Top 50 Michael Bungay Stanier Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “This is why, in a nutshell, advice is overrated. I can tell you something, and it’s got a limited chance of making its way into your brain’s hippocampus, the region that encodes memory. If I can ask you a question and you generate the answer yourself, the odds increase substantially.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

2. “Five times a second, at an unconscious level, your brain is scanning the environment around you and asking itself: Is it safe here? Or is it dangerous?”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

3. “Coaching should be a daily, informal act, not an occasional, formal “It’s Coaching Time!” event.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

4. “When you build a coaching habit, you can more easily break out of three vicious circles that plague our workplaces: creating overdependence, getting overwhelmed and becoming disconnected.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

5. “One of the laws of change: As soon as you try something new, you’ll get resistance.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

6. “If this were a haiku rather than a book, it would read: Tell less and ask more. Your advice is not as good As you think it is.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

7. “But a Yes is nothing without the No that gives it boundaries and form.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

8. “People don’t really learn when you tell them something. They don’t even really learn when they do something. They start learning, start creating new neural pathways, only when they have a chance to recall and reflect on what just happened.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

9. “Silence is often a measure of success.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

10. “What was most useful for you?”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

11. “Bite your tongue, and don’t fill the silence. I know it will be uncomfortable, and I know it creates space for learning and insight.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

12. “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. LEONARD COHEN.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

13. “Your job as a manager and a leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

14. “Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

15. “Coaching for performance is about addressing and fixing a specific problem or challenge. It’s putting out the fire or building up the fire or banking the fire. It’s everyday stuff, and it’s important and necessary. Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person who’s managing the fire. This conversation is more rare and significantly more powerful.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

16. “The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

17. “But the very nature of doing more Great Work means there will be times when you stumble, times you lose the path, times when you’re hacking through the jungle. You’ll ask yourself if this was the right path in the first place. As various military leaders have pointed out over the years, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

18. “You are remembered for the rules you break. DOUGLAS MACARTHUR.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

19. “Michael Porter’s best, when he said, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

20. “The Strategic Question: If You’re Saying Yes to This, What Are You Saying No To?”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

21. “Suppose that tonight, while you’re sleeping, a miracle happens. When you get up in the morning tomorrow, how will you know that things have suddenly got better?”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

22. “If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news? DOUGLAS ADAMS.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

23. “Coaching for development is about turning the focus from the issue to the person dealing with the issue, the person’ who’s managing the fire.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

24. “Don’t think of it as failure. Think of it as time-released success. ROBERT ORBEN.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

25. “What will you say No to if you’re truly saying Yes to this?”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

26. “What Do You Want?” Research.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

27. “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done. LOU HOLTZ.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

28. “You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

29. “When you’re talking about people, though, you’re not really talking about them. You’re talking about a relationship and, specifically, about what your role is in this relationship that might currently be less than ideal.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

30. “Samuel Beckett put it best: “Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

31. “Stop offering advice with a question mark attached. That doesn’t count as asking a question.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

32. “In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen shares a crucial insight: “You can’t do a project. You can only do the next step.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

33. “Generous silence provides space for the other person to be with their own self, for you to be with them, for presence to show up. It allows them to take a breath. It whispers, “This is an interesting place to be. Let’s hang out here for a moment.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

34. “You want your people to feel that working with you is a place of reward, not risk.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

35. “The simple act of adding “for you” to the end of as many questions as possible is an everyday technique for making conversations more development- than performance-oriented. Yes, the problems still get sorted out. But with “for you” there’s often additional personal insight, and with personal insight comes increased growth and capability.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

36. “Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We live within our habits. So shape the way you want to lead, and build the right coaching habits.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

37. “Even Dilbert mocks coaching – and there’s no surer sign of mainstream success than that.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

38. “Winston Churchill said that “we shape our buildings; and thereafter they shape us.” We.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

39. “To build an effective new habit, you need five essential components: a reason, a trigger, a micro-habit, effective practice, and a p.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

40. “Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

41. “What’s On Your Mind?” Research.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

42. “Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

43. “Resilient systems build in fail-safes so that when something breaks down, the next step to recover is obvious. Make your habit a resilient system.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

44. “Part of what makes the Focus Question work so well are those two final words, “for you.” A 1997 study involving a fairly convoluted series of math problems focused on the impact of having the word “you” as part of a math problem’s description. The researchers found that when the word “you” was present, the questions needed to be repeated fewer times, and the problems were solved in a shorter amount of time and with more accuracy.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

45. “Winston Churchill said that people “occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

46. “Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

47. “John. He’s a nightmare. Never before have I met someone who suffers more acutely from SOS: Shiny Object Syndrome. He’s so scattered that it’s like working with confetti.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

48. “Coming up with ways to fix things feels more comfortable than sitting in the ambiguity of trying to figure out the challenge...”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

49. “Warren Berger, A More Beautiful Question.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier

50. “George Bernard Shaw was on to something years ago when one of his maxims for revolutionaries stated, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

— Michael Bungay Stanier