
And the keystone conversation, and it'shard as simply, let's have a conversation
about how we work together before weplunge into the work.
And again, simple and difficult, becausemost of us plunge into the work.
You know, you sign up a new coachingclient and you're like, right, I'm here to
add value.
So what are you up against?
(14:17):
What's on your mind?
What's the challenge?
What's hard for you?
How can I be?
So how will we measure success and all ofthat's into the work.
And you don't have a conversation aroundwhen you've had a coach or you've thought
about a coach and it's been a good breakin relationship, what do they do?
And when you've had a mediocre coachingrelationship, like in my time, I've had
lots of coaches and a lot of them werelike pretty underwhelming.
(14:40):
And I can be really articulate about whatI need in a coach if I'm hiring a coach
and if they asked me.
So it's this exchange of informationabout.
How do we bring out each other's best?
How do we work together?
How do we fix it when things go wrong?
How do we get back on track?
All of these kind of meta conversationsthat enable you to better do the work.
(15:03):
I call that right sizing.
Yeah.
Don't start doing the work until you knowwhat you're doing.
Yeah.
So part of it's right sizing, which is,you know, what's the actual work?
You know, and that's why in the coachinghabit, the question, what's the real
challenge here for you is so effectivebecause we all think the first thing that
(15:27):
shows up is the real challenge and itreally is.
It's just their first stab at it.
So, you know, you provide so much help ifyou can be the person to help figure out
what the real problem is.
You don't even need to come up with theanswers.
It's like just figuring out what the realproblem is.
Most of the magic.
(15:48):
And then you kind of bring that to theright sizing of the relationship as well,
which is like, so what does, what does theshape look like with you and me at our
best?
And getting that out there is soimportant, but you trained with CTI just
after I trained with Coach U.
Right.
And they talked about establishing theCoding Agreement.
(16:11):
Yeah.
Which seems to have got lost in...
How much, how many, how often?
And not what do we need to do to do thebest that we can in this space right now?
Yeah.
Well, how much, how many, how often is auseful and essential part of the
conversation, but it's just not the wholepart of the conversation.
(16:33):
So, you know, the origin of this work forme comes from a guy called Peter Block.
He called this stuff social contracting.
And I...
Social contracting is a bit of a bitabstract.
It's a bit high level.
It's used in other contexts in differentways.
So it's a bit confusing.
(16:53):
But essentially it's the same, which islike, how do we work together?
And and what I like about a contract isthe thing I like about that phrase is a
contract in legal terms is a exchange ofvalue, an equal exchange of value.
You do this thing for me.
I give you money to an equal exchange ofvalue.
And this idea that.
(17:14):
We're not just finding out the logistics,but we're actually exchanging the value of
who we are and how we want to show up iswhat gives the relationship the
opportunity to flourish.
Because like if you're a coach and I knowmost people listening to this will be
coaches or thinking about being coaches.
(17:35):
You know, learning how to coach is trickyand your training and your mastering that
they have to run a practice.
You have to.
find clients, you have to keep clients.
That's the whole other level of skill.
And there are many coaches who like I lovethe marketing.
I love trying to find new clients.
Some people, some people love that, butnot that many.
(17:58):
And one of the ways you can help yourselfis by keeping your good clients longer.
And the one one of the ways you can keepyour good clients longer is you have
relation a conversation about how will wekeep this going as long as possible.
So it's as good for
for both of us for as long as possible.
If you can pull that off, then youactually start building these long term
(18:19):
client relationships, which is good forthe client and also good for your
business.
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with you onthat one.
But hey.
okay.
So what what what what do you want to takeissue with?
So I, I, it depends what the coaching isfor, doesn't it?
So if the coaching is an external thinkingpartner relationship over time, where
(18:41):
somebody
wants somebody to just travel with them,then that's a great thing.
But I think often coaches are hired for athing.
And then and then that needs to be ashorter relationship.
Otherwise, we just extend it for noreason.
Well, I agree with that.
(19:02):
I mean, I think too often coaches businessmodels are kind of growing.
I'm trying to build codependence with thisplan.
Absolutely.
So it drags on forever and ever and ever.
And there are too many coachingrelationships where people on both sides
are kind of slightly going through themotions of what that works.
(19:23):
But.
you know, the in the how to work withalmost anyone booked there are kind of
three phases to kind of building this bestpossible relationship.
The first is you taking time to answer thefive core questions of the Keystone
relationship yourself.
So you know, you know your answers,because it's so much a bit of a self help
(19:46):
book hidden inside of business book,right?
The second phase is you have the keystoneconversation, you actually have a
conversation around how you want to worktogether.
But the third phase is the maintenancephase, which is like, you need to check in
often on how you check in all the time onhow you're doing, you need to repair
(20:07):
often, and you need to reset as required.
And what you and I are talking about isthe reset process, which is like, all
right, so are we done?
Are we not done?
If we're not done?
what needs to be done to reset.
So we get back to this idea of arelationship.
And these are the three columns of thethree principles of a BPA, our best
(20:32):
possible relationship, a relationship thatis safe and vital and repairable.
