Book Review: The Advice Trap by Michael Bungay Stanier

Best-selling author Michael Bungay Stanier wastes no time getting to the point in his latest book, "The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever." Whereas business authors often rely on circuitous, indirect reasoning in an attempt to generalize their ideas to as broad an audience as possible, Michael Bungay Stanier jumps right to it: "Your advice doesn't work."

Why the crusade against giving advice? Whether you're a Fortune 500 CEO, a middle manager at a startup, or just starting your career in a frontline position, you likely give advice to friends, to coworkers, to customers. But the advice doesn't work. It doesn't solve problems. It doesn't make our peers, friends, and colleagues wiser, more productive, more autonomous. Not only does the advice not work, but it's also adversely affecting both your performance and the performance of your team. To Bungay Stanier, our propensity to dole out advice freely and excessively is a leading cause of dysfunction within our organizations, one that renders us less engaged, less autonomous, and less happy. Our cultural inclination to sling advice leads to a collective sense of learned helplessness.

For Bungay Stanier, the act of jumping to advice is a tacit statement that we, the advice giver, are "better than the other person." When you give advice, "You're saying they're not smart enough, wise enough, resilient enough, capable enough, competent enough, generous enough, trustworthy enough. You're saying that they're not good enough." Since we don't fully understand the situation of those to whom we are giving advice, since we don't appreciate their context and the scope of the problems, our advice is weak and flimsy at best, condescending at worst. Regardless of intention, our advice is rarely put into practice.

Bungay Stanier argues that our whole tendency to launch into advice-giving comes from our innate need to exert control over a situation. We develop advice-giving habits and even advice-giving cravings. Situating advice in the frameworks of "Atomic Habits" and "The Power of Habit," the book argues that we become wired for advice-giving in response to ambiguity or distress, which in turn triggers a dopamine release leading to repeated advice-giving.

As one might expect from the author of "The Coaching Habit," this book proposes a remedy that relies on coaching. The artful application of seven coaching questions empowers our colleagues to solve problems for themselves, making it all the more likely that they'll actually solve the problem. But it's insufficient to know about these seven questions. What's needed instead is the establishment of a new habit, a new way of relating to our peers, friends, and family. For Bungay Stanier, that new habit is being "coach-like." Not hiring a professional coach, not seeking out coaching training, but gradually integrating "coach-like" behaviors into our practices. Coach-like behaviors include asking questions, staying curious, being comfortable with silence, and clarifying ambiguity. None of these comes easily in a fast-paced, advice-prone culture. But when we find opportunities to be intentional in applying them, we see that they are intrinsically rewarding. And we observe that they actually solve problems, they actually get things done.

That's why "The Advice Trap" is an essential follow-up to "The Coaching Habit," because it shows us what we're up against when we seek to be more coach-like. In turn, it gives us the tools to break through this resistance, the tactics we need to establish a culture of coaches.

Beyond the insightful content, "The Advice Trap" is a fun, laugh-out-loud read. It's the rare business book that you'll actually want to read and apply right away, it's the rare coaching text that you'll want to devour all at once. Through sharp wit, well-used brevity, and innovative type-setting, "The Advice Trap" can easily be read in one or two sittings, just as it can be re-read in brief moments between meetings, when faced with the demands of an uncertain world, when we set an intention to be more coach-like.

Build coaching skills with "nudges"

This post is the fifth in the Training in Turbulence series, which explores how to develop talent amidst the disruption and volatility of the COVID-19 pandemic. Talent developers will find that the concept of nudges pairs well with micro-learning, as described in the last post!

From programs to systems

Before COVID-19, talent developers taught coaching skills in “macro-learning” contexts that required considerable resources, particularly of that increasingly-important resource: employee time. As this resource wanes amidst economic disruption, talent developers have to develop alternative strategies for building core skills. One such strategy, that of behavioral nudges, doesn’t just require “less” of learner’s time. It requires no time investment whatsoever.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein suggest in their book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" that “nudges” are strategic configurations of the “choice architecture” surrounding behaviors. Those who want to use nudges to improve the performance of a skill, say coaching, should seek to influence the “physical, social, and psychological aspects of the contexts that influence and in which our choices take place – in ways that promote a more preferred behavior rather than obstruct it.” If we want to develop coach-like behaviors through nudges, we need to stop managing learning programs - and start acting on organizational systems.

Getting started with nudges

At first, this may seem daunting. Many of us were educated in the traditions of cognitivism or other theories of education, trained to teach primarily through the well-sequenced delivery of high-quality content. In support of this, we learned to work within a system. We didn’t learn to be architects of the system itself. If we want to build nudges, we need to give ourselves the time and patience to learn this new tactic. Still, I believe that everyone in this profession can affect positive outcomes through nudges, regardless of our level of experience or expertise with this type of intervention.

