Strategic leaders stay curious longer
In science-led organizations, the executive burden to move quickly and deliver outcomes often leads us to default to providing answers. Yet as Harvard Business Review observes, “the role of the manager, in short, is becoming that of a coach” (HBR, The Leader as Coach). Coaching is no longer peripheral—it is increasingly seen as a leadership behaviour that improves both execution and culture when practiced consistently.
Still, coaching remains underused in executive settings. It is often perceived as vague, HR-owned, or incompatible with high-stakes decision-making. This session challenges that perception. It introduces a practical, scalable approach to coaching grounded in one simple discipline: stay curious longer, and resist the reflex to offer advice.
Leaders who adopt this behaviour shift how strategy gets implemented. They create space for better thinking, not just faster decisions. This methodology has been applied within science- and mission-driven organizations such as Roche, Genentech, and the Gates Foundation, where the need to balance technical depth with adaptive leadership is constant. At its core are five deceptively simple questions—usable in moments of real-time decision-making, not just formal coaching settings.
Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of The Coaching Habit, the best-selling book on coaching published this century, with over one million copies sold. His work has influenced how managers and executives in complex organizations develop coaching as a day-to-day leadership behavior rather than a specialist intervention.
As founder of Box of Crayons, he has helped large-scale organizations shift from advice-driven to curiosity-led leadership. His frameworks have been adopted across sectors where execution, autonomy, and decision quality must coexist, including biotechnology, healthcare, and global development.
His most recent book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone , shows how to build the Best Possible Relationship with the key people at work. He’s the host of the Change Signal podcast.
Michael was a Rhodes Scholar, and was recently awarded the coaching prize by Thinkers50, “the Oscars of Management.
Why This Matters:
In early-stage life science companies, leadership attention is one of the most constrained resources. With lean, possibly remote teams and complex scientific challenges, the instinct is often to move fast by stepping in, offering answers, troubleshooting, driving execution directly. That approach can be effective in the short term but limiting over time. It narrows the aperture for independent thinking and centralizes too much around the CEO.
Coaching, applied as a tactical leadership move, creates room for sharper judgment and greater team ownership—without slowing execution. It embeds inquiry into high-value moments: portfolio reviews, hiring decisions, clinical trade-offs. Done well, it accelerates alignment by creating space for others to think clearly and act decisively.
McKinsey has found that one of the key growth constraints in innovation-driven companies is the over-functioning of senior leadership and the under-leveraging of emerging decision-makers (McKinsey, The New Possible). This session introduces a practical method to address that—using five questions that prompt clarity, focus, and forward movement in real time.
Questions to reflect on:
Where in my organization could my instinct to advise limit others’ ability to think independently?
Which decisions still rely too heavily on my involvement and why?
What might become possible if I built a stronger habit of curiosity in high-stakes conversations?
What assumptions am I making about what my team needs from me right now?