So safe meaning it's it's you removed fearvital meaning that there's still life and
challenge and provocation in there.
And repair, meaning you get to fix it whenthings go wrong because it always goes
wrong.
(20:53):
And I think I think what you and I areagreeing on is that too often coaching
relationships become safe, but they losesome of their vitality because the kind of
purpose of the relationship has kind ofleaked out.
Yeah, and I love hearing you talk in alanguage that's different from mine,
(21:16):
because it's enabling me to make a wholeload of meaning of some of the things that
I think.
And I love that.
Because that relationship thing, thatpartnering thing, we're only in
relationship and in partnership, aren'twe, if we check in to make sure we still
are?
Because otherwise, I think we are and youthink we're not.
Yeah, and quite frankly, the reason Istopped coaching is I just found myself
(21:37):
too often in relationships that would beboring.
I was like, I like you.
I don't mind this coaching, but I want tosay I'm a bit it doesn't have a whole lot
of vitality here for me.
And I just I know I also figured out thatI have more impact by doing different
things.
But I do think that we often default tosafety and we forget about vitality.
(22:07):
Yeah.
And the vitality brings thetransformation, doesn't it?
The energy and the bounce and the notdoing the same thing all over again.
Yeah.
I think you need both.
I mean, you can, if you had vitality andkind of provocation, if you like, without
safety, then it's really good until itisn't.
And then it shatters.
So you're trying to find that dancebetween safe and vital.
(22:29):
And it's different with every client youhave.
And then for all of them, there comes atime where something gets misunderstood,
something goes off the rails, somethingleaks, something breaks, something rips,
and that's the repairability.
Because if you can repair it, you have achance of extending it for the full length
and the full potential of therelationship.
(22:51):
That's so insightful because there's asort of hidden implicit assumption that
things won't break, isn't there?
Yeah, they will.
We all start going, it's amazing.
I've hired a coach.
it's amazing.
I've got a new client.
we love each other.
But, you know, to be blunt, shit alwayshits some fans somewhere down the line.
There's no such thing as a relationshipwithout kind of hiccups in it.
(23:15):
And often, it's just sweepinggeneralization.
But, you know, because coaching is full ofnice people who are people people and
trying to do their best.
They're often not that good at conflictand they're good at repair.
They're like, let's just keep it nice.
And nice can suck the life out of a goodrelationship.
(23:38):
I wish we'd had this conversation before Idid a supervision session on Monday.
We, you know, this it's so jargony thisthing that people say to me, how do I use
myself as instrument?
And I go, let's talk about saying what younotice or sense or experience.
But this, this coach came to supervisionand the, the, the question was she and
(24:02):
the, and the person she was coaching hadhad a disagreement.
And she said, how do we use thedisagreement for learning?
And I said, it depends on how much you'veannoyed them.
You know, is this about the disagreementis part of the learning or is it that the
disagreement is just that something youhave done has been experienced by them as
(24:22):
being really irritating?
Right.
Is it not the same thing?
No, I mean, I think I would go look, firstof all, how do you use this disagreement
to repair the relationship and possiblystrengthen, re -strengthen it?
And then how do you learn from thatexperience?
So that when it shows up again between thetwo of you, you're better able to navigate
(24:45):
it the second time.
It may be showing you something aboutwhat's going on in their working life, but
it may actually be showing something abouthow you're getting on with each other.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, because we were talking aboutpatronizing, you could be really
patronizing by accident in those contexts,can't you?
That's true.
(25:07):
It is.
I think it's a real danger with coachingis there's a slightly.
There's a slight odor of moral superioritysometimes with coaches, which is like, you
know, look, look how advanced I am and howself aware I am and how open hearted and
(25:27):
open minded and stuff I am.
And.
All of that is great stuff when you'redoing the work and kind of becoming that.
But I remember, I mean, this is like 15years ago or longer, perhaps going to a
what at the time the ICF held these biginternational conferences and just
(25:48):
wondering around going everywhere.
We all feel very smart here.
Like they're all.
very self congratulatory about how the sunshines out of various orifices.
And, you know, one of the attributes Imost like is humility.
(26:10):
Not in a kind of false, you know, look atme, I'm so humble.
Humility for me means you have your feeton the ground.
There's actually a connection betweenhumility and the word for ground, humus.
And it and it humility for me is knowingboth your strengths and your non strengths
(26:31):
and and kind of holding them in balance.
Like I think I'm isn't so weird.
I'm saying this so certainly, but I thinkI'm quite humble.
I'm confident and humble in that I'mconfident about who I am and how I show up
in the world and where I think I can bestserve.
And I'm really clear about all the stuffI'm a bit shit at.
And there's plenty of it.
(26:51):
Yeah.
And we're all a bit broken.
I share that.
I often say to friends and colleagues, Ican't stand being with coaches because it
all feels a bit worthy.
Yeah.
And I think when it feels in aconversation that somebody who's sorted is
working with somebody who's not as sorted,the power differential there is massive,
(27:14):
isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
That's right.
And it's it's.
You know, it's a metaphor that gets talkedabout a bit, but the Kintsugi metaphor,
which is like, you know, porcelainrepaired with gold lacquer.
