Meet Toronto-based Michael Bungay Stanier, best known for The Coaching Habit, the best-selling coaching book of the century, today talking with me about his most recent book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. It's a fantastic conversation. Michael is a thoughtful and engaging guest, and we talk about the hard truth: most of us leave the health and fate of our at-work relationships to chance. We say "Hi," exchange pleasantries, hope for the best, and immediately get into the work. Through our conversation and his book, Michael shows and tells us how to build the Best Possible Relationship with the key people at work.
Meet Toronto-based Michael Bungay Stanier, best known for The Coaching Habit, the best-selling coaching book of the century, today talking with me about his most recent book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone. It's a fantastic conversation. Michael is a thoughtful and engaging guest, and we talk about the hard truth: most of us leave the health and fate of our at-work relationships to chance. We say "Hi," exchange pleasantries, hope for the best, and immediately get into the work. Through our conversation and his book, Michael shows and tells us how to build the Best Possible Relationship with the key people at work.
About Michael
Michael Bungay Stanier is at the forefront of shaping how organizations around the world make being coach-like an essential leadership competency. His book The Coaching Habit is the bestselling coaching book of this century, with over a million copies sold and more than ten thousand five-star reviews on Amazon. In 2019, he was named the #1 thought leader in coaching, and in 2023 won the coaching award from Thinkers 50, “the Oscars of management”. Michael was the first Canadian Coach of the Year, has been named a Global Coaching Guru since 2014, and was a Rhodes Scholar. His most recent book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, shows how to create psychological safety by building the Best Possible Relationship with the key people at work.
Michael founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that had helped hundreds of organizations transform from advice-driven to curiosity-led. Learn more at BoxOfCrayons.com. Michael is a compelling speaker and facilitator, combining practicality, humour, and an unprecedented degree of engagement with the audience. He’s spoken on stages and screens around the world in front of crowds ranging from ten to ten thousand. His TEDx talk has been watched by a million and a half people. Learn more at MBS.works. En route to today—and these are essential parts of his origin story—Michael knocked himself unconscious as a labourer by hitting himself in the head with a shovel, mastered stagecraft at law school by appearing in a skit called Synchronized Nude Male Modelling, and his first paid piece of writing was a Harlequin Romance-esque story involving a misdelivered letter … and called The Male Delivery.
Learn more at www.MBS.works
Michael LeBlanc 00:04
Welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast. My name is Michael LeBlanc, and I am your host. This podcast is produced in conjunction with Retail Council of Canada.
In this episode, meet Toronto-based Michael Bungay Stanier, best known for, ‘The Coaching Habit’, the best-selling coaching book of the century, today talking with me about his most recent book, ‘How to Work with (Almost) Anyone’. It's a fantastic conversation.
Michael is a thoughtful and engaging guest, and we talk about the hard truth: most of us leave the health and fate of our at-work relationships to chance. We say "Hi," exchange pleasantries, hope for the best, and immediately get into the work. Through our conversation and his book, Michael shows and tells us how to build the best possible relationship with the key people at work. Let's listen to it now.
Michael, welcome to The Voice of Retail podcast, how are you doing this afternoon?
Michael Bungay 00:52
I am doing pretty well and I'm very happy to be here. So, thanks for having me along.
Michael LeBlanc 00:56
Well, I'm thrilled to have you on the mic, where am I finding you today?
Michael Bungay 01:01
Well, I mean, surely Toronto, as we speak, but in 48 hours’ time, I'll be in Australia, which is where I'm originally from. So, you've called me just in the moment before I hopped on a plane.
Michael LeBlanc 01:13
Well, fantastic. So once again, you're a busy guy. Thanks for making time and I'm in Toronto as well. Now I see you have a connection in some way, shape or form to Toronto, talk about, you know, Australia versus Toronto, where you live, where you work, just a little bit about that.
