How to avoid the advice trap

How to avoid the advice trap with Michael Bungay Stanier

Why in coaching you don't want to jump in to give advice too soon.

Michael, welcome to the show.

I’m happy to be here. I’m happier we've got an audience reading as well, so thanks to everybody who's reading. It's cool.

Thank you. You've been on the show before. You spoke at my conference, Talent Development Think Tank.

Congratulations on that. That was a huge success.

Thank you so much. Because of you and all the great speakers we had on the team, it was an amazing experience. I'm still riding high from that. For anybody that doesn't know you, they can go back to the previous episode we did where you told a lot of your backstory and how you wrote your sensation, The Coaching Habit, as well as your other books and things you've done. We're going to dive into the new book, The Advice Trap. I do want to start with that conference because it was a big hit. It was amazing from beginning to end for two days. We had many great speakers and facilitators there. You were one of the few that I hadn't seen before but I knew you were going to be good. You knocked my socks off, killed it with the closing keynote. I want to say to you that we finally get a chance to talk again since the event. Thank you for coming and crushing it.

It was my pleasure. Let me ask you this. This is not meant to be stroking my ego but what do you think particularly landed or what did I do that was something that people reading can go, “If I'm speaking, facilitating or closing an event, I could take away and learn from that?”

Keys to a successful keynote

It's a great question and it's something that we can all benefit from, especially anybody reading, watching who facilitates workshops and training and development and all. If I think about your keynote, there are three things that I would boil it down to, number one is preparation. It was clear that you had practiced that keynote. Tell me if I'm wrong, but many times you had it down. I'm not talking about the information but every little minutia moment and how to get people laughing, get them thinking about what's coming next, it was clear that you had studied, you had practiced and that you were well-prepared.

Number two, you brought a lot of energy. People come to these things looking for energy. There are some great speakers that get by on knowledge or whatever it is, but a lot of times people get energy from the speaker. You and I, as speakers, often get energy from the audience. We want to bring that energy and run a lot of that. Number three is something that was well in line with what I wanted to create with the Talent Development Think Tank, which is that you made it highly-engaging and interactive. It was not, “Let's listen to Michael talk for 60 minutes about what he knows about coaching and then let's go back and see if we can apply it.”

From the first moment, you had people up talking to each other, interacting and that lasted for ten minutes. The energy in the room was extremely high. You had other interactions and people coaching each other throughout the experience. It not only created people learning, because I'm someone who runs experiential learning workshop so I believe strongly in the power of experiential learning, but people were forming bonds. They were hugging. They were crying. You do not see that during any other keynotes. Those are my three keys to success and why I think yours was one of the best keynotes I've ever seen.

The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever

Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. I'm going to pick up on the piece of the preparation for it. I'm going to point in a slightly different direction because it is true that it is a well-honed experience. I have done that a fair number of times and I've polished it. I know what lands and I know where the pauses are. It's a piece beyond knowing your script. One of the ways people can hear that is know your script and that's part of the journey. There's a way that you’ve got to get beyond the script to knowing the performance in your bones and knowing the principles of the performance. For me, the piece that allows me to have an impact as a keynote is no matter what happens in my interaction with the audience, I probably know how to manage it through my stagecraft where I stand and how I interact and how I give space to some of the ideas and how I use the flip chart rather than the slide.

We've all seen keynote speakers where they're like, “You're giving us your speech.” It doesn't matter if Godzilla invades the room, you're like, “I'm going to carry on with the speech.” If Godzilla is in the room, I'm like, “We're going to use Godzilla because we can play with that.” That’s a metaphor for something. That’s a disruption that’s useful. It's about knowing your stuff and paradoxically being present to what's happening right in the room and being able to meet that and use that and incorporate that into the experience.

It's important. It also makes me think of the day before your friend, Liz Wiseman, gave the closing keynote on the first day about multipliers. She has a prepared speech. She altered it a little bit for this experience. She and I had a prep call and we talked about who the audience was and what they wanted to get out of it. One of my favorite moments from her talk, I don't think you were in the room for that one but when one of our participants, John Hernandez, who became a friend of mine, mentioned something from her book about taking the pen away from somebody and how managers do that often when they're sharing all their ideas. We're going to get into this topic. She stopped and metaphorically grabbed a pen from me and went on this riff about that and was clearly not prepared. It was fantastic and painted a great picture of what it means how people accidentally diminish their people. It’s my favorite part.