And it's like broken, but fixed and morebeautiful and different, you know,
(27:35):
similar, but different metaphor is thatscar tissue is the strongest tissue in the
human body, which actually isn't true,unfortunately, but it would be great if it
was.
But, you know, it's like it's our scarsand our wounds and our.
stories of failure that make us moreinteresting and more useful to the people
with whom we're trying to help.
(27:56):
And yet there's a fear to disclose thatwe're not superhuman.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if you listen to this, and you'reworried, I'm like, if it's any use, it's a
whole lot easier to go, look, I'm probablymore screwed up than you are.
And I still can ask a good question ortwo.
So.
Yeah, it's a very freeing experience togo, yeah, I'm a bit of a mess.
(28:21):
Well, yeah, and I said to a group theother day when I did my last night when I
did a coaching session a few weeks ago,which was the worst I've done for a very
long time, and they all went.
And I went, well, if you're going to doyour best work, you're going to do your
worst work, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
That's nice.
We've there's a chapter about humility inour in the new book.
(28:44):
the human behind the coach and that'sgreat because we're just trying to get
people to recognise that actually thisisn't about being perfect or superhuman or
special or different.
That we're one human who facilitates thethinking of another.
Yeah, it's the more you can, the more youcan be nuanced in your humanity, the more
helpful and just kind of the more real youare to the world.
(29:10):
Which is why coming back to the advicetrap when I say to people,
what you say about the advice monster,they go, thank goodness.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's named.
It's normal.
Often the feedback I've had, and I thinkthis is true, is that some of the what's
most useful in my work is I, I think offive more abstract concepts.
(29:35):
So, you know, the advice monster and justkind of three of them, if you like, save
it, tell it and control it.
They're kind of like.
a simpler way of understanding some of thekind of deeper ego driven reasons why we
might leap to give advice to protectourselves and protect our status and
protect our kind of sense of who we are.
But when you call it an advice monster andyou go, you probably noticed your advice
(29:58):
monster.
Everyone's like, yeah, I have an advicemonster.
I'm like, we all have an advice monster.
You're in very good company.
You're a whole of humanity.
Yeah, yeah.
So what's your hope for your work?
What do you want it to have done to do inthe future?
Well, for years now, I've had a personalmission and my language is to infect a
(30:24):
billion people with the possibility virus.
wow.
That was better language before Covid andwe had a virus.
But if you want to kind of unpack that,you know, a billion people is an
impossibly large number.
but it speaks to kind of me thinking aboutscale of impact.
(30:47):
The virus idea is that it can spreadwithout me.
So it's about putting ideas into the worldand I don't need to be known for them.
I don't need to be the hero.
I don't need to be the guru.
You know, if people discover the sevenquestions on the coaching habit and they
don't know the mic from me, that's fine byme.
And then the possibility virus, what thatmeans is,
(31:12):
to help people make braver choices.
It comes down to kind of man search formeaning, which is like, you know, in the
moment we have a choice.
It's helping people see that they havechoices and help them make the braver
choice so that they get to kind of unlockthe best of who they are and look their
own greatness.
(31:33):
So, you know, that's the that's the kindof the ripple effect that I'm trying to
have in the work that I do.
and I also don't think too much about it.
because, you know, my job is to take mybest guess at the next project that is my
best contribution to that bigger game andthen put it out in the world and, you
(31:57):
know, something's spread and some thingsdon't spread as much.
And, and, you know, as an atheist, I'mpretty sure that once I'm dead, I'm dead.
So I don't get to find, I don't get myreward in heaven or anything like that.
So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it'salready working better than I thought it
would with the success of some of thesecoaching books.
(32:18):
And so I keep doing that work and it'slovely to hear back from people
occasionally when it's been helpful fromthem.
Well, it's very helpful.
Lots of our listeners have been infected.
Well, thank you.
And I'm speaking about that is that, thatyou, and then they,
coach differently and they touch otherpeople.
And so there's this kind of ripple effect.
(32:40):
And, you know, one or two or three degreesthat can can make a difference.
Yeah.
And I'm taking the advice monster and yourname into a group of 500 on Tuesday.
So fantastic.
Thank you so much.
Michael, thank you so much for coming tothe coaching in.
What a pleasure it's been to be inconversation with you.
(33:01):
Thank you, Claire.
You're wonderful.
And hopefully maybe you, me and CatherineMonnets can have a glass of wine.
That would be fun, exactly.
And thank you everyone for listening.
Bye bye.
If you've enjoyed what you've heard today,we'd love you to share the podcast with a
friend or leave a comment on social media.
And if you'd like to become a regular atThe Coaching In, you can subscribe on
(33:23):
Podbean and all major podcast channels.
We look forward to welcoming you nexttime.
You've been listening to The Coaching In,3D Coaching's virtual pub.
For more information, check out 3dcoaching.com.
You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching'svirtual pub where we enjoy conversations
with people who engage in the world ofcoaching.
Welcome to this week's edition of TheCoaching In.
I'm Clare Pedrick and today it's mypleasure to have Michael Bungaistania with
(00:21):
me.
