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Welcome back to House of Leadership. We explore what it really takes to grow and lead successfully in a fast-paced, high-performance environment.
We publish every Thursday and Sunday.
Thursdays are deep and tactical, practical frameworks, real examples, and leadership tools you can use immediately. Sundays are calm and reflective, with one book, one visual, and one question to sharpen how you think. Thursday builds your capability; Sunday builds your perspective.
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What did we learn this week?
You Deserve a Better Intranet
A modern intranet like Haystack streamlines workplace operations by centralizing knowledge, communication, and resources.
Employees will no longer waste time hunting through email chains or scattered folders—they can find what they need in seconds.
With customizable templates, clear layouts, and multimedia capabilities, teams can create and share content that is easy to read, navigate, and reference. Haystack turns your intranet into an interactive, engaging resource hub that supports collaboration and knowledge retention.
Upgrading your intranet boosts efficiency across departments, reduces duplicated work, and ensures consistent, accurate information is accessible to everyone. Employees stay informed, aligned, and empowered, while leadership gains visibility into engagement and usage.
Haystack transforms your intranet from a static repository into a dynamic platform that drives productivity, connection, and culture.
📘 The Coaching Habit – Michael Bungay Stanier
The Big Idea
Most managers talk too much.
They jump in.
They solve.
They rescue.
They advise.
And in doing so, they accidentally create dependency.
The Coaching Habit argues something radically simple:
Stay curious a little longer.
Rush to action and advice a little more slowly.
Coaching isn’t a formal process.
It’s not a performance review.
It’s not a 60-minute framework.
It’s a daily habit of asking better questions.
Less advice.
More curiosity.
Better outcomes.
Advice Is Overrated
When someone brings you a problem, your brain lights up:
“I know the answer.”
So you tell them.
It feels efficient.
It feels helpful.
It feels like leadership.
But it creates two issues:
You become the bottleneck
They stop thinking for themselves
Advice solves today’s issue.
Coaching builds tomorrow’s capability.
The Seven Essential Questions
Stanier distills coaching into seven powerful questions.
Not complex.
Not fluffy.
Just sharp and useful.
1. The Kickstart Question
“What’s on your mind?”
Simple. Open. Expansive.
It creates space without steering.
2. The AWE Question
“And what else?”
The most powerful coaching question in the book.
People rarely say the real issue first.
“And what else?” cuts deeper.
It prevents you from solving the wrong problem.
3. The Focus Question
“What’s the real challenge here for you?”
This shifts from surface issue → ownership.
It makes it personal.
It makes it real.
4. The Foundation Question
“What do you want?”
Clarity reduces drama.
Often conflict or stress exists because wants are unspoken.
5. The Lazy Question
“How can I help?”
Direct. Honest. Efficient.
Instead of guessing what support looks like.
6. The Strategic Question
“If you’re saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?”
Focus requires sacrifice.
Every yes costs something.
Leaders forget this.
7. The Learning Question
“What was most useful for you?”
Reflection locks in growth.
Without reflection, conversations evaporate.
Tame the Advice Monster
Stanier names the internal urge to fix everything:
The Advice Monster.
It whispers:
“You’ve seen this before.”
“Just tell them what to do.”
“This will be quicker.”
It feels productive.
But it’s ego dressed up as efficiency.
Great leaders don’t kill the Advice Monster.
They manage it.
Coaching as a Daily Micro-Habit
This isn’t executive coaching theory.
It’s hallway conversations.
Slack messages.
1:1s.
Quick check-ins.
You don’t need more time.
You need better questions.
Five minutes of curiosity beats 45 minutes of direction.
The Shift
The deeper message of the book:
Stop being the hero.
Start building heroes.
When you answer every question, you become indispensable.
When you ask better questions, you make others indispensable.
That’s scalable leadership.
The Signal for This Week
Here’s the quiet signal from The Coaching Habit:
The quality of your leadership is determined by the quality of your questions.
If your team relies on you too much,
it might not be a capability issue.
It might be a curiosity issue.
This week, in your next problem-solving conversation:
Ask one more question before giving advice.
Then ask:
“And what else?”
Let the silence do the heavy lifting.
Coaching compounds.
Just like culture.
🗞️ Things worth checking out
Stop guessing. Start scaling.
See the top-performing Facebook ads in your niche and replicate them using AI. Gethookd shows you what’s actually working so you can increase ROI and scale ad spend with confidence.
🧠 One visual to sit with
❓ One Question
In your next conversation:
Pause.
Ask one more question.
Then say, “And what else?”