The Advice Trap Michael Bungay Stanier: How to save others from the perils of your good advice

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About the author

“My name is Michael. I can hop. Do you want to see me hop?”
That’s how Michael introduced himself to bemused strangers at the supermarket when he was three.

Michael Bungay Stanier is at the forefront of shaping how organizations around the world make being coach-like an essential leadership behavior and competency. His book The Coaching Habit is the best-selling coaching book of this century and in 2019, he was named the #1 thought leader in coaching, and was shortlisted for the coaching prize by Thinkers50, the “Oscars of management”.

Michael is the Founder of Box of Crayons. Box of Crayons is a learning and
development company that helps organizations transform from advice-driven to curiosity-led.

Michael is a compelling keynote speaker who combines practicality, humour, and an unprecedented degree of engagement with the audience. He has performed around the world in front of crowds ranging from ten to ten thousand.

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 (and stage fright) at law school by appearing in a skit called Synchronized Nude Male Modelling; and his first paid piece of writing was a Harlequin Romance-esque story involving a mis-delivered letter called … The Male Delivery.

Source: https://www.mbs.works/about

Click here to buy on The Book Depository

https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Advice-Trap/9781989025758/?a_aid=stephsbookshelf 

About the book

The Advice Trap is the much anticipated companion book to the Wall Street Journal bestseller and smash hit, The Coaching Habit. It’s all about how to #TameYourAdviceMonster. And that’s no easy thing.

This book:

• untangles the difference between Easy Change and Hard Change.
• tackles the thorny issue of how to change your behaviour so you stay curious longer.
• provides the tools to make you masterful at focus, and your conversations irresistible.
• introduces a new way of thinking about leadership that rests on curiosity and invites in empathy, mindfulness and humility.
• and so much more!

Plus, it’s all written in a clear, funny and practical manner.

Source: https://www.mbs.works/theadvicetrap

Links

Find out more and download the advice trap resources here:
https://www.mbs.works/theadvicetrap
Listen to Michael giving excellent advice on facilitation on the First Time Facilitator podcast here: https://www.firsttimefacilitator.com/michael-bungay-stanier/

BIG IDEA 1 (6:47) – The perils of advice.

The dysfunctional patterns that repeat themselves between individuals within teams are because of the advice trap. And these bad habits and behaviours and dysfunctional patterns will just keep happening as advice is perpetually carried forward. 

Researchers suggest that advice givers are less likeable and are ineffective at developing others.  Advice is given by people who were not curious enough to find out what the real challenge is with the person they’re giving the advice to.

Falling into the advice trap also limits change because people can’t identify the real challenge themselves. It stops success being scalable because it sticks people into the status quo. 

The trap is keeping on giving advice even though it doesn’t work. 

BIG IDEA 2 (9:24) – The types of advice monster. 

There are personas of the advice monster – tell it, save it, and control it. 

‘Tell it’ loves the spotlight and believes it has all of the answers. 

‘Save it’ is the rescuer, who uses the excuse of being helpful to provide advice – with a ‘faint smell of burning martyr’.

The third persona is ‘control it’, it’s always present and has delusions of grandeur and can’t possibly empower others because then it will lose control.

All these personalities are really saying that ‘you are better than the other person’.  Which is quite a statement, but this should be confronting; every time you give advice, you are suggesting you are better than the other person.

BIG IDEA 3 (11:48) – Stay curious longer. 

The answer is curiosity.

Michael talks about the key principles in the book; be lazy – don’t feel like you have to carry everything and make all the decisions and come up with all the answers; be curious – keep asking questions at all opportunities, and be often – coaching is something that shouldn’t happen only quarterly or annually but it should be your normal way of doing things.

Music By: Almanac Song by Seth Parson

Let’s Connect

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/steph-clarke

Instagram: @stephsbizbookshelf

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