Welcome, Michael.
thank you for having me.
I'm excited to be here.
Well, our listeners are super excited tohave you here, as am I, because I only
recommend four books ever and one of themis yours.
that's so good.
What are the other three?
So we recommend Your Advice Trap.
(00:41):
Fantastic.
We recommend Listen.
by Catherine Monix.
Nice.
Catherine Monix is brilliant.
I have I've interviewed her in my pocket.
I've had a glass of wine with CatherineManic.
She was the first person who introducedthe CBT cognitive behavioral therapy into
palliative care.
And her book, The End in Mind isbrilliant.
(01:04):
So I love that you're recommending herstuff.
Well, I would love to live down the roadfrom Catherine Monix.
My dad died and Catherine's Ted Talk wasthe best thing that supported him and me
through that last thing.
So she's amazing.
So yes.
(01:24):
Yeah.
So this is by Catherine Manix.
Improv Your Life by Pippa Evans.
Okay.
I don't know that one, but I like, I'vedone, I've done improv trainings.
I probably know some of the basics.
So Pippa Evans is, isn't a coach.
Neither is Catherine, although I kind ofsuggest that she is.
And then I recommend mine.
(01:45):
Of course, that's great.
That's a good list.
Well, I'm flattered to be on it.
Thank you.
However, this morning I've just receivedfive copies of How to Listen by Oscar
Trimboli.
I love Oscar down in Melbourne inAustralia and I blurbed his book, I think,
somewhere.
Yeah, you did.
You blurbed the top of his book.
So I'm looking forward to reading that.
That might make it to number five.
(02:07):
He's very wise about the art of deeplistening.
That's where he's hung his hat and he'svery good at it.
Yeah.
So one of our listeners in Japan said, youmust interview Oscar Trimboli.
So I just contacted him and he went, yes,which is what you said.
So thank you very much for being here.
It's a pleasure.
So tell us a bit about the story that gotyou to recognizing how important
(02:33):
conversations would be.
Well, I am I live in Canada, Toronto, butI grew up in Australia and I grew up in a
very lovely household.
Good parents and two brothers I mostlyliked.
But we wouldn't I wouldn't call us aparticularly chatty family.
Like there's an inner joke about howStenia men tend to be a bit as a turn, a
(02:57):
bit quiet.
And on the hand, I've always loved to beI've always been a bit of a show off.
You know, apparently as a three year old,I
come up to strangers in a supermarket andgo, Hi, I'm Michael.
I can hop.
Would you like to see me hop?
So I kind of like the spotlight.
And I remember being in the universityclass.
(03:22):
So I was 18 or so 19.
And it was me and my friend back, MichaelBachelard and and eight other women.
It was an English literature class.
And I noticed in a moment.
that he and I were doing a lot of thetalking and I'm not sure we were
mansplaining exactly that term didn't evenexist back then, but we were certainly
(03:46):
consuming more than our share of theoxygen in part because we're like excited
and we like reading and we like literatureand we kind of liked ideas.
And it triggered something in me that thenext step for me was actually going and
training on a youth suicide hotline,something called Youthline.
in Australia.
(04:07):
And that was the first training for me tounderstand the power asking a question,
the power of understanding that theirfirst answer might not be their only
answer, their first answer might be at onelevel and there might be other stuff kind
of going on underneath.
It's kind of training based on CarlRogers' work, so Rogerian counseling.
(04:28):
And that was it for me.
I did that for a number of years inAustralia.
And then, you know,
By the time I finally left, I went toEngland to study.
By the time I finally left university,coaching was just becoming to become a
thing.
And I noticed that I was in England.
(04:50):
So it was a weird Californian thing.
So I don't know, Californians don't doanything.
But that first seed had really beenplanted with that youth crisis counseling
telephone training.
That's so interesting, isn't it?
Because I think we might be a reasonablesimilar ages.
(05:12):
And of course, my first job was coaching,but I didn't know it was coaching because
nobody called it coaching.
Right.
Right.
And then and then the Americans startedtalking about coaching.
I suspect where of that generation, wherewe're like, we remember a time when nobody
was a coach other than the person blownaway on the sports field.
And now, of course, almost everybody isthe coach.
(05:34):
Although I did a
podcast with Terry Belf, who in America,and she said that coaching started in
Europe.
Well, that's interesting.
I mean, I know Terry.
Well, I know.
I don't know particularly well, but I knowher from the very early days of coaching.
So, yeah, there we go.
That's possible.
(05:54):
Yes.
So when did you first realize you were acoach?
Well, I don't even call myself a coachnow.
I've.
I've always been I would have said thatfor a long time, I would call myself a
facilitator or a teacher, you know, whichare adjacent labels, I think, to coaching.
(06:17):
If you had to pin me down now, I wouldcall myself a teacher.
And then as a kind of core belief in termsof what I bring to the world.
And then there's different ways in which Ido that.
I, you know, I speak, I facilitate.
I.
You know, I don't have a coaching practicebecause I've discovered that my best work
(06:38):
is done creating content and writing booksand stuff rather than the one to one
stuff.
I do a certain amount of kind of informalad hoc coaching, I guess, because I'm just
naturally a curious person.
