In Michael Bungay Stanier’s book, The Advice Trap – Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, he asks, “Why is it easy (ish) to figure out our new phones, but hard to keep our resolutions?” He says what we all know – some change is easy and some change is hard. Let’s take a deeper look at this notion as it relates to giving advice.

Easy Change – He describes the experience of easy change this way:

• I want to learn a new thing.
• I find a method of learning it.
• I practice it a bit.
• I improve.
• I get pretty good (which may be where I stop because I’m good enough).
• I decide to push on to the next level of mastery.

Some examples are learning how to stream movies and TV shows, going to work a new way, learning a new skill at work, or trying a new recipe we have never attempted before.

Hard Change – Conversely, the experience of hard change goes this way:

• I want to learn this new thing.
• I find a method of learning it.
• I make utterly no progress . . . OR . . . I dismiss it as a stupid topic/idea that I don’t need anyway.
• I decide to learn it a different way . . . OR . . . I begin to doubt my worth as a human. Why can’t I get the hang of this?

Michael asserts, “Taming your Advice Monster is Hard Change, plain and simple.” “You don’t need a new APP, you need a new operating system.” Clearly, Hard Change is trickier. Examples are getting the same feedback in your annual performance review even after you have tried to change, the yo-yo effect of losing and gaining weight, any commitment or goal that is repeated over and over and never addressed.

“Advice-giving is an overdeveloped muscle. What you’re trying to do is train an underdeveloped muscle: curiosity.”

How are you thinking this might apply to you?