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Michael Bungay Stanier      

#1 Thought Leader on Coaching, Author of "The Coaching Habit" & Top-Rated Leadership Expert

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 best-selling coaching book of this century, with over a million copies sold and thousands of five-star reviews on Amazon. In 2019, he was named the #1 thought leader in coaching. Stanier was the first Canadian Coach of the Year, has been named a Global Coaching Guru since 2014 and was a Rhodes Scholar.

Stanier founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps organizations transform from advice-driven to curiosity-led. Stanier 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 watch by mor than a million people.

En route to today—and these are essential parts of his origin story—Stanier 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.

Speech Topics


The 5 Question Leader: the secret to working less hard and having more impact

Managers and leaders find themselves stuck in three vicious circles. They’re frustrated by teams who have become overdependent on them. They’re overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to do. They’re disconnected from their own Great Work: the work that has impact, the work that has meaning. Sound familiar?

Breaking out of those vicious circles is simpler than you might think.

Mastering five essential questions can help managers and leaders increase the focus, courage and resilience they need to have more impact in the work they do.

In this practical, interactive and engaging session participants will:

• discover the three vicious circles that keep managers – and their teams – stuck

• learn the five core questions they need so they (and those they lead) can focus on the work that matters

• get three quick-to­-master techniques to ask a question well (it’s harder to do than it sounds!)

• find the Best Coaching Question in the World (and it has just three words)

• and understand how to apply the New Habit Formula to convert insight into new, sustainable behaviours.

This 60-90 minute program is based on Michael Bungay Stanier’s new book The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever.

David Allen calls it a “brilliant how­-to manual”, Dan Pink says the book “distills the essentials of coaching” and Brené Brown calls it “practical and inspiring”.

Do More Great Work

People are busy, overcommitted, over connected and overwhelmed. They're working hard, but are they having the impact that they, and you, want them to have? What if they were able to do more of the work that matters, more Great Work? This useful, provocative and highly interactive session is based on Michael Bungay Stanier's best-selling, powerful and strategic productivity tool and Amazon.com best-seller, Do More Great Work. The session is based on a simple but powerful model: Good Work vs. Great Work. Participants work with that model and create new insights and strategies around how they spend their time, what really matters and how they can bring more focus, courage and resilience into the work they do. Participants will leave not only with new insights and new energy but also with a plan to do something different right away.

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