Michael Bungay 01:29
Yeah, sure. So, you know, I grew up in Australia and was pretty happy there, but in my mid-20s, won the scholarship that took me to England, where amongst other things, and probably as my number one achievement I fell in love with a Canadian. I didn't go back to Australia and we lived in Oxford for a while London for a while Boston for a while, but then in 2001, well in 2000 We went to a local pub in Boston because we weren't loving it there and we had some beer and then we each wrote down the name of three cities on a beer coaster on the Cadillac, we flipped the beer coaster. Toronto made both beer coasters. Even though I've never been to Toronto before. I just heard good things and so 2001 we moved up to Toronto, and I've been here ever since. So I would call myself a Torontonian now.
Michael LeBlanc 01:48
Wow, fantastic. Well-
Michael Bungay 02:20
I still don't like the winter, it's minus 1000 degrees out there as we speak and I'm like, what am I doing?
Michael LeBlanc 02:26
Yeah, it's a bit-, it's a bit chilly. I mean, when I first was coming to Toronto, I'm from Ottawa originally, which is an even colder place. It was likely to come into Miami in February. It was, it was fantastic.
Michael Bungay 02:36
Sunglasses shorts, Hawaiian shirts, the whole thing.
Michael LeBlanc 02:40
Are you kidding me? It was fantastic. Well, listen, we kind of jumped in. I want to-, I want to get a bit of-, you know, you're an interesting cat. I mean, as you said, you went to England on a Rhodes scholarship, your bestselling author, your personal coach, how did you become who you are?
Michael Bungay 02:53
Gosh, I don't know if you've ever heard the saying inspiration is when your past suddenly makes sense. It's fair to say there's been very little planning and quite a lot of stumbling into-, into good luck. A key moment was actually when I was 14 and a teacher, my high school in Australia said So Michael, what are you doing after high school, I'm like,
Michael LeBlanc 03:15
I'm 14, I don't know.
Michael Bungay 03:17
What is it, I have no-, no clue, but my dad is English and actually went to Oxford University. He grew up in Oxford. So, I said, ‘Well, maybe I'll go to Oxford University’ and my teacher said well, laughed, ‘Well, you'll have to be a Rhodes scholar to do that’. I was like, ‘Okay, well, I don't know what that means, but noted’. And it planted a seed that actually allowed me-, got me over the line to win a Rhodes scholarship. When I finished-, when I finally finished university, and I, you know, I was in university for eight years, I did a degree in literature, I did a law degree, I did a master's degree in literature, still had no idea what I wanted to be or do when I grew up, but found myself in the world of innovation, like literally inventing products and services for other companies and it was a pretty great first job, because, they're like, we liked the fact that you're slightly weird. We-, we like the fact that you're different and we're trying to be innovative and creative. So, you're kind of, we're not going to beat you down and kind of force you to behave and you know, do a proper job.
Michael Bungay 04:22
And so that was a very helpful start and amongst other things that got me deeper into the art of curiosity, because part of what we would do is we would run focus groups, ask people, you know, how they felt about soup or-, or credit cards or about a shopping, you know, a shopping brand and it's where I really learned to go deep and be curious and ask good questions and, you know, fast forward a whole bunch of ways I moved to Toronto, my flight out of Boston was on 9/11 from the job I had lined up and Toronto fella Part and as a necessity, I kind of started my own business. With no business plan. I'm like, I don't know, I've got a wide range of apparently useless skills. I'll do-, my business plan was, can I find somebody with a pulse and a wallet, can I convince them to give me some of their wallet.
Michael Bungay 05:19
But in the end, I found that intersection between something that I thought was important, which was around how do you bring out the best in the people with whom you work, something that I thought was done badly, which is how coaching was taught and trained in organizations and something that I thought there was a business model too, which is, again, Selling Coach Training. So I founded a company called Box of Crayons, which in the end, became about how do we teach practical coaching skills to busy managers and leaders and then that got accelerated in like, about eight years ago, when I wrote a book called The Coaching Habit, and haven't gone through a whole process of getting turned down six or seven times by a publisher, I self-published it and to my great delight and a certain sense of smugness, it's gone on to sell more than a million copies and has become kind of the definitive book for people in organizations to try and be more coach like, stay curious longer with the people with whom they work.
