Michael Bungay Stanier

speaker

505 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 5 Jun

Michael Bungay Stanier’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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The One You Feed | Personal Growth, Emotional Resilience & Purpose · How to Tame Your Advice Monster and Become a Better Listener | Michael Bungay Stanier · 5 Jun 2026 podcast

So celebrate that.

Then there are just some basics around questions that are good to know, which is it's good to know just the difference between an open question and a closed question.

And lots of people listening already know this, but a closed question typically will get an answer yes or no or maybe or I don't know or I don't care.

But it's kind of a question that often leads to focusing of the conversation.

And they have a place.

There's a way that a closed question can create understanding or create commitment.

So it's not that you should never use closed questions.

But if you're trying to get a conversation rolling, a closed question will typically have you doing a lot of the work.

And an open question, you know, it requires a person to give you more than a one or a two word answer.

So that's helpful.

The second kind of basic really essential to understand is shorter questions tend to be better than longer questions.

I'm in trouble.

Yeah.

Exactly.

You and your polysyllabic approach to life.

The more cognitive lifting somebody has to do to understand your question, the harder it is for them to come up with a good answer.

So one of the things that I see people do is sometimes they feel the need to set context, create a big buildup.

explain where they went on their family vacation two years ago as part of the lead into it, and eventually get to a question.

And quite often, I mean, I sort of say, look, pretend you're James Bond.

In a James Bond movie, the action starts the first second the movie starts.

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