“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.” — Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult

Unlock your greatness. Set a goal that matters to you–and to the world

With The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier penned the bestselling coaching book of the century. With The Advice Trap, he showed you how to tame your Advice Monster. Now, he’s here to help you reclaim your ambition and motivation to become your best self, driven with purpose and meaning.

If you are ready to get unstuck, to figure out what you should do that matters, to unlock your best self, to take on a project that you know is yours–you need to know How to Begin.

This is your practical guide to finding the focus and courage to set a Worthy Goal: one that lights you up, compels you to grow, and serves a bigger game by being thrilling, important and daunting.

With humor, compassion, and laser-focused clarity, Bungay Stanier walks you through a tested process to:

– find and refine your Worthy Goal to meets three integral criteria;
– strengthen your Worthy Goal with three tests–and a single word that takes it from Good to Great;
– get clear on your commitment;
– build the resources to cross the threshold and begin;
– how to travel in small steps to ensure that you progress;
– find the four types of people you need to travel with–and the fifth you should consider;
– and a good deal more.

This book is for you if …

You’re at the start of your adult life, and you’re fired up to live a life of meaning and impact.

You’ve achieved things in your career, and it’s now time to “climb the second mountain” and think about legacy.

You’re unhappy with how the world is working right now, and you want to change your part of it for the better.

You’re a coach, and you want to support your clients to be great and do great things.

You’re ambitious, but feel you’ve never been given full permission to find and strive for a Worthy Goal.

It needs you to begin, and start doing something that matters.

***

“Of particular appeal for those of us who instinctively recoil from self-help woo-woo and just want to get on with doing Great Work that leaves the world a bit better than we found it.” — Courtney Hohne, Chief Storyteller for Moonshots, X (formerly Google X)

“A friendly voice and a guiding hand” — Austin Kleon, New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist

“Piercingly frank, funny, gorgeous, vulnerable, and ultimately really damn helpful.” — Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult

“Eminently practical, clever, delightful, and beautifully rendered–a non-fiction Where the Wild Things Are for adult dreamers and doers.” — Whitney Johnson, bestselling author of Smart Growth and Disrupt Yourself

“I loved this book, and that’s coming from a gal who’s never been big on goals.” — Liz Wiseman, New York Times bestselling author of Impact Players and Multipliers

“Powerful, magical and compelling. We don’t need more time, we simply need to decide.” — Seth Godin, author, The Practice

Your happiness and your success depend on your working relationships

The people you manage. How well you work with your boss. The way collaboration happens with colleagues and peers. How you connect with important prospects and key clients.

But the hard truth is this: most of us leave the health and fate of these relationships to chance.

We say “Hi,” exchange pleasantries … and hope for the best.

But every relationship becomes suboptimal at some point, whether it’s a good one that goes off the rails or one that was poor from the start.

Mostly we are resigned to the fact that this is what happens: relationships always get a little broken, or a little stale, or a little worse. C’est la vie, c’est la guerre. Carry on.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

Every working relationship can be better.

This book shows you how to build the best possible relationship.

One conversation. Five questions. Detailed guidance on how to prepare and set the relationship up for success. Key insights on how to maintain the relationship so that it will continue to thrive.

From the author of the phenomenal bestseller The Coaching Habit comes a book of advice…on how to give less advice. Ah, the irony.

The Coaching Habit was an unexpected bestseller: over 750 thousand copies sold so far, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and used by people and organizations around the world. If The Coaching Habit says, “Here are the seven essential questions to be more coach-like,” The Advice Trap is about getting to grips with how to actually change your behaviour so you stay curious a little bit longer.

It sounds like it should be easy, but it’s not. To get there, leading coach and trainer Michael Bungay Stanier offers specific coaching strategies, particularly on how to focus on what matters most. The audiobook of The Advice Trap gives you tools to make your conversations, coaching and otherwise, irresistible.

If you’ve already read The Advice Trap, thank you, and there’s a ton of added value content for you in the audiobook, too. Michael’s invited other voices to respond to what was most useful for them in each of the chapters, so there are different perspectives and less of a monologue of advice.

You’ll hear from:
* Pau Gasol, NBA All-Star
* Dr. Alex Osterwalder, leading management thinker
* Dr. Kofi Hope, co-founder of Monumental
* Feyzi Fatehi, CEO of Corent Technology
* Leanne Hughes, host of the First Time Facilitator podcast
* Dr. Shannon Minifie, CEO of Box of Crayons
* Sandy McIntosh, EVP and CHRO of TELUS
* Tyson Yunkaporta, author of the acclaimed book Sand Talk

In 2019, Michael Bungay Stanier was named the #1 Thought Leader in Coaching, and was short-listed for the coaching award by Thinkers50, the “Oscars of Management.” His work’s been featured in journals such as HBR, Fast Company, Forbes, and Inc., and his company, Box of Crayons, has trained more than 100,000 people, regular managers, leaders, and individual contributors in the tools and mindset required for this essential leadership behaviour: staying curious and being more coach-like. You’ll get all of that wisdom and experience when you listen to The Advice Trap. (And, by the way, thank you in advance for buying it and listening.)

A Page Two Books production