Michael LeBlanc 06:21
And you would describe that on the business side, other than being offered, that would be your primary. That's what the business is about helping people be-, lead better professional and personal lives is that how kind of the through line would you describe your business?
Michael Bungay 06:35
I've got a couple of businesses. So, Box of Crayons is a, is a business-to-business business, b2b and that's about how do we give great managers and leaders and individual contributors, the skills and the courage and the capacity and the desire to be curious, ask good questions and kind of add coaching to the way that they manage and lead people. The company I have called MBS works, is about helping people find the work that matters to them, find their next big thing, and giving people with the courage to kind of do the work that not only makes a bit of a difference in the world, but also is thrilling for them, and also is a learning growth for them, so they kind of unlock their greatness while they tackle some of the hard things.
Michael Bungay 06:36
Interesting. All right. Well, you know, what brought us together today on the mic is your book that's-, most recently released book, ‘How to Work With Almost Anyone’, Who did you write the book-
Michael Bungay 07:20
It's a great title, isn't it? It's like, I've written eight or nine books and of all the titles I come up with. This is the one that I'm like, Man, I nailed that title and that is the best because everybody, everybody lingers on the ‘almost’ just as you did. Everybody has a smile on their face when they hear the title. So it was, it was a moment of success.
Michael LeBlanc 07:51
I'm not sure it'd be a you know, if it was called "How to Work With Anyone", I mean, come on, that's bullshit.
Michael Bungay 07:55
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it would be a bold-faced lie, you can't work with everybody and I certainly don't know the secret to working with anybody but, but almost anybody that I can take a crack at?
Michael LeBlanc 08:08
Very good. Now, who did you write the book for and what whitespace so to speak, you're an author, you've written a lot of books, you know, there's both a, you know, there's got to be a place something unique about the book, but who were you did you have in mind when you sat down and put, you know, fingers to keys or whatever, how you write and talk about that whitespace for me.
Michael Bungay 08:26
Yeah, I'm-, I'm writing it for people who are in organizations and interact with human beings and the work that they do. So a pretty broad audience. I mean, the truth is, work happens through people for almost always, unless you're a monk, writing illuminated manuscripts somewhere in an isolated room for almost everybody else, we get our stuff done through people, and the quality of our work relationships, when they're good, and when they're bad has such a big impact, not just on our success, you know, does the work get done or not, but also on our happiness
Michael LeBlanc 08:27
Right.
Michael Bungay 08:50
And-
Michael LeBlanc 08:51
The outcome, not just the outcome of the work, not just the transactional nature,
Michael Bungay 09:08
Right.
Michael LeBlanc 09:08
But you know, the world that is around you, as you're doing your life's work.
Michael Bungay 09:12
Everybody listening has had a moment where they're like, you know, what, I was doing this project, the work was actually pretty good, but I had a terrible boss, or I had a terrible collaborator, and it poisoned the water and at the same time, we've had an experience where we're like, you know, I did this project, the work wasn't that exciting, but man, I had some really good people to work with and it was a fun thing. It was an illuminating experience, but you know, most of us leave the quality of our work relationships down to chance, you know, we cross our fingers, we hope for the best and we see how it goes and I know that people can be more active in making almost all of their working relationships a little bit better and I wanted to give people a practical guide on how to do just that.
Michael LeBlanc 09:56
What's that keystone conversation, you refer to it several times in the book. So, tell us-, tell the listeners more about that.
Michael Bungay 10:04
Well, to start off by understanding that with all the key working relationships, you have happiness and success, people who influence that, you want to build the best possible relationship with those people. Not the best relationship. You know, not every working relationship is going to be unicorns dancing through the fields, burping up rainbows, but you're going look, I want this to be the best it can be between you and me and a BPR, best possible relationship has three pillars, needs to be safe, needs to be vital, and it needs to be repairable. So, you want it to feel like you can be yourself, that's the 'Safe' thing. You want it to feel that you can push and provoke and step into the kind of the trickier areas that's the 'Vital' and you want to be able to repair it because every working relationship gets kind of dinged, or dented, or cracked.
Michael LeBlanc 10:58
Drained or whatever.
