THE COACHING HABIT
More Coach-Like Leadership
According to our research with The Harris Poll, 88% of business leaders say the skills it takes to lead are always evolving and 95% say being a better leader matters to their career satisfaction.
Coach-Like Curiosity delivers what leaders are asking for - and what organizations need most right now.
Staying curious longer and rushing to advice and action more slowly is a skill that positively impacts some of the toughest workplace challenges. Leaders who stay curious longer create teams that are more engaged, more self-sufficient, and better at identifying and solving the right problems. The benefits show up quickly: better conversations, braver decisions, and a culture that’s more efficient and more resilient.
Join the 132,000+ people putting Coach-Like Curiosity to work to strengthen their organizations every day.
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Over 1,000,000 copies sold
Box of Crayon’s flagship training program is inspired by the best-selling book, The Coaching Habit®. It's been implemented at top organizations around the world.
Learning in Action
Immediate Applications
The Coaching Habit isn't a theoretical exploration of what it means to be coach-like. It's a place to bring real workplace problems and get practical tools to solve them. This isn't about taking people out of their day to learn, it's about taking their day into the learning.
Psychological Safety
Coach-like curiosity is one of the skills that contributes to a leader's ability to create psychological safety. Learning how to make space for questions, slow down the rush to judgement, and listen to what people need in order to take risks and move work forward is essential to the success of every person on the team.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict is unavoidable. Smart people who care about their work will inevitably disagree. Complex projects run into challenges and delays that create tension and pressure. The skill of coach-like curiosity helps individuals evaluate their own roles and helps everyone learn how to listen to diffuse and resolve conflict faster.
Problem Solving
Improving problem solving skill starts with learning how to identify the root challenge. Far too often, energy is dedicated in the wrong direction. Coach-like curiosity slows down the rush to action long enough to identify the real challenge so the rest of the problem solving process uses resources and capacity better.
Openness to Change
Coach-like curiosity is a tool that individuals can use to prepare themselves for change as well as to support the doubts and fears that come up in the change process. When people feel prepared, they are more open to risk, to change, and to stick with something new.
Cross Functional Collaboration
Great teams have their own shorthands and styles, it's what connects people and helps them move quickly together. Coach-like curiosity is the skill that all teams can tap into to make cross-functional communication easier and more effective.
Innovative Thinking
Curiosity is a driver of discovery. Coach-like curiosity improves innovation efforts by helping people slow down and identify the real challenge, recognize the person or people impacted, and to learn how to listen to that feedback as part of the innovation process.
Micromanagement
Coach-Like Curiosity is the fastest path to transforming micromanagers into coach-like managers. Micromanagement is a symptom of many common problems like overwhelm, lack of leadership experience, and broken trust. It won't get solved until managers have a different tool to use. That's where the systematic parts of The Coaching Habit make a real difference.
Clarity
About five hours a week is lost to trying to decode communications from managers and co-workers. Coach-Like Curiosity tackles this from a few directions starting with helping people understand the real challenge so they can communicate it. Then we teach people how to ask questions and how to be open to being asked questions.
DIVE INTO Coach-like Curiosity
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The specific business skill we teach is called Coach-Like Curiosity. It blends the power of curiosity with elements of coaching to help people connect and better understand each other - and the work they're doing. -
You don’t have to be a coach to be coach-like. Everyone can learn how to use coach-like behaviors into the workplace. It's a skill that can be used to resolve tensions, increase psychological safety, and to identify and overcome challenges faster. -
Coach-like curiosity centers people. It's about communication in service to one another. It's a Relational Curiosity skill that helps everyone contribute to improving performance because everyone can learn how to stay curious a little longer.
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From the C-Suite to people managers to customer-centric roles, coach-like curiosity improves individuals in a way that strengthens the whole organization.
OUR DIFFERENCE
The Benefits of Coach-Like Curiosity
We help learners across the entire organization develop their own coach-like curiosity habit. From the C-Suite to people managers to customer-centric roles, coach-like curiosity is a skill that improves individuals in a way that strengthens the whole organization.
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Understand coach-like curiosity and how to apply it
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Recognize and manage the Advice Monster Habit
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Learn our Seven Essential Questions and how to use them
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Identify when and how to apply Coach-Like Curiosity in key moments
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Adopt a new approach to creating and maintaining habits
Hear Directly from Companies using The Coaching Habit
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As a fast-growing technology company, the desire to move quickly can mean a default to leading by telling and giving advice. We now have a thousand employees who understand the power of slowing down the rush to advice, and staying curious long enough to reflect on root challenges—and how important this practice can be for deepening understanding and relationships with others.
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The interactive workshops have been very effective in helping us create a coaching culture. Not only are they educational, they are also engaging. The concepts are simple and practical, and the format has you immediately practicing and applying the learning. We’ve had great feedback from participants and are now working to scale the concepts broadly across the organization.
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We collaborated to co-design a coaching program that helps all of our team members show up with curiosity. It’s the backbone of our leadership development programming, and it’s highly effective. We realized a 459 percent return on investment, with team members reporting a strong sense of empowerment and time savings by using a coach-like approach.
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The Coaching Habit has made a huge impact on my organization. Participants have reported a change in their leadership approach, shifting from directive to inquiry-based, due to what they learned in the program. The course is thoughtfully structured, providing excellent scaffolding to embed the learning. This design is exceptionally well-executed, and I say this as a picky instructional designer!
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The training certification program delivered by BOC was best in class! The blended learning experience delivered by my master trainer helped me learn, practice and apply the techniques that supported the delivery of over 40 successful workshops!
