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

This book is NOT about turning you into a coach

Just like its companion, The Coaching Habit, this book is about making you a leader, a manager, a human whos more coach-like. That means building the simple but difficult habit of taming your Advice Monster so you can stay curious a little longer, and rush to action and advice-giving a little more slowly. Its a fast and practical read, and I think youll enjoy it.

TheAdviceTrap.com #TameYourAdviceMonster

Advance Praise for The Advice Trap

Being a coach-like manager and being coached is a core part of our culture at Microsoftits how talented people thrive and grow. Michael Bungay Stanier has helped evolve how we think about coaching and how it can bring our growth mindset to life.

Jean-Philippe Courtois , President, Microsoft Global Sales; Marketing and Operations EVP , Microsoft Corporation

This book speaks truth: when the best leaders do less themselves, they get more from others. But learning to do less can be painfully hard. Fortunately, Michael Bungay Stanier applies his signature wit and clarity to the challenge, which means making Hard Change just got a whole lot easier.

Liz Wiseman , author of Multipliers and Rookie Smarts

Concise, powerful, and true. Once again, MBS delivers a wake-up call with real value.

Seth Godin , author of This Is Marketing

The Advice Trap is the antidote for bureaucratic inertia. You cannot be a leader if you do not own this book.

Jennifer Paylor , People Engineer, Executive Leadership Development, and Coaching Leader for Enterprise Operations & Services, IBM

Readers Praise for The Coaching Habit

Absolutely brilliant

An extremely practical book and one of the few I have read twice (and will read it again).

GORAN SECUISKI

No fluff, just great

Every chapter is worth your time. Thats the highest praise I can give a book. Its not rocket science stuff, but it sure is useful and practical and clearly explained.

L. RAMEY

Refreshing guide

Very interesting concepts in this book and loved the presentation. The book had me sucked in and I ended up reading it in two nights, taking notes all the while.

BRYAN CALLAHAN

Concise and on point

I have plodded through many books that wish they could be this book. I enjoyed the authors presentation style and illustrative personal antecdotes