The Advice Trap – Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way you Lead Forever has been the focus of this month’s social media articles. So far, we have explored Easy and Hard Change, The Advice Personas, and Six Foggy-fiers that interfere with our work as coaches. This article will look at the dark side of giving advice and offer us four steps to taming our advice Monster.

We’ll begin by looking at what Michael calls the damage of giving advice. He offers that when giving advice is our dominant management strategy, the damage is felt in four places.

1. It demotivates the advice-receivers.
2. It overwhelms the advice-givers.
3. It compromises team effectiveness.
4. It limits organizational change.

He concludes this section by saying, “The Advice-Giving Habit (AGH) generates waste, leaches innovation, and reduces the capacity to scale for success.”

That pretty much says it all! And, none of us want that! So, let’s end this article with his Four Steps to Taming Your Advice Monster.

• Who let the dogs out? – Fun! Michael has a great way of describing things. He says, “You’ve got to know the trigger before you can change the habit.”
• Confessions – Those of you who have been with us have probably heard one of us profess, “Confession is good for the soul!.” And, in this case, you are confessing to your bad behavior.
• Prizes and Punishments – This is where you articulate the benefits AND the costs of the behavior you identified in Confessions. The benefits are serving you in some way while getting in the way of Future You.
• Future You FTW! – For the Win! This is where we reach the clarity of knowing why it is worth creating a new habit – one who is a better version of ourself – Future You!

We Can Do This! How are you taming your Advice Monster?

Read other posts in this series at this link.