Liz Wiseman, a total legend.

Speaking of Liz Wiseman, I messaged her, “I'm interviewing Michael for the show. Any questions you think I should ask?” She sent me a list of questions to ask you.

That's awesome and terrifying at the same time.

The Coaching Habit and The Advice Trap

Let's start with your latest book. You've written books before. The Coaching Habit was a big sensation. We talked about that in the last interview. You’ve got this book, The Advice Trap, coming out. Tell us about the book. How did this come about? Why did you write it? I know that writing a book is a big challenge but there are many rewards as well.

The Coaching Habit has been this amazing and delightful and unexpected success, close to 750,000 copies out there in the world, which is roughly 740,000 copies more than you'd ever expect even on your good days. I'm like, “This is great.” There have been people in the world who picked up The Coaching Habit and have loved it and have used it right away. They’re like, “I get the seven questions. I get the principles. I get staying curious.” They write me cool emails and I'm like, “Thank you, A) For reading the book. B) For using the book. C) For reaching out and telling me that it's a good book and writing a nice review on Amazon or whatever it might be.”

There's also a whole bunch of people who go, “I don't get your book. I do get your book. I like it but I can't seemingly change my behavior.” I stopped giving as much advice as I do and I stay curious a little bit longer because that's the call to action in that first book, can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly? Lots of people find that difficult. Someone’s like, “Why is that? Why is that hard?” I'm asking you to stay curious a little bit longer, not for a week or a month, just three minutes. How hard is that? It turns out that's hard for some people. It's hard for most people.

With The Advice Trap, I wanted to get into the, “Why is this difficult? Why is this hard?” It turns out that it's not like learning how to use your latest phone where you fiddle around with it and you watch a couple of videos on YouTube going, “How do I know to upload the X phone 12?” or whatever it is that you've got. It is more of a profound challenge to how you show up in the world. It's asking you to step away from stuff that feeds who you are at the moment, the status, the control, the certainty, the authority that comes with going, “I've got answers for you.” Not to mention years of practice into a different way of leading. A leadership that's more based on humility and being humble or that mindfulness, that awareness of what's going on and empathy, a connection with that other person. If the first book’s theme is to stay curious longer, the second book’s theme is to tame your advice monster which is, “Here's what you need to do to fundamentally shift your behavior so that you can use those questions and those tools from the first book.”

I read The Coaching Habit. One of my biggest takeaways was the idea of staying curious longer and taming the advice monster because, especially the longer we go and the more knowledge we accumulate, we want to help people and we want to give them advice. For the benefit of people that haven't read that, what does that do to people? What's the danger of jumping to advice too soon?

Solving the wrong problem is a key danger of jumping in to give advice too soon. Click To Tweet

Dangers of jumping in to give advice too soon

There are a number of dangers. The first two are about inefficiency and they're connected. When you leap in too soon, too fast, too quickly to give advice, let's face it, we do this all the time. As soon as somebody starts talking, an advice monster looms out of the dark and goes, “I'm going to add some value to this conversation because I’ve got ideas. Even though I don't know what's going on or the context of the people involved or the technical specifications, even though I don't have any of that, I could tell you some ideas.” When that happens, the first two things that go wrong are, first of all, you're often busy trying to solve the wrong problem because you fall into this mistaken belief that the first challenge that shows up is the real challenge. Honestly, it's not. It rarely is.

Let's say, miraculously, you somehow figured out what the real challenge is. The second unrelated issue is that your advice isn't nearly as good as you think it is. Most likely, you're offering up slightly crappy advice to solve the wrong problem. You can guess how that’s fundamentally an issue in terms of your life, at work or elsewhere, which is like, “I'm spending a whole bunch of time offering up not good solutions to solve things that aren’t the real problem that we've got going on here.”

