LEADERSHIP LIBRARY
The Advice Trap
Michael Bungay Stanier
IN BRIEF
In this follow up to The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier argues that managers need to tame their “advice monster” to be an effective coach and offers tactical guidance for how to do so..
Key Concepts
Taming the Advice Monster requires the hard change of approaching management in a different way
“You’ve likely given well-considered and useful advice to someone in the last day or two. But your advice works less well, and more often than you’d think, for two immediate reasons. 1. You’re solving the wrong problem ...2. You’re proposing a mediocre solution” (p. 5)
“Hard Change is more difficult because the Easy Change solutions, frustratingly, just don’t work. You’ve tried them, then tried them again. Downloading the app doesn’t work. You just end up with a lot of unused apps. You actually need to install a new operating system.” (p. 22)
“Hard Change involves saying no to some of what’s worked so far for Present You. Saying no now enables you to say yes to the promise of future rewards. You’re playing a longer-term, harder, bigger game, with a constant temptation to opt out for a short-term win. You’re potentially changing your beliefs and values, roles and relationships, and how you show up in the world.” (p. 24)
The Advice Monster lives because of our need to have an answer, save others, and be in control
“The loudest and most obvious persona the Advice Monster plays is Tell-It. Tell-It is here to convince you that you were hired to have the answer; if you don’t have the answer, you’ve failed in your job. Having the answer is the only real way for you to add value, and the only way you’ll be recognized as a success.” (p. 33)
“Save-It’s tactic is to take you aside and explain, earnestly, that if it wasn’t for you holding it all together, everything would fail.” (p. 34)
“The final persona your Advice Monster likes to play is Control-It. This is the most tricksy of the three. It’s a backroom operator, and with a tone of gentle authority will assure you that the only way to succeed is to stay in control at all times.” (p. 36)
Quotables
“Future You lives and leads from a place that is more empathetic, more mindful, and more humble. These qualities don’t automatically make you nicer or more compassionate (although I think they often do). They make you smarter, more human, and more effective.” (p. 52)
“Should you ask a rhetorical question? Does a one-legged duck swim in circles? I’m not sure either. But in any case, don’t ask ‘fake questions’ that already have the answer built in, such as ‘Have you thought of...?’ and ‘Did you consider...?’ Those aren’t questions—they’re advice with a question mark tacked on.” (p. 73)
“You can be known as the person who helps articulate the critical issue or as the person who provides hasty answers to solve the wrong problem. Which would you prefer? Exactly. From now on, frame your role as helping to find the real challenge.” (p. 85)
“First, the biggest problem we’re facing is lack of curiosity, not excess. If you err on the side of too many AWEs, it’s not terrible.” (p. 108)
“Samuel Beckett put it succinctly enough, in his bleak way: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’” (p. 178)
“The first way to go deep is to become generous with silence.” (p. 179)
“When the buck actually stops with you—and make sure that’s true, not just Control-It telling you what you want to hear—then make the call that’s required.” (p. 207)
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