Michael Bungay 10:59
Yeah, yeah, it inevitably happens and the research will tell you that the relationships that continue to thrive are the ones where somebody has known how to repair that relationship and in terms of the best way to get to a best possible relationship, the keystone conversation is a conversation about how we work together before you get into the work and it sounds obvious, but it is a rare thing because mostly the work always sounds really important. You're like, okay, it's urgent, it's important permission, permission crisis, it's the mission. That's what we're all getting paid for, we're getting paid to do the work. So let's crack on with it and the truth is, work happens through people. So, if you have a moment to say, hey, how can we best work together so that we bring out the best in each other so that we avoid the worst in each other, so we give each other the best chance of success. That's going to not only make you feel happier about working with other people, but it's actually going to allow you to do a better job on the work itself.
Michael LeBlanc 12:02
You know, I love the structure of the book. You've got your word and phrase toolkit, you-, you've got a code-, a QR code, where you can-, you show how to model a keystone conversation. Talk about your-, oh, by the way, you, you actually in one of these, my favorite one is page 103, for those who are listening and buy the book, you know, I-, it's one of my favorite word and phrase toolkit solutions that you have and, and I always hate asking people, or in a conversation, I'm gonna play devil's advocate. I just hate that. You know, so I love your ‘that's a hard question, but I think it's helpful for us to answer it’. That's a great, different phrase to ask the same question. So, thank you for that. I mean, that's-, and that's a great-, a great example, now talk about the tradecraft of how you structure a book, it's your ninth book. You know, I don't know if the ninth is any easier some ways than the first, but you know, the process, you might, you know, have down a little bit, but talking about your tradecraft when you sit down and write a book, does it-, does it just flow out of you, do you have a structure and objective talk-, how does that work?
Michael Bungay 13:02
Yeah, sure. Well, it starts with a couple of design principles and the first design principle is, I'm trying to write the shortest book I can that's still useful. My experience of most books is there's too many words and there's not enough editing and there's too much, kind of, filler and because I publish my books through a kind of hybrid publishing thing, where I'm not working with a traditional publisher, but I have some control over the look and the feel and the size of it. I'm like, successful to me is somebody getting to the end of one of my books and every page I add, makes it harder for that person to get to the end of the book. So I'm constantly trying to go, ‘what's essential, what is-, what is fluff that I can cut, and what is lean that I definitely want to keep in’, so that's a starting point.
Michael Bungay 13:51
Secondly, I'm trying to make this book practical and useful. So it's not just talking about the ideas, but I want to give people tools to shift their behavior and that's why there are things like the QR codes, inviting people to get extra tools and watch me do a keystone conversation in the like because I know that a book, it's often the start of a change in behavior, but it's rarely enough for the whole thing. So, I want to inform people to know that the book is a portal to an ecosystem of support and encouragement and training and all of that good stuff.
Michael LeBlanc 14:23
It's just like a launching point, right? I mean-
Michael Bungay 14:25
It's a launching point. Yeah, it's like if I can get you-, if this sounds interesting, there's more to help you go further and then Michael, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the structure of the book, to trying to see the shape of the arc of it and that's kind of connected to this idea of, you know, what's the shortest book I can write that still useful, my bias is to write more rather than less.
Michael LeBlanc 14:48
8 years of university will do that to you, right.
Michael Bungay 14:52
Exactly, exactly. So, I spend a lot of time with actually pen and paper, drawing the shape of the book. I'll do it little square, and then I'll give a kind of headline, and other square and other headline and I'll kind of go does it make sense if I'm reading it at that kind of high level and I probably spend three or four months, just playing around with structure and shape and trying to find the arc, and I'll do some writing, and then I'll try and figure that out and then what happens is you write a first draft and all first drafts are crap and that still happens after-, after your ninth book. It's like, it's still a bad first draft and I've now written enough books, I'm like, at least comfortable with going yeah, it's another disappointing start.
Michael LeBlanc 15:39
But you know, there's a positive outcome. So, I guess you can take your own advice, I suppose.