The third issue goes deeper. It diminishes both parts of the conversation. If somebody is on the receiving end of advice all the time, what they're getting your messages is that they're not good enough to fix it, solve it, figure this out themselves. You have a steady diminishing of a sense of confidence and competence and autonomy that you want in people. If you're a leader, if you're committed to talent development, and people reading this podcast and this conversation definitely are. That whole "leaping in to try and help people" has the opposite effect. It diminishes them. It doesn't only diminish them, it diminishes you as well.

When you're in that place of giving advice, put aside the fact that you're disempowering people and put aside the fact that you're becoming a bottleneck. The fact that you carry that weight of going, “I'm going to be the person with the answers, with the solutions, who can save the day and save the person.” That is exhausting and it's frustrating and overwhelming at the same time. The caveat we're going to put all of this, Andy, is to say, “There's nothing wrong with advice itself.” The way life works is through an exchange of advice. Let's not think that advice itself is bad. What we're trying to get to is the advice trap, which is when advice-giving is your default response. To be fair, that is true for many of us much of the time.

It's healthy to check yourself, and I've been doing that, not since the book but especially since your keynote at the Think Tank. Multiple times then people have brought situations to me and I stopped myself like, “I know what I think you should do. Michael Bungay Stanier says that you should not jump to advise.” I find that a lot of times they'll say, “No, but I want your advice.” I wanted to ask you about the balance there. It's great to ask their permission first before jumping right to advise because to your point, they may not even want it sometimes. They might want to vent or there may be some deeper issue that you're not even aware of until you dig deeper for it.

If somebody comes to you and goes, “Andy, how do I?” That's the most explicit version of advice-asking you can get, “How do I?” I have a script that I want to offer up to you that might be helpful. It might be helpful for people reading. You want to be helpful. You don't want them to leave the conversation without some progress on whatever the challenges that they're doing, but you also want to break their dependency on coming to you for the answer because even though they're like, “I want the advice from you,” that may not be the bigger win. If you're a leader who's going, “I'm trying to encourage people to figure some stuff out themselves and have a sense of confidence and have a sense of autonomy and have a sense of self-sufficiency.” It doesn't matter that they go, “I want you to tell me the advice.” You're like, “I don't care. That's not how we're going to roll around here. I'm going to help you figure this stuff out yourself.”

At the same time, you don't want to abandon them so they're like, “My boss is useless. She gives me nothing.” What's the fine line? Here's my script. Andy Zooms me up here and goes, “Michael, I got you. It’s brilliant. You are smart. You are clever. You are good looking. You're the perfect person to give me some advice around here.” My advice monster is going, “You're right. Michael is smart and good-looking and clever, wise, perfect.” Andy goes, “Here's my problem. I've got a problem with X. What do you think I should do?” I'm like, “I can feel it pulling me forward to share value and add value and be the smart person in this conversation.”

In my script I go, “Andy, that is a great question and I'll make sure that we get this solved. I have some ideas on how to solve this as you'd expect from a man as good looking and as wise as me. Before I give you my answer, which I will give you, I'm curious to know because I know you've thought about it, what ideas do you already have? Give me one idea that you've already come up with.” You will tell me and I will nod my head, and I’ll look interested. Whether or not I am but I'm going to look interested. I'm not going to judge it, analyze it, dismiss it or even go, “It's brilliant.” I'm going to go, “That's great. What else could you do?” I’m nodding my head and looking interested and I’ll go, “What else could you do?”

At a certain point, I'll go, “This is fantastic. Is there anything else you could do?” Andy was like, “No, I'm tapped out.” I'm like, “This is great. You've already got 4 or 5 options you came up with by yourself. That's brilliant. Let me give you 1 or 2 additional thoughts that your ideas have made me think of.” What you see me doing is going, “I'm going to be more coach-like in this three-minute conversation. I'm going to acknowledge what's going on. I'm going to reassure him that I've got his back. I'm not going to let him leave the conversation before he got some ideas on how to go forward with this.”

I'm looking to spoon feed him my answer because I don't even know what the problem is. I don't know what the best challenge is. I'm going to get you to tell me what you think your ideas are. What that means is when I add my own ideas, they're the ideas that you haven't thought of, that you didn't consider, that I get to use my expertise to go. It's a much more precise useful diagnostic and solution than me riffing off an issue that I don't even fully understand.