And, you know, I do ask a lot ofquestions.
So but certainly there was a moment when Ijust, you know, coaching became a thing
(07:02):
and I did my first coach training.
you know, early 2001 with CTI.
And, and being a coach felt like a helpfulphase to go through a useful confirmation
that the way I showed up in the world wasa useful way to show up.
(07:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the thing I really like about yourbooks, Michael, is that they are really
simple and straightforward.
Thanks.
And that is very opposite to the industryof coaching.
Yeah, well, it actually.
Part of the reason for writing the bookwas an irritation that there was a certain
(07:45):
amount of kind of woo abstraction, kind ofjazz hands, kind of black box around
coaching.
And so certainly for the coaching habitand the advice trap.
A key part of this was trying to unweirdcoaching for normal people so that it felt
like it was a tool that anybody could use.
(08:08):
You didn't have to be qualified as a coachto be more coach like.
So, you know, I know these books have beenhelpful and successful in the world of
coaching, but I really write them forpeople who weren't coaches, but for who
wanted to bring some of the power ofcoaching into their everyday life, whether
that's as a manager and a leader or as aparent or some other.
(08:29):
other role.
Because it's just a conversation, isn'tit?
Well, it's, it's a it's, it's just aconversation is a pretty loaded term,
because it's like, it's a conversationwhere it takes a certain amount of self
management and skill to make it work.
But indeed, in the end, it's at its best,it's a great conversation.
(08:53):
Yeah.
One of the things that I noticed thatpeople really like about your books,
is that it helps them to see underneathand it helps them to see the least that
they need to do to be able to have thesegreat conversations.
Yeah, you know, my design philosophy, notjust in my books, but in the programs I
design and all the stuff I do is what'sthe least I can teach that would be the
(09:14):
most useful.
So one of the.
ways we seek to reassure ourselves thatwe're adding value is by pumping more
stuff in.
So this is true, whether you're coachingor teaching or writing, I'll just add this
extra bit.
And, you know, at the heart offacilitation and coaching is creating
(09:38):
space for the other person to be able toengage in what's there.
And that often means you needing to stepout of the spotlight, remove some of the
content.
make it about them rather than about you.
And so often, the reason content is thereis a look at me and I'm adding value.
Look at me and I've got a safety net.
(09:59):
Look at me and this silence isn't awkward.
So I it's taken a while to figure thisout.
But I do do a lot of work trying to stripcontent away.
So there's space for people to really getit.
And also, it makes me go, what is the mostessential thing for me to talk about or to
teach?
(10:21):
I absolutely agree with you because that'salso my philosophy, which was why it was
such a delight to suddenly come acrossyour work and think, I'm not completely
bonkers after all.
Well, you might be completely bonkers, butmaybe we both are.
At least we agree on this designprinciple.
Yeah.
Yeah, because complexity.
In fact, I was talking to a coach of theStates this morning and she was saying
(10:43):
that she'd found out about me and she alsoread your stuff she was telling me.
because she was looking around the worldand going, surely it can't be this hard.
Yeah, some of my favorite moments are whenpeople go through a one day program I've
created, which we typically sell into bigcompanies.
(11:05):
And they're like, I think I just spentnine months in a coach training school to
learn what you've just taught in a day.
And I'm like, coaching is simple, butdifficult.
Yeah.
You know, it's like just a conversationthat's simple but difficult to have just a
conversation.
It's difficult to.
(11:26):
manage your own anxiety about theambiguity and the silences and the
uncertainty of what's going on.
It's difficult to stay fully present tothe other person.
It's difficult to really see them in theirfull catastrophe, the excellence and the
messiness of who they are.
It's difficult to not finish conversationswith a neat bow and a ta -da.
(11:52):
It's difficult to not...
avoid some of that, the more challengingthings you might say to somebody, all of
these things are simple enough in terms oftechnique, but they're difficult to do for
all sorts of other reasons.
Yeah, you can see what you need to do.
But doing it is the harder step, isn't it?
(12:13):
Yeah.
So you were on Gary Krotos's podcast theother day.
True.
Yeah.
And he said to me, talk to Michael aboutKeystone Conversations.
So I have a new book out or a relativelynew book called How to Work with Almost
Anyone, which I think is probably the bestbook title I've ever come up with.
(12:33):
It's like it's just a good book title.
I love it.
And, you know, it's a you call it a sisterbook, I think, or a cousin book to the
advice trap and the coaching habit.
Because the primary people I wrote thosetwo books for were busy managers and
leaders.
You know, that was my imagined.
(12:54):
avatar, if you like, as I wrote that.
And, you know, in the context of work,although I think it goes broader than
that, you know, your your happiness andyour success so often depend on the
quality of your working relationships.
And this is true whether you're in a bigcompany or whether you run your own
coaching practice or whatever it might be.
(13:14):
And most of the time, we don't do muchabout that.
We just hope for the best.
And the key insight around this book is
you can actively shape the workingrelationships you have to be the best
possible versions of those relationships.
BPRs, the best possible relationship.
(13:35):
So it doesn't mean every relationshipturns into this wonderful, you know,
perfect thing.
