I like the conversational writing tone of Michael Bungay Stanier, and really appreciated his book The Coaching Habit for distilling his coaching expertise into seven impactful questions.
In his new book, How to Work With (Almost) Anyone, he attempts to take the same approach to building relationships, but it feels clunkier and less intuitive, perhaps because each relationship is different. Because the possibilities are so expansive and contextual, the questions don’t feel as crisp as the ones in the Coaching Habit. Also, the description of how to have the initial “Keystone Conversation” to create a “Best Possible Relationship” feels a little vague, perhaps because it’s knowledge that is learned by doing, not reading.
That being said, there are gems of insight sprinkled throughout this book, and I appreciate the premise that the way to improve our relationships is to consistently communicate about the state of the relationship and what is or isn’t working for us.
For what it’s worth, his five key questions are:
1) “What’s your best?” (what strengths do you bring to the relationship?)
2) “What are your practices and preferences?” (preferred ways of interacting)
3) “What can you learn from successful past relationships?” (how did they show up? how did you show up?)
4) “What can you learn from frustrating past relationships?” (same as previous)
5) “How will you fix it when things go wrong?”
These are great questions to reflect on to improve any relationship, so I appreciate Stanier’s sharing of his approach in this book.
#relationships #coaching #bestpossiblerelationship