Michael Bungay 15:44
You have to-, you have to write through the bad drafts to get to the good stuff. So, I'm like, okay, here's my, here's my rough start and by the-, by the third draft, it's often something's beginning to emerge. Sometimes you have to start all over, like a book prior to this-, is a book called, ‘How To Begin’, which is about helping people find their worthy goals. And I-, I wrote 90 pages of this book, and I thought it was pretty good and I shared it with people and they're like, this is terrible. I didn't know-, I don't even know what this book is about, and I literally managed to save one good line from that first draft that alone, we unlock our greatness by working on the hard things, I was like, that actually is really good, but then I had to rebuild the book from, from that single line again. So, you know, sometimes-, sometimes it goes smoothly, sometimes it goes roughly but the art of writing, you know, the art of writing is to keep writing.
Michael LeBlanc 16:42
Yeah, that will that architecture you describe is really comes out in the book, it's a very useful book, not just as an interesting read, but
Michael Bungay 16:48
Thank you.
Michael LeBlanc 16:49
Yeah, I think you nailed it there. Now you've probably done, I don't know-, I'm gonna throw-, I'm not even gonna throw a number. How many interviews about this book and, and your work, is there one, more than one, less than a million, is there any question you would wish people interviewing, you would have asked about the book or your work that you've never been asked?
Michael Bungay 17:09
You know, the thing that gets asked less than I thought it would, which is about the final section of the book, which is about maintenance. So the book is roughly in three sections, the first section is: "How Do You Prepare for a Keystone Conversation", I mean, it's kind of setting up the idea of a best possible relationship and a keystone conversation, but the work part one is answering the five questions that I suggest as part of the keystone conversation, because you know, Michael, secretly, this is-, this is a bit of a self-help book wrapped in a business book. The idea being, you need to know your own good answers to the five questions of the Keystone conversation, you know, what's your best, what are your practices and preferences, the good day and the bad day question, the repair question, how will we fix it when things go wrong, the more articulate you can be about that, the more helpful it is.
Michael Bungay 18:03
The second phase of the work is to actually have the Keystone conversation and you've pointed out that there's kind of all these, kind of, worksheets and toolkits around, here's how you literally send the invitation, have the conversation and kind of manage that process, but once you had a keystone conversation, the work is not done. The relationship carries on, I mean, it'd be great if it was one and done, but that's just not reality. So once you do that, you're like, how do I keep this relationship safe and vital and repairable, and you do it with kind of a three ways one is kind of checking in all the time, how are we doing, what's going on, how you feeling, here's how I'm feeling.
Michael Bungay 18:44
Secondly, you repair often, there's always kind of micro tears that are happening in the relationship where somebody's a bit disappointed, a bit, let down a bit confused a bit, you know, disgruntled, and the more you can keep checking back in that and going do we need to say anything, do anything just to kind of reorient to each other and then the third part of it is to reset as required. Occasionally, you know, a hard truth needs to be said, a kind of-, a reboot needs to happen, or a relationship needs to finish and wrap up because it's like this is this is no longer tenable and that final piece around the work of the maintenance of the relationship is the thing that gets asked at least.
Michael LeBlanc 19:28
Okay, that last part and I'm still trying to figure out, shifting gears a little bit. I'm still trying to figure out the implications on work and society and all these things of the COVID era, this weird time we went through.
Michael LeBlanc 19:42
You and me and everybody.
Michael LeBlanc 19:43
Well, you know, as I read your book and reflected on it, I mean, the way we work and communicate, I mean, I've got partners that I rarely see and I talked to retailers, who hire very senior people that they rarely see and they never imagined themselves doing such a thing, like they just didn't-, they just didn't even fathom of it pre COVID The technology was kind of always-, always in place, but culturally, they never thought about it. You know, how are you thinking about that and, you know, these large and small ways or small and large ways and are we in a transitional period of trying to figure this out or is it-, you know, hasn't been that long, right, since it's-, it's-, we've had this big lock down, how are you thinking about the COVID era and its impact on the way we, we work and live?