It means that when you're A, if you're Aand you're working with B, there's
potential between you.
How do you fulfill as much of thatpotential as possible?
How do you bring out the best?
of each other as much as you can.
How do you avoid the worst of each otheras much as you can?
(13:57):
And the keystone conversation, and it'shard as simply, let's have a conversation
about how we work together before weplunge into the work.
And again, simple and difficult, becausemost of us plunge into the work.
You know, you sign up a new coachingclient and you're like, right, I'm here to
add value.
So what are you up against?
(14:17):
What's on your mind?
What's the challenge?
What's hard for you?
How can I be?
So how will we measure success and all ofthat's into the work.
And you don't have a conversation aroundwhen you've had a coach or you've thought
about a coach and it's been a good breakin relationship, what do they do?
And when you've had a mediocre coachingrelationship, like in my time, I've had
lots of coaches and a lot of them werelike pretty underwhelming.
(14:40):
And I can be really articulate about whatI need in a coach if I'm hiring a coach
and if they asked me.
So it's this exchange of informationabout.
How do we bring out each other's best?
How do we work together?
How do we fix it when things go wrong?
How do we get back on track?
All of these kind of meta conversationsthat enable you to better do the work.
(15:03):
I call that right sizing.
Yeah.
Don't start doing the work until you knowwhat you're doing.
Yeah.
So part of it's right sizing, which is,you know, what's the actual work?
You know, and that's why in the coachinghabit, the question, what's the real
challenge here for you is so effectivebecause we all think the first thing that
(15:27):
shows up is the real challenge and itreally is.
It's just their first stab at it.
So, you know, you provide so much help ifyou can be the person to help figure out
what the real problem is.
You don't even need to come up with theanswers.
It's like just figuring out what the realproblem is.
Most of the magic.
(15:48):
And then you kind of bring that to theright sizing of the relationship as well,
which is like, so what does, what does theshape look like with you and me at our
best?
And getting that out there is soimportant, but you trained with CTI just
after I trained with Coach U.
Right.
And they talked about establishing theCoding Agreement.
(16:11):
Yeah.
Which seems to have got lost in...
How much, how many, how often?
And not what do we need to do to do thebest that we can in this space right now?
Yeah.
Well, how much, how many, how often is auseful and essential part of the
conversation, but it's just not the wholepart of the conversation.
(16:33):
So, you know, the origin of this work forme comes from a guy called Peter Block.
He called this stuff social contracting.
And I...
Social contracting is a bit of a bitabstract.
It's a bit high level.
It's used in other contexts in differentways.
So it's a bit confusing.
(16:53):
But essentially it's the same, which islike, how do we work together?
And and what I like about a contract isthe thing I like about that phrase is a
contract in legal terms is a exchange ofvalue, an equal exchange of value.
You do this thing for me.
I give you money to an equal exchange ofvalue.
And this idea that.
(17:14):
We're not just finding out the logistics,but we're actually exchanging the value of
who we are and how we want to show up iswhat gives the relationship the
opportunity to flourish.
Because like if you're a coach and I knowmost people listening to this will be
coaches or thinking about being coaches.
(17:35):
You know, learning how to coach is trickyand your training and your mastering that
they have to run a practice.
You have to.
find clients, you have to keep clients.
That's the whole other level of skill.
And there are many coaches who like I lovethe marketing.
I love trying to find new clients.
Some people, some people love that, butnot that many.
(17:58):
And one of the ways you can help yourselfis by keeping your good clients longer.
And the one one of the ways you can keepyour good clients longer is you have
relation a conversation about how will wekeep this going as long as possible.
So it's as good for
for both of us for as long as possible.
If you can pull that off, then youactually start building these long term
(18:19):
client relationships, which is good forthe client and also good for your
business.
Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with you onthat one.
But hey.
okay.
So what what what what do you want to takeissue with?
So I, I, it depends what the coaching isfor, doesn't it?
So if the coaching is an external thinkingpartner relationship over time, where
(18:41):
somebody
wants somebody to just travel with them,then that's a great thing.
But I think often coaches are hired for athing.
And then and then that needs to be ashorter relationship.
Otherwise, we just extend it for noreason.
Well, I agree with that.
(19:02):
I mean, I think too often coaches businessmodels are kind of growing.
I'm trying to build codependence with thisplan.
Absolutely.
So it drags on forever and ever and ever.
And there are too many coachingrelationships where people on both sides
are kind of slightly going through themotions of what that works.
(19:23):
But.
you know, the in the how to work withalmost anyone booked there are kind of
three phases to kind of building this bestpossible relationship.
The first is you taking time to answer thefive core questions of the Keystone
relationship yourself.
So you know, you know your answers,because it's so much a bit of a self help
(19:46):
book hidden inside of business book,right?
The second phase is you have the keystoneconversation, you actually have a
conversation around how you want to worktogether.
But the third phase is the maintenancephase, which is like, you need to check in
often on how you check in all the time onhow you're doing, you need to repair
(20:07):
often, and you need to reset as required.
And what you and I are talking about isthe reset process, which is like, all
right, so are we done?
