This week’s upcoming book recommendation is The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier—a practical reminder that leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about helping others discover better ones.
One of the biggest misconceptions about coaching is that it’s simply asking powerful questions.
It isn’t.
Coaching reaches its full potential when curiosity becomes part of an organization’s culture.
In many workplaces, leaders are rewarded for providing answers quickly. Meetings often celebrate certainty, confidence, and speed. As a result, thoughtful questions can sometimes be misunderstood as hesitation, challenge, or a lack of expertise.
Yet the opposite is often true.
Great coaching questions uncover assumptions, clarify priorities, challenge thinking, and create space for better decisions.
That pause—the moment between the question and the answer—is where learning happens.
Whether you’re leading a sales team, guiding organizational change, developing leaders, improving performance, or working through a complex business challenge, curiosity is one of the most underutilized leadership capabilities.
The goal isn’t to ask more questions.
The goal is to ask better questions.
Questions like:
• What problem are we really trying to solve? • What assumptions are we making? • What does success actually look like? • What options haven’t we considered? • What would change if we looked at this differently?
At the same time, effective leaders recognize that coaching is one leadership approach—not the only one.
There are moments when people need a clear decision, direct feedback, expert guidance, or accountability. Great leaders know when to coach, when to teach, when to mentor, and when to decide.
That discernment is what transforms coaching from a technique into a leadership capability.
Organizations that embrace coaching as part of their culture don’t see thoughtful questions as slowing progress. They recognize that better thinking leads to better decisions, stronger ownership, greater innovation, and more sustainable results.
That’s one of the reasons The Coaching Habit continues to be one of my favourite leadership books. It reminds us to stay curious a little longer—not because questions are the goal, but because better questions often lead to better outcomes. Coaching isn’t just for coaches. It’s a capability that elevates sales conversations, change adoption, leadership development, strategic planning, performance management, conflict resolution, and innovation.
Reflection Question
Think about your last three conversations at work.
How many times did the question asked reveal something important that was not yet thought of?
The difficult questions often create space for someone else to think more deeply in the rush of their workday and aim for productivity.
Sometimes the greatest value we bring as leaders isn’t the answer we provide. It’s the question that changes the conversation.