Let’s start with the basics. To create nudges that assist in the building of coaching skills, we need an awareness of when, where, and why coaching should ideally take place within our organization. When we isolate these variables, we begin to understand the best place to deploy a nudge.

Since workplace coaching originated with formal “sessions,” team meetings and 1:1s are the natural places to begin. Team meetings often have a recurring cadence, they occur in conference or huddle rooms, and they provide an opportunity for coaching because they are the typical setting for performance-oriented conversations.

When considering the physical, social, and psychological aspects of team meetings and 1:1s, perhaps we are drawn to that physical (or virtual) organizing tactic that guides nearly all of these interactions: meeting agendas. Meeting agendas are often “topical,” in that they sequence a list of items for discussion. It is here that we can apply a simple nudge to encourage coaching behaviors by writing each agenda item not as a topic, but as a question. Then, below each question, we might include 2-3 coaching questions. For example, let’s say a manager and an employee are reviewing candidate resumes in search of a third member to add to their team. Rather than writing “candidate selection” or “new employee hiring” atop the agenda, the manager can add the question: “What next steps must we take in our hiring process?” Below this question, they add three popular, practical coaching questions: “What do we know to be true about each candidate? How can we separate the facts from our judgments? And if we say yes to this candidate, what are we saying no to?” By formatting meeting agendas in such a way, the manager nudges their meetings away from reporting sessions and towards coaching opportunities.

But coaching as a habit cannot be limited to team meetings and 1:1s. Nudges can make us more likely to practice coaching on a peer-to-peer basis, but only if embedded in the environments where our peer-to-peer coaching should occur. My background is in technology, and currently, I work for Zendesk, a company that builds software for customer interactions. Customer service conversations in the form of “tickets” form the most common use case for this software. Customer service agents or salespeople can work out of Zendesk to respond to emails, serve chats, and take phone calls. Zendesk then logs the conversation in a ticket that facilitates further communication. Working at Zendesk, it’s clear to me that many of our customers deal with highly complex questions from their clients. When evaluating this scenario for nudges, we again want to consider the when, where, and why. In this context, our “when” includes the moment before a new hire submits a response to a customer. Our “where” is the software user interface in which customer support agents work. We can deploy a nudge in this context to accelerate new agents in their ability to support customers.

Nudges and technology

Let’s use this example in the context of an online store that uses Zendesk to field questions ranging from refunds and billing to product troubleshooting and issue resolution. If that online store needed a fast way to bring their new hires up to speed, they could pair a new agent with a tenured mentor for 1:1 assistance on ticket responses. That’s where the nudge comes in. The online store could configure Zendesk in such a way that the new hire’s replies are automatically sent to their mentor for feedback and coaching before they are sent to the customer. The store could even configure Zendesk in such a way that the mentor could initiate a coaching dialogue based on the new hire’s responses, giving the new hire a chance to revise their answer before sending it out to the customer. By configuring a software application to initiate a coaching dialogue automatically, a talent developer nudges their organization towards peer-to-peer coaching. By the way, such a use case is quite common amongst Zendesk’s customers - it can be configured with a simple and widely-used feature known as “macros.”

Accustomed to a world of macro-learning, talent developers tend to think too broadly about many things within their domain. Shifting from day or week-long courses to small systems-level details is an abrupt change of pace. We must remain focused on the least amount of work that we could do to make it easier for team members to engage in a target behavior - in this case, coaching.

For a nudge to achieve optimal results, it should require little work by the talent developer, and next to no overhead or administrative obligation. Similarly, team members should hardly be aware that the nudge exists at all. That’s why low-tech nudges are not only more efficient to implement than high-tech nudges - they’re often more effective! Ultimately, this is why nudges matter for training in turbulence. They combine little effort on the part of the trainer and the learner - to achieve lasting improvements to recession-ready skillsets.

Low-tech and high-tech coaching nudges

Training in Turbulence: How to Train Coaches in a Crisis

This is the fourth post in "Training in Turbulence," a series on workplace training during the COVID-19 crisis.

Before COVID-19, talent developers established formalized training programs aimed at teaching coaching behaviors. These included certificates and certifications, which combined considerable classroom time with contextual learning.

Such programs will always be available but may be less accessible during a downturn due to cost and time constraints. Yet even before the pandemic, such programs were deployed mostly to support the development of formal coaching engagements conducted by coaching practitioners. Talent developers should maintain such programs when appropriate. But this time of disruption demands a new direction. With fewer opportunities for formal programming, the learning and development profession must turn to micro-learning to establish a widespread coaching culture.

My backyard shed required coaching from my father-in-law and countless 5-minute YouTube tutorials

Micro-learning myth busting

There are a few widespread misconceptions about micro-learning that we first ought to address. Due to explosive growth in micro-learning platforms, many L&D professionals mistakenly think that micro-learning requires complex technology. Perhaps this sentiment comes from digital advertising. When one does a Google search for micro-learning, they will find many results for technology providers. They will not find many results regarding deploying a micro-learning strategy in a low-tech context. From TalentCards to mLevel, Axonify to DuoLingo, these technologies exist at all price points, levels of customization, and intended applications. And while these technologies are indeed useful in supporting micro-learning, particularly for their ability to gamify learner experience and provide valuable analytics, they remain more of a “nice-to-have” than a concrete prerequisite.