Are we not done?
If we're not done?
what needs to be done to reset.
So we get back to this idea of arelationship.
And these are the three columns of thethree principles of a BPA, our best
(20:32):
possible relationship, a relationship thatis safe and vital and repairable.
So safe meaning it's it's you removed fearvital meaning that there's still life and
challenge and provocation in there.
And repair, meaning you get to fix it whenthings go wrong because it always goes
wrong.
(20:53):
And I think I think what you and I areagreeing on is that too often coaching
relationships become safe, but they losesome of their vitality because the kind of
purpose of the relationship has kind ofleaked out.
Yeah, and I love hearing you talk in alanguage that's different from mine,
(21:16):
because it's enabling me to make a wholeload of meaning of some of the things that
I think.
And I love that.
Because that relationship thing, thatpartnering thing, we're only in
relationship and in partnership, aren'twe, if we check in to make sure we still
are?
Because otherwise, I think we are and youthink we're not.
Yeah, and quite frankly, the reason Istopped coaching is I just found myself
(21:37):
too often in relationships that would beboring.
I was like, I like you.
I don't mind this coaching, but I want tosay I'm a bit it doesn't have a whole lot
of vitality here for me.
And I just I know I also figured out thatI have more impact by doing different
things.
But I do think that we often default tosafety and we forget about vitality.
(22:07):
Yeah.
And the vitality brings thetransformation, doesn't it?
The energy and the bounce and the notdoing the same thing all over again.
Yeah.
I think you need both.
I mean, you can, if you had vitality andkind of provocation, if you like, without
safety, then it's really good until itisn't.
And then it shatters.
So you're trying to find that dancebetween safe and vital.
(22:29):
And it's different with every client youhave.
And then for all of them, there comes atime where something gets misunderstood,
something goes off the rails, somethingleaks, something breaks, something rips,
and that's the repairability.
Because if you can repair it, you have achance of extending it for the full length
and the full potential of therelationship.
(22:51):
That's so insightful because there's asort of hidden implicit assumption that
things won't break, isn't there?
Yeah, they will.
We all start going, it's amazing.
I've hired a coach.
it's amazing.
I've got a new client.
we love each other.
But, you know, to be blunt, shit alwayshits some fans somewhere down the line.
There's no such thing as a relationshipwithout kind of hiccups in it.
(23:15):
And often, it's just sweepinggeneralization.
But, you know, because coaching is full ofnice people who are people people and
trying to do their best.
They're often not that good at conflictand they're good at repair.
They're like, let's just keep it nice.
And nice can suck the life out of a goodrelationship.
(23:38):
I wish we'd had this conversation before Idid a supervision session on Monday.
We, you know, this it's so jargony thisthing that people say to me, how do I use
myself as instrument?
And I go, let's talk about saying what younotice or sense or experience.
But this, this coach came to supervisionand the, the, the question was she and
(24:02):
the, and the person she was coaching hadhad a disagreement.
And she said, how do we use thedisagreement for learning?
And I said, it depends on how much you'veannoyed them.
You know, is this about the disagreementis part of the learning or is it that the
disagreement is just that something youhave done has been experienced by them as
(24:22):
being really irritating?
Right.
Is it not the same thing?
No, I mean, I think I would go look, firstof all, how do you use this disagreement
to repair the relationship and possiblystrengthen, re -strengthen it?
And then how do you learn from thatexperience?
So that when it shows up again between thetwo of you, you're better able to navigate
(24:45):
it the second time.
It may be showing you something aboutwhat's going on in their working life, but
it may actually be showing something abouthow you're getting on with each other.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, because we were talking aboutpatronizing, you could be really
patronizing by accident in those contexts,can't you?
That's true.
(25:07):
It is.
I think it's a real danger with coachingis there's a slightly.
There's a slight odor of moral superioritysometimes with coaches, which is like, you
know, look, look how advanced I am and howself aware I am and how open hearted and
(25:27):
open minded and stuff I am.
And.
All of that is great stuff when you'redoing the work and kind of becoming that.
But I remember, I mean, this is like 15years ago or longer, perhaps going to a
what at the time the ICF held these biginternational conferences and just
(25:48):
wondering around going everywhere.
We all feel very smart here.
Like they're all.
very self congratulatory about how the sunshines out of various orifices.
And, you know, one of the attributes Imost like is humility.
(26:10):
Not in a kind of false, you know, look atme, I'm so humble.
Humility for me means you have your feeton the ground.
There's actually a connection betweenhumility and the word for ground, humus.
And it and it humility for me is knowingboth your strengths and your non strengths
(26:31):
and and kind of holding them in balance.
Like I think I'm isn't so weird.
I'm saying this so certainly, but I thinkI'm quite humble.
I'm confident and humble in that I'mconfident about who I am and how I show up
in the world and where I think I can bestserve.
And I'm really clear about all the stuffI'm a bit shit at.
And there's plenty of it.
(26:51):
Yeah.
And we're all a bit broken.
I share that.
I often say to friends and colleagues, Ican't stand being with coaches because it
all feels a bit worthy.
Yeah.