I would imagine a lot of times, they're going to come up with the same idea and then you can say, “Those are great ideas. I was thinking the same thing.”

You don’t even need to tell them you are thinking the same thing because they assume you were thinking the same thing. What's brilliant about that is when they come up with a whole bunch of good ideas that you haven't thought of, they're going to give you credit for all of those plus the 1 or 2 that you add in. Ironically, by delaying giving advice, you end up sounding smarter.

The Advice Trap: Ironically, by delaying giving advice you end up sounding smarter.

That's why I brought you on. I knew all this stuff already. I wanted to let you talk about it, let you write the book, give you the opportunity. The other thing I was thinking there too is that when someone comes to your advice and you give them that answer right away, they have one answer and it's like, “Take it or leave it.” There's ego involved. If they don't take it, it's like, “I gave this guy my advice, he wouldn't take it,” versus 1 or 2 of 7 options that they can consider.

Giving the right kind of advice

That insight around ownership is important. As you all know, if you come up with the idea yourself versus having your boss suggest the idea, which one are you more likely to feel engaged with? Which one do you more likely want to do? Which one do you have more buying with? What's the one you came up with by yourself? I'm not sure who it was. It was some ancient philosopher. The worst leaders are the ones who lead from the front. The best leaders are the ones who lead from the back. The best leaders are the ones who people go, “We did it all ourselves.” That's what you're doing here. You're like, “I'm leaving you. You don't even know how I'm facilitating this to make this work.”

I didn't even realize when we set it up, I know you and Liz were friends and we had Liz coming to speak at the Think Tank and then you come in to speak as well, how much your research, teachings and books jive. One of the questions we got when I posted about this on LinkedIn was from Heather Swensgard who was at the Talent Development Think Tank, you asked, “How did The Advice Trap that we fall into aligning with the accidental diminishers from the Multipliers book?” It seems like they aligned well if you think about the idea guy jumping and all those things.

The idea guy is very much the diminisher. I talked about these 3 personas of the advice monster. We've all got the advice monster but there are 3 different personas: tell it, save it, control it. Tell it probably corresponds to the idea guy, which is, “I'm trying to be helpful here.” In fact, what's happening is that sense of sucking the oxygen out of the room. They are always better than your ideas, “My ideas are the ones that will win. My ideas will always trump your ideas.” They accidentally diminish. The save it advice monster is connected to the rescuer, which is, “Let me jump in and keep you all safe and keep you all protected and keep you all unable to learn and grow because I’ve wrapped you up in cotton wool.” The third one, you can make a better connection than I could because you know Liz’s diminisher works better than I do. The third one is around control it. That's that sense of you've always put your fingers in all the pie. You don't let in the chaos and the mess and the possibilities and the opportunities of the future and other people's perspectives. You keep a tight wrap on things to make sure that everything is known all the time. Is there a corresponding diminisher that comes to mind for you on that?

If you look at Liz's research and you go to the five traits or tendencies of diminishers, the number one most common tendency of diminishers is the micromanager. Nobody likes working for a micromanager and yet many people fall into that trap because they're afraid of what might happen if they're not involved.

You have that link with Liz's research. Part of the differences between Liz and my stuff is Liz does amazing research and then brings it to life in her books. I surf other people's amazing research and see other people who have figured this out.

There's value in doing both. Everybody loves Malcolm Gladwell and his books. It seems like he surfs on everybody else's research and turns it into something that we all love reading.

I once did an interview with one of the academics that Gladwell’s idea had taken and popularized in one of his books. It was about how Picasso's early works are more valuable than his later work because he goes through his different phases, because he had a pink version, a blue phase and then another phase. Whereas Matisse painted the same thing over and over again. It was either apples or Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain. His paintings became more and more valuable as he became more masterful in a single domain. Anyway I was like, “I read them at the Gladwell book. That's interesting.” I looked up the researcher and he was surfing off or referencing. This researcher was not happy. Gladwell is a bazillionaire, well-known everywhere and a professor. It's also true that some people are translators and other people are the ones who make the primary connections. Liz happens to be brilliant at both.

We need all those things. I was there in the room while she was seeking your help at the Think Tank. She's working on her latest book.