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The Coaching Habit is one of my favorite trainings to teach and has made a big difference in how our leaders work with their employees! Our employees love how interactive the training is and how impactful the questions can be in conversations with their peers and employees. Every time in a meeting when I hear a leader say “what’s on your mind?” I am reminded of the effectiveness of the resources provided. The Coaching Habit has given us an easy and effective way to introduce a curiosity mindset company-wide.
Available Learning Formats
With different learning formats and learner-specific options, The Coaching Habit® meets the needs of complex organizations.
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Learning Journeys
Coach-Like Curiosity for Multiple Roles
Time varies by learners
Digital core, pre- and post-assessments, and real-world practice prompts.
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On Demand
Coach-Like Curiosity for People Managers
107 minutes total seat time
Videos, exercises, and workplace scenarios
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On Demand
Coach-Like Curiosity for Individual Contributors81 minutes total seat time
Videos, exercises, and workplace scenarios
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On Demand
Customer Focused Communication
30 minutes total seat time
Videos, exercises, and workplace scenarios
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Virtual
Coach-Like Curiosity6 hours of learning via video conference
Blend of facilitated, social, and self-directed learning -
In Person
Coach-Like Curiosity6 hours of face to face learning
Blend of facilitated, social, and self-directed learning -
Virtual Coach-Like Curiosity for Senior Leaders
4 hours of learning via video conference
Themes specific to senior leadership challenges and senior leadership team engagement and communication -
In Person Coach-Like Curiosity for Senior Leaders
4 hours of face to face learning
Themes specific to senior leadership challenges and senior leadership team engagement and communication
We all have an Advice Monster Habit.
Get a head start on one of the key learning outcomes of The Coaching Habit. Understanding your Advice Monster Habit is the first step in making the change to coach-like curiosity.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Each learning format has its own pricing model. Our sales team will work with you to create the best approach for your budget.
We offer train-the-trainer accreditation for in-house facilitators. If you're interested in learning more, please reach out to our sales team.
We host monthly Interactive Previews that cover all of our learning experiences and formats. Our team can also demo our Learning Journeys and On Demand experiences via videoconference.
We offer a pilot option for clients looking to complete a proof of concept as part of an anticipated larger engagement. We work closely with your team to create a pilot experience that supports your learning goals.
Our Learning Journeys are customizable and have a range of add on options. If you'd like to discuss other licensing options, our sales team can work with you on that.
You can make a bulk book purchase here. Discounted pricing based on the quantity of books you’re ordering is available.
The experience is heavily based on The Coaching Habit but not identical. We've curated the best from the book and enriched it with new intellectual property leading to a deeper application of coach-like curiosity throughout your day.
Our experiences work equally well for both scenarios. We’ll work with you to decide what option best suits your needs. Participating in intact teams can foster camaraderie while mixed groups can offer diverse perspectives. Some companies find value in offering a mix of both approaches — intact teams for cohesion and mixed groups for broader insights. The choice depends on your specific objectives and preferences.
The 'best' feedback scores often align with personalized learning experiences. Individuals tend to rate their experience highly when provided with a learning format tailored to their needs and organizational contexts. We prioritize understanding your organization in order to choose the learning format(s) that will best suit your needs.
If you're interested in multiple formats, our Learning Journeys are the right place to start. You can build your own experience using our Add Ons.
Yes, our Learning Journeys are built with sustainment as one of their key components.
TWO MINUTE CASE STUDY
Curiosity: The Backbone of Leadership Development
Learn how TELUS partnered with Box of Crayons to develop the potential of people at every level, every day.
TELUS is a global market leader in communications and technology with $16 billion in annual revenue and 15.2 million customer connections spanning wireless, data, IP, voice, television, entertainment, video and security, healthcare, and agriculture. The services TELUS offers help people and, businesses thrive in a constantly changing digital environment. TELUS engaged Box of Crayons as their learning partner to make the skill of coach-like curiosity a habit across their entire organization as part of a broader change initiative around performance development.
Their objectives were to completely reimagine performance development by providing team members with direction and coaching, emphasizing forward-thinking developmental coaching instead of retrospective performance evaluation. The idea behind this approach was to create a flexible and simple goal-setting process that focuses on a maximum of five quarterly goals, including one for personal development, and allows for feedback collection from anyone in the organization. In addition, TELUS wanted to build a strong coaching culture that would be used in daily interactions and in performance.
Partnership Results
- 459% return on investment
- 97% of participants said that, as a result of experiencing Box of Crayons’ programs, they’d be more focused and effective at work
- 89% of leaders reported that they are now generating tactics to break patterns in conversations that create barriers to curiosity and coach-like conversations
- 70% reported implementing habits to support more coach-like conversations with their teams
- Over 80% noted a significant difference in smarter collaboration, employee engagement, career conversations and the understanding of the value of coach-like curiosity
“Everyone has a role to play in creating a coaching culture, and we’re focused on unlocking the potential of people at every level, every day, to generate new and better ideas for our company, customers, and communities.
A few years ago, we set out to enhance our coaching culture. While our team is exceptional at developing signature initiatives, we embraced a growth mindset and asked ourselves: “And, what else?” We chose Box of Crayons because they ask the very same question.
We collaborated to co-design a coaching program that helps all of our team members show up with curiosity. It’s the backbone of our leadership development programming, and it’s highly effective. We realized a 459% return on investment, with team members reporting a strong sense of empowerment and time savings by using a coach-like approach.
Box of Crayons delivered and did it while having fun. They’re talented, and true partners.”
– Sandy McIntosh, Executive Vice-president, People & Culture and CHRO, TELUS
Have more questions? Great!
You're practicing curiosity already!