And I think when it feels in aconversation that somebody who's sorted is
working with somebody who's not as sorted,the power differential there is massive,
(27:14):
isn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
That's right.
And it's it's.
You know, it's a metaphor that gets talkedabout a bit, but the Kintsugi metaphor,
which is like, you know, porcelainrepaired with gold lacquer.
And it's like broken, but fixed and morebeautiful and different, you know,
(27:35):
similar, but different metaphor is thatscar tissue is the strongest tissue in the
human body, which actually isn't true,unfortunately, but it would be great if it
was.
But, you know, it's like it's our scarsand our wounds and our.
stories of failure that make us moreinteresting and more useful to the people
with whom we're trying to help.
(27:56):
And yet there's a fear to disclose thatwe're not superhuman.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, if you listen to this, and you'reworried, I'm like, if it's any use, it's a
whole lot easier to go, look, I'm probablymore screwed up than you are.
And I still can ask a good question ortwo.
So.
Yeah, it's a very freeing experience togo, yeah, I'm a bit of a mess.
(28:21):
Well, yeah, and I said to a group theother day when I did my last night when I
did a coaching session a few weeks ago,which was the worst I've done for a very
long time, and they all went.
And I went, well, if you're going to doyour best work, you're going to do your
worst work, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
That's nice.
We've there's a chapter about humility inour in the new book.
(28:44):
the human behind the coach and that'sgreat because we're just trying to get
people to recognise that actually thisisn't about being perfect or superhuman or
special or different.
That we're one human who facilitates thethinking of another.
Yeah, it's the more you can, the more youcan be nuanced in your humanity, the more
helpful and just kind of the more real youare to the world.
(29:10):
Which is why coming back to the advicetrap when I say to people,
what you say about the advice monster,they go, thank goodness.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's named.
It's normal.
Often the feedback I've had, and I thinkthis is true, is that some of the what's
most useful in my work is I, I think offive more abstract concepts.
(29:35):
So, you know, the advice monster and justkind of three of them, if you like, save
it, tell it and control it.
They're kind of like.
a simpler way of understanding some of thekind of deeper ego driven reasons why we
might leap to give advice to protectourselves and protect our status and
protect our kind of sense of who we are.
But when you call it an advice monster andyou go, you probably noticed your advice
(29:58):
monster.
Everyone's like, yeah, I have an advicemonster.
I'm like, we all have an advice monster.
You're in very good company.
You're a whole of humanity.
Yeah, yeah.
So what's your hope for your work?
What do you want it to have done to do inthe future?
Well, for years now, I've had a personalmission and my language is to infect a
(30:24):
billion people with the possibility virus.
wow.
That was better language before Covid andwe had a virus.
But if you want to kind of unpack that,you know, a billion people is an
impossibly large number.
but it speaks to kind of me thinking aboutscale of impact.
(30:47):
The virus idea is that it can spreadwithout me.
So it's about putting ideas into the worldand I don't need to be known for them.
I don't need to be the hero.
I don't need to be the guru.
You know, if people discover the sevenquestions on the coaching habit and they
don't know the mic from me, that's fine byme.
And then the possibility virus, what thatmeans is,
(31:12):
to help people make braver choices.
It comes down to kind of man search formeaning, which is like, you know, in the
moment we have a choice.
It's helping people see that they havechoices and help them make the braver
choice so that they get to kind of unlockthe best of who they are and look their
own greatness.
(31:33):
So, you know, that's the that's the kindof the ripple effect that I'm trying to
have in the work that I do.
and I also don't think too much about it.
because, you know, my job is to take mybest guess at the next project that is my
best contribution to that bigger game andthen put it out in the world and, you
(31:57):
know, something's spread and some thingsdon't spread as much.
And, and, you know, as an atheist, I'mpretty sure that once I'm dead, I'm dead.
So I don't get to find, I don't get myreward in heaven or anything like that.
So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it'salready working better than I thought it
would with the success of some of thesecoaching books.
(32:18):
And so I keep doing that work and it'slovely to hear back from people
occasionally when it's been helpful fromthem.
Well, it's very helpful.
Lots of our listeners have been infected.
Well, thank you.
And I'm speaking about that is that, thatyou, and then they,
coach differently and they touch otherpeople.
And so there's this kind of ripple effect.
(32:40):
And, you know, one or two or three degreesthat can can make a difference.
Yeah.
And I'm taking the advice monster and yourname into a group of 500 on Tuesday.
So fantastic.
Thank you so much.
Michael, thank you so much for coming tothe coaching in.
What a pleasure it's been to be inconversation with you.
(33:01):
Thank you, Claire.
You're wonderful.
And hopefully maybe you, me and CatherineMonnets can have a glass of wine.
That would be fun, exactly.
And thank you everyone for listening.
Bye bye.
If you've enjoyed what you've heard today,we'd love you to share the podcast with a
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And if you'd like to become a regular atThe Coaching In, you can subscribe on
(33:23):
Podbean and all major podcast channels.
We look forward to welcoming you nexttime.
You've been listening to The Coaching In,3D Coaching's virtual pub.
For more information, check out 3dcoaching.com.
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