Michael Bungay 20:25
I think there are-, COVID and beyond create a number of forces that make being in healthy relationship with other people harder, you know, COVID, disrupted that experience of 'let's hang out with each other' and that's not the whole of the thing, but there's no doubt that just when you're when you're bumping into each other, when you've got those kind of day to day, small interactions, there's a way that that exposure allows you to, to kind of build a relationship. At the same time, we've all known that experience of being lonely in a crowd, where you're like, hey, I'm saying hi to people, but nobody really knows me.
Michael Bungay 21:06
And there's a way that through the various technologies we have, you can do just as good a job building a relationship through a camera, but it requires a little more effort, but it's not just COVID. You know, you look at social media and you know, it's really clear that there's a way that you vanish into the infinity pool of social media, and you mistake, you know, liking somebody's Instagram post as an act of friendship and I'm like, it's not really that. You know, I read-, I read just today that, you know, in companies that have people coming back there, there are just kind of office furniture, where these little pods that people can work in, kind of little solo pods designed to create a space to work in, in an open space office and, and people are fighting over them, people are like, I just want to be in my little pot, I want to be isolated. So, there's a trend towards-, structurally around all these ways that it becomes easier to isolate yourself and there's an increase in loneliness and lack of connection and I think, you know, COVID is fuel on a fire that was already burning.
Michael LeBlanc 21:06
Right.
Michael LeBlanc 22:19
You mentioned-, kind of the last question, you mentioned other things going on, you touched on a couple of them. It's a noisy, messy, dangerous time, two wars, social media, evil or joy, AI that's got us into a post truth world, you know, that concept well. What's your-, what's your advice to the listeners and how they can focus, continue to focus on improving their lives and their workplace relationships in and around all this stuff, stay sane, and-
Michael Bungay 22:45
Yeah.
Michael LeBlanc 22:45
Keep it all together?
Michael Bungay 22:47
Well, I'm not sure I had the answer towards, you know, total sanity. I'm looking for it myself, quite frankly but if I-, if I could offer one thing, it might be this. Somebody said this to me the other day, and I thought it was profoundly true. Nobody likes to be the first person to say hello, and everybody loves to be greeted. So, there's this powerful insight as to like-, being the person who reaches out, whether that's literally just being the person who says hello, being the person who says, hey, let's have a conversation about how we're working together to see if we can do a better job at working together. You know, being the person who goes, why don't I be the person that initiates or reinitiates or reignites this friendship that's gone quiet. I think that act of being the person who reaches out can be-, is a generous act.
Michael LeBlanc 23:42
Well, it's-, that's advice filled with great wisdom so thank you for that, the book is 'How to Work With Almost Anyone', Michael, where do people-, folk-, where do folks go to get in touch with you or learn more about the book and learn more about your work?
Michael Bungay 23:57
Thank you. I'm lucky if the book sounds interesting, bestpossiblerelationship.com, shows you where to buy the book, which is, you know, everywhere but it also there are free downloads. There's actually a video of me doing a keystone conversation. So, if you want to sort of see what it looks like in real life, there it is and if you want just more of me in general and about the other books and kind of social handles on the website is MBS.works.
Michael LeBlanc 24:20
Well Michael, I thank you very much for spending time on The Voice of Retail podcast. I wish you much sanity particularly as you're headed to Pearson Airport. I wish you that-, I wish you that for the afternoon, but anyway, listen Safe travels. Congratulations on your success and the book, I recommend it to everybody, and I look forward to keeping in touch and-, and reading your next work and, and continue to understand what you're talking about. Thank you. So, thanks for being on the pod.
Michael Bungay 24:48
Thank you, Michael.
Michael LeBlanc 24:49
Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Voice of Retail. If you haven't already, follow us on your favorite podcast platforms. New episodes will end automatically each week and be sure to check out my other retail industry media properties and the Remarkable Retail podcast with Steve Dennis, and the Global eCommerce Leaders podcast.
I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, senior retail advisor, keynote speaker and Rethink Retail 2023: Global Top Retail Influencer. If you want more information, content or to chat, follow me on LinkedIn.
Safe travels everyone!
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, Toronto, retail, Michael, good, conversation, relationship, people, write, keystone, talk, relationships, podcast, coaching, business, called, fantastic, tradecraft, draft, work