April is always a month of hopefulness, new beginnings, and smiles! Last month, my colleague, Karen Anderson, shared some juicy learnings from the book, The Advice Trap by Michael B Stanier. Everyone is hopeful when they ask for advice. This is a topic that is ubiquitous to every seminar we provide on coaching so it’s worthy of more reflection and insights. In each of our RCG seminars, we stress that advice-giving is not in alignment with coach-like behaviors. This brings up comments from some participants saying, “People ask us for advice, why is this so bad?” You read in last month’s article that “advice-giving” is an over-developed muscle and we are needing to ramp up the development of our “curiosity” muscle. Habits are so hard to break after years of practice and this is one habit that may call for an adaptive change (remember that in Level 2, Powerful Coaching?). How will I be more curious about what the person wants or is trying to do when they are asking for advice?

You learned from Karen’s article that our egos play a part in advice giving. Our “persona” likes to satisfy the demands of the situation:

1) I have the answer, so I TELL IT. People see me as knowledgeable, confident, and successful!

2) I am responsible for others, I am here to help them, so they won’t fail, so I SAVE IT!

3) I really don’t trust others to succeed so I CONTROL IT!

Well, what an insight! Who is in the middle of these three? Yep! I am. I don’t want to be, I want others to be because I really care about people. This is one reason we became educators.

We chose this profession to make a difference in others’ lives. We care. We want to support others’ success. YES, we do and because of that, we must cognitively understand and recognize that advice just doesn’t do anything to accomplish all the things we wanted to do. Advice just doesn’t work unless…it’s an emergency (What is the code to enter the building? Where is her medicine?), or code-red (Stop, a car is coming! Be sure you have your passport at the airport).

Advice is often implied when someone comes to us to ask questions. We assume they want or need our advice. So, let’s bring the facts in to place: Advice doesn’t work because as Stanier says, first, you’re solving the wrong problem. We get sucked into believing that the first thing they mention is the real challenge. Coaches learn very quickly that exploring what is going on or why something is important, reveals real, underlying, and critical challenges. Second, you’re proposing a mediocre solution. It’s so common for our brain to connect to pieces of what someone is saying, and we start offering a range of “not-nearly-as-good-as-you-think-they-are” solutions. Most of the time we don’t always have the full picture. Maybe it’s one-part truth to six-parts conjecture.

Yes, the Advice-Giving habit damages so much. “It wastes time, leaches innovation and reduces the capacity to scale for success. You reduce your ability to be agile, and you endanger the engagement and ambitions of your people. Advice giving entrenches the status quo of hierarchy and process, keeping your organization stuck.” Given our mission to do good, next time more research of this pesky habit!