It is going to be good. I've had a chance to see the research that she's been doing. She's different from me in her creative process because my process is I write and I rewrite a lot. I take some ideas and it's through the rewriting they become polished and lean and useful. Liz works and reworks the research. What happens is you get to research in such a rigorous place and elegant that then it’s basically a question. You’re laying it down and it becomes the book.

It makes sense. I also saw in that room proof that everybody has their strengths and there are things where they can use help. Hers is clearly on the research and finding things that are going to be impactful for us, even naming them in a way that resonates with us. Yet, she seemed she wanted help with, “How do I formulate this in a way that people can grasp onto and get it?” She was singing your praises that you have this native genius in formulating books and putting them in a way and helping others do the same where they're engaging, and there's something that people want to read. I saw that with The Coaching Habit. I'm sure you have that with this book as well.

When we see Liz’s new book coming out whenever that is, everybody reading, keep an eye out for it because the research is compelling. We can say that Liz will take all the credit for all the good ideas because she should, that will be hers. If there's anything that sounds too glib or too slick, I probably came up with that.

The best leaders are the ones who lead from the back. Click To Tweet

Speaking of Liz, one of the questions she sent to me to ask you is, “How does Michael keep himself from giving advice about not giving advice?” This is a real challenge for anyone who has been designated a thought leader on a topic.

Giving advice about not giving advice

The first piece I would keep saying about is there's nothing wrong with advice. It's the default response to giving advice. With this new book coming out, I'm doing quite a lot of podcast interviews and being asked my opinion a lot. Many of them, I turn the table and I get the host to do a bunch of the talking. I will try and engage them in opinion. There is a constant awareness that I do try to hold, which is around people want to hear my opinion about a bunch of stuff. I don't want to not be helpful in that way. I also want the medium to be the message. If I'm preaching balancing advice with an inquiry, I want to try and role model that in the conversations that I have. Thirdly, I also want people to know that I have a skeptical view of my own expertise. I will offer up opinions and offer up advice but also, often I will frame it as, “He's my best guest.” I'm one man with one perspective and may or may not be right. Diminishing the advice isn't quite right but certainly slightly downgrading it so people have a choice as to go, “Is it right or not right? Choose to accept it or not?”

I love that approach. We started off this interview with you turning the tables and asking me a question, which was a great way for me to engage, sing your praises without you doing it yourself. Also, get to show off my own knowledge and expertise on what makes a great talk and that sort of thing. I study it as well. Yours was fantastic, all this stuff you do. I want to get back to the book. We talked about the advice monster, the idea of remaining curious and uncovering the real challenge because if you're given life too soon, you might miss it. What does it mean? I know you talk in the book about sealing the exit. What does it mean to seal the exits?

Sealing the exits

What we're talking about there is neuroscience. I'm no neuroscience expert but I've read a bunch. I know enough to be dangerous. I probably know a little bit more than that. Here's the compelling insight that is helpful to understand anytime you're interacting with another human being. This is whether it's a one-to-one conversation or you're in a team meeting or you're presenting or even if you're in a podcast in this conversation. People's brains, your brain, my brain, everybody's brain, five times a second is scanning the environment and going, “Is it safe here or is it dangerous?” It's unconscious. It's that little lizard brain. It’s that little survival piece, our amygdala going, “Safe or dangerous?” The brain’s number one rule and purpose is to survive. It's like, “Be efficient and survive.” That’s it. Its job is to make sure that you don't kill yourself. That's what it's doing. It can't do that on a conscious level the whole time. It would be helpful to understand one of the criteria that make situations safe for your brain.

In the book, I talked about it briefly in The Coaching Habit and then we expanded a bit in The Advice Trap. We get into this whole concept of TERA, which is an acronym for the four key drivers that make a situation safe for the brain and TERA stands for Tribe, Expectation, Rank and Autonomy. Let me go through those quickly. Tribe, the brain is asking, “Are you with me or are you against me?” Expectation, the brain is going, “Do I know what's about to happen or do I not know?” Rank, the brain is asking, “Are you more important than me or am I more important than you? Who's most important here?” Autonomy, the brain is going, “Do I get any say in this or are you making all the choices for me?” The more tribe-ness you feel, the clearer the expectations, the higher the rank and the more certainty around autonomy, the safer you feel. When you feel safe, you’re more fully engaged.

When you're under threat, you move into fight or flight mode. Your shoulders go up. You hold your breath. Oxygen drains from your prefrontal cortex. You're not as smart. You're not as engaged. You're not as generous. You’re not as able to see the nuances and the ambiguities. When you feel safe, you keep breathing, your shoulders drop. Your brain is full of oxygen. You get to see the best in people, assume positive intent, show up with new and smart ideas. It's helpful if you can create a safe experience for people, be it a podcast host, team manager or a regular conversation with a regular person.

Part of what sealing the exits is about going, “How do you use neuroscience to help you make any interaction, any conversation feel safer so people are more engaged?” Let me ask you a question, Andy. Tribe-ness, you get the concept because I had you make it feel that people are like, “You're with me rather than against me. We're in this together rather than you versus me.” When you think back to the leadership Think Tank and the conference that you and Bennett put on, what are some of the things that you did to increase the sense of tribe-ness?

Increasing sense of tribe

The couple of the biggest things we did were, number one, we painted a picture of an event that was going to be interactive, where people are going to be not just listening but contributing. They felt like they needed to come in and be ready to contribute. Number two, this is the biggest, is that we created a sense of community and connection. Right off the bat we invited people in our network. We made personal invitations. I sent a personal video to almost everybody who bought a ticket to the Think Tank. It created this idea of connection and community. When we were there, we saw people forming real relationships. It was more about friendship and contribution and learning than jockeying to see who the smartest person in the room is or, “Is someone going to catch me not paying attention or not engaging?” It was people supporting each other. It was a phenomenal experience because it was about, for me, personal connection.

When you find that level of specific tactics that drive that interaction, that's where the magic starts to happen. The fact that we're all wearing name tags, the fact that how interactive it was, the fact that you’ve got people up and moving, the fact that you’ve got people to shoot video testimonials, all of these are a way of going, “I feel like it's more of a tribe-ness experience.” You did that at a scale in a conference but in a one-to-one conversation with somebody, you can increase the sense of tribe-ness. It can be everything from little stuff like doing this interview.

The Advice Trap: Empowerment is an act of vulnerability.

You will notice that I'm maintaining eye contact. The reason is that I'm looking at my camera, which is at the top. Actually, Andy is at the bottom. That's where his image appears on my screen. What I'm doing is rather than looking at Andy, which is what I'm naturally inclined to do so I feel like I'm maintaining eye contact with Andy. You notice that as I do that and I'm looking at Andy, it's a bit weird because I'm not connected with the people reading. It's a bit annoying and a bit uncomfortable because I can't see Andy directly anymore. What I find by doing this, I'm looking at the camera here because you get that sense of I'm with you rather than I'm with you but not really.

I'm doing that because this increases the sense of tribe-ness between me and everybody reading and watching this. They're going, “I'm more likely to be staying engaged in this conversation rather than backing away from this conversation.” It's all these little things that make the odds of people staying connected and engaged in your conversation with you a little bit better, which means that you're likely to be a little more efficient, a little more effective and appreciated which over time pays off in terms of big wins.

That is good and powerful. Like you, I have studied a little bit of Neuroscience and Psychology. It's cool that you mentioned tribe-ness. I've read the book, Tribe, by Sebastian Junger. I don't know if you've read that book. The biggest takeaway from that, it's a short one but powerful, is that people empirically value and need human connection and need to be part of something. Throughout evolution and out all of the time, other than the last 50 to 100 years, people have not been able to survive on their own. Psychologically, we have a need to be part of something and to have a human connection. That's why eye contact is important.

That's why in certain cultures you have to make eye contact when you cheer drinks. This goes back to Viking days. They could grab their sword and cut your head off if you're not paying attention. It's all part of that. How do we build trust and build that sense of connection and community? Whether people say they're extroverted, introverted, shy, outgoing, whatever it is, we all need human connection. I was trying to create that at the conference. What I'm hearing is to try to create that safety and that human connection in every interaction. When you're having that one-on-one coaching conversation, not be multitasking, doing other things, but give them your attention and seal the exits.

In The Advice Trap book, there’s a deeper insight around tribe expectation, rank and autonomy and a list of different tactics that people can use around that.

One thing that makes me think of is another question I wanted to ask you in your book. In The Advice Trap, you talk about leadership and coaching and you talk about vulnerability. That's something that is getting increasingly more valuable and powerful for leaders to be able to leverage vulnerability, something they would never do in the past. Can you talk about your perspective on that, why is vulnerability? How does that play into all of this?

The doorway I come at this is around empowerment. If I say to the people reading, the people committed to talent development, who are here in leadership, I go, “What do you think of empowerment? Good thing or bad thing?” I'm sure I'm going to get 98.5% of people going, “Empowerment is a good thing.” The remaining 1.5% didn't understand the question. If they didn't understand the question, they'd also go, “Empowerment is a good thing.” They're like, “How do you do empowerment? How does that work?” Empowerment, in theory, is easy. You're like, “Go for it. Take what you want and be the person you want to be.” In actuality, empowerment means giving up of power and giving up of control and enabling the other person to pick that up and cloak themselves in that. It turns out that empowerment in practice is quite difficult because most of us love the power and the control and privilege that we have. Some of us are born to it.

Andy, you and me, we’re tall, white dudes and that gives us a whole bunch of advantages right away. Other people have worked up to a way of going, “I've learned through diligence and resilience and persistence and the like.” As you have this and you look at people around you that you're looking to lead and influence you're like, “The way I invite them up is I step out of the way and I give them some of the tools that I own and have.”

Empowerment is an act of vulnerability, which is saying, “I'm willing to be a bit naked, be a bit vulnerable as a commitment to serve others and invite them in.” Robert Greenleaf, in the ‘70s, wrote a book called Servant Leadership. It's not what you call a snappy read. It’s long and it's profound because of that idea, which is your job as a leader is to be in service to them. You measure that by having them be better than when you started working with them. That's a powerful insight around how to show up as a leader.

The brain’s number one purpose is to survive. Click To Tweet

I facilitate workshops in companies all over the world and I've studied this, especially the Multipliers concepts. We run a program based on Liz's book and research. We talk about the top trait of diminishers as the micromanager, someone that believes they need to be involved in everything. I often go off on a tangent when I'm running this to talk about, why do you think people do this? For me, it always goes back to fear. Fear that either someone else is going to fail or is going to reflect poorly on you and you might lose your job, or the other side is you develop people, they do well. What if I helped them so much they're better than me? People go, “What do we need Michael anymore for? What do we need Andy anymore? Michael has all the great knowledge, let's get rid of him.” There's so much fear around that. What you're saying, you’re willing to empower them and be vulnerable and give that away and help develop people. More often than not, you're going to be rewarded for that.

Liz’s research backs that up. You'll see that in her new book as well. That's exactly right. That comes back to the three advice monsters: tell it, save it and control it. They are monsters that are about protecting your ego and giving up on that status that's connected to all three of those things. Is an act of vulnerability a fearful act? The rewards can outweigh the risks.

Sometimes in life to be successful, you’ve got to take a risk. I have plenty of other questions and notes here but I want to ask you, is there any other piece of advice that you want to give people or anything that we didn't cover from the book that you want people to know?

Maybe that's an invitation. I've been asked by a bunch of people, “Where do I start with this whole idea of taming my advice monster?” People like the metaphor but they're like, “I don't know what to do with it.” It's not available yet but it will be available after the book launches, there's a short questionnaire that we put together, which is like, “What’s your advice monster?” It’s 21 questions. It's 5 minutes. It's not meant to be rigorously based in science but it does push you down a couple of directions to say, “Which one feels strongest for you? Is it tell it? Is it save it? Is it control it?” Once you know that, you can start building up a repertoire of tactics to help tame your advice monster. The starting point being, I've started noticing your advice monster.

There's a bunch of people reading who will be going, “I get this but I don't know if I'm much of an advice-giver. I'm good.” My bet would be you're not as good as you think you are. Start noticing that tendency you have to leap in, fix it and solve it. You can always justify it because you're being helpful and that's what they asked you to do. That's your job and it's your role. Notice your advice monster. Notice what happens if you slow things down a little bit. Stay curious a little bit longer. That's the start perhaps of an interesting transformation.

I’m going to go back to a question that Liz sent me to ask you and it relates to this which is, “How does Michael tame his own incessant advice or creativity monster?” When you lead a creative team you've got many things going on, many ideas. How do you tame your own advice for creativity monsters?

I would answer like this. I've given up being the CEO of Box of Crayons. It's quite a big transformation for me because I started the company years ago. It's been a company I've been associated with a whole bunch of collateral, branded Box of Crayons. I've got a whole bunch of shirts that are aligned with a Box of Crayons experience. I gave up the role of being CEO and stepped away from being involved in the day-to-day running of it. Part of me is celebrating that. It's amazing. Part of me is mourning that, which is, “This is me trying to figure out who I am.”

What I have found and one of the reasons we did this was the danger of Michael’s, “I like to meddle, I like to have ideas, I'm a bit bored by the everyday running of stuff,” getting in the way and undermining what we're trying to do at Box of Crayons and what Shannon, the new CEO, is leading in terms of change. One answer to Liz’s question is I've set up a little sandbox for me to come and create and do my own stuff where I go, “This is where you get to play. This is where you get to be creative. This is where you get to do new stuff.” You get to do it in a way that we put up protection, so it doesn't damage the things that you don't want it to break.

I had a feeling that's where you were going to go because I remember our conversation in California when we were talking about this. I also thought it was a fantastic story of how you found your new CEO and her rise to taking on that role.

Shannon was completing a PhD in Literature but also working behind the bar of our local pizzeria. She’s turning out to be a brilliant CEO. She knows how to pour a good glass of wine as well. I asked her to come and do a bit of help, mushing The Coaching Habit book. She blossomed, coming in as a part-time marketer and has ended up as full-time CEO.

It’s amazing and such a great story and testament that you can find talent anywhere if they have the talent and the capabilities to develop great talent. Then for you to be able to tame your micromanager tendencies, I hope and think. Let go of the reins a little bit so that you can focus on your strength, which is creating. That's awesome. I certainly appreciate you taking the time to come here and share your stories, creativity, and wisdom. For anybody reading that wants to go find out more and of the book, The Advice Trap is coming out. I know it's available on Amazon and probably plenty of other places. Where else should people go to follow you?

Going to TheAdviceTrap.com is a good place to go because leading up to the launch of the book, we've set up some pre-publication specials. If you buy a book, believe me, I'm grateful for them. We've got a little giveaway for you if you buy a book. If you buy two books, you get access to a unique course that I'm running around a deeper dive into leadership based on humility and empathy and mindfulness. There are other prizes if you buy 5 and 10 and 100 whatever books as well. In general, MBS.works is my new website. That's where a whole bunch of stuff will be showing up.

The Advice Trap: When giving advice, put aside the fact that you are disempowering people.

Get the book. Buy 2, buy 5, buy 10, buy 100, however many you need. I know I'm going to buy at least a couple to get into that course. Michael, this has been awesome. Thank you for coming back on the show. Thanks for speaking at the Talent Development Think Tank. I look forward to staying in touch.

Thanks, Andy.

Cheers.

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Thank you for reading this episode of the show. I am always grateful for everyone who reads, who subscribes and who have left reviews for our podcast on iTunes. By the way, if you haven't done that yet, it would mean the world to me, head on over to iTunes. Take one-minute, write a quick review. It helps our podcast grow and I appreciate your support. As my gift to you, I have created a report of the top five trends impacting talent development. If you haven't grabbed that report yet, you can head on over to AdvantagePerformance.com/trends. You can download my report of the top five trends impacting talent development in 2019, as well as sign up for our newsletter to get updates on everything that is going on. Thanks again for reading.

• Michael Bungay Stanier
• Talent Development Think Tank
• Episode - previous episode with Michael Bungay
• The Coaching Habit
• The Advice Trap
• Multipliers
• Tribe
• Servant Leadership
• Box of Crayons
• Amazon – The Advice Trap book
• TheAdviceTrap.com
• MBS.works
• iTunes – Talent Development Hot Seat
• AdvantagePerformance.com/trends