Here, it’s useful to refer back to the Association for Talent Development’s definition of micro-learning as that which is effective, efficient, and short. Micro-learning requires a commitment to efficiency, effectiveness, and above all, brevity. Technology can facilitate these commitments - but all are feasible without technological sophistication or even a technical solution. Email and Slack can be just as useful in pushing micro-learning as a high-end micro-learning platform. So can a well-placed bulletin board post or flyer in an elevator. My team at Zendesk has used Slack to publish nearly all of the micro-learning pieces we have shipped to our stakeholders. I once worked with a team at Google that published micro-learning articles on time management next to bathroom mirrors - to promote handwashing and to facilitate learning during the 20+ seconds we (hopefully) all spend scrubbing.

Many also believe that micro-learning requires complicated designs and time-intensive graphics, that it’s more the domain of game developers than trainers. While it is true that some micro-learning lends itself to gamification or rich-media simulations, effective micro-learning can be as simple as plain text on a printed piece of paper (if presented to the right audience in the proper context). Anyone with access to a basic suite of business tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Office can design great micro-learning. The development and delivery of the material matter far more than the flashiness of the design.

Others maintain that micro-learning is ineffective at achieving complex learning objectives. Perhaps we derive this sentiment from our broad familiarity with "macro-learning," including courses, workshops, boot camps, and conferences. But new theories of neuroscience suggest that "macro-learning" is most effective at the onset of a career, or while onboarding into a new role. The more experience we acquire, we need more opportunities to "repeat and use" the knowledge we have stored, and more opportunities putting that knowledge into practice. Micro-learning fundamentally works towards the goals of repetition, utilization, and application. It comes as no surprise that the research continues to prove the effectiveness of this tactic. In a study of its efficacy, TrainingIndustry.com concluded that "Microlearning not only mitigates cognitive overload but also supports long-term retention."

Learning to be a coach with micro-learning

Putting aside these sentiments, let’s turn to how we can use micro-learning to support the development of coaching habits at all levels of the organization. We’ll assume that any organization has two related yet still distinctive audiences for coaching content.

On one side, we have staff members and individual contributors who must learn the skills of peer-to-peer coaching. On the other, we have managers and executives. While we expect that both groups need to be fluent in coaching, there are differences in how each will approach coaching. For example, peer-to-peer coaching is unlikely to engage in sensitive human resource issues. On the other hand, peer-to-peer coaching conversations are likely to involve levels of detail and nuance that we would not expect in executive coaching. As we construct our blueprint for micro-learning, we’ll need a workable plan for both audiences.

For micro-learning to have its maximum effect, it must move beyond vague platitudes about the importance of coaching. Talent developers can build coaching habits with a micro-learning approach, but only if that approach deals with specific coach-like behaviors. This approach necessitates a focus on coaching tactics, case studies, and personalized simulations, the three themes of coaching micro-learning.

A coaching tactic is a conversational technique that converts conversation into goal-directed action. Tactics include questions (e.g., what’s holding you back?”), cautions (e.g., here’s why you want to avoid giving advice), or productivity hacks (e.g., here’s how to visualize progress towards a goal). In a micro-learning context, tactics are typically reminders of what we know to work in coaching - whether consciously or unconsciously.

A coaching case study is a story, ideally a real experience from the organization, of how someone became “unstuck” or achieved measurable success by participating in coaching. In micro-learning, case studies need to be brief yet applicable. They are not published to celebrate achievements, but to scale what is already working in pockets of the learning culture.

Lastly, personalized simulations are interactive widgets that create a rapid and ideally gamified environment in which to apply tactics and case studies. The simulation can be academic or airy in tone. They can involve high-tech exercises such as virtual reality coaching, or low-tech scenarios like a dialogue scripting exercise. In 3-5 minutes, learners use a simulation to imagine new applications for their emerging coaching skills.

Micro-learning ideas for coaching skills:

When done with variety, creativity, and a sense of optimism, talent developers will find that micro-learning ignites an organization’s ability to be more “coach-like.” With well-designed spacing and a commitment to brevity, those who work in L&D can keep their organizations focused on a more positive future, even amidst a perplexing present. But micro-learning has its limits. It’s an excellent vector for disseminating skills-based content, but it requires a supportive environment in which such skills can become a habit. If we want to see coaching at the core of our culture, we need reinforcement and affirmation in the form of behavioral nudges. And that's where we will turn in our fourth blog post on Training in Turbulence.

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@ryanpanzer is a learning and leadership development professional with a passion for coaching and technology.