“My name is Michael. I can hop. Do you want to see me hop?” That’s how I introduced myself to strangers at the supermarket when I was three. Not much has changed. Here’s the formal bio (best bits at the end).

Michael Bungay Stanier is at the forefront of shaping how organizations see coaching as an essential leadership competency. His book The Coaching Habit is the best-selling coaching book of this century, with over a million copies sold. In 2019, he was named the #1 thought leader in coaching, and he has spoken on coaching from Brené Brown's podcast to the TEDx stage.

Michael founded Box of Crayons, a learning and development company that helps organizations transform from advice-driven to curiosity-led. He currently leads MBS.works, a place where people find the clarity, confidence and community to be a force for change.

En route to today—and these are essential parts of his origin story—Michael knocked himself unconscious as a labourer by hitting himself in the head with a shovel; mastered stagecraft at law school by appearing in a skit called Synchronized Nude Male Modelling; and wrote (and was paid for) a Harlequin Romance-esque story involving a misdelivered letter … and called The Male Delivery. He was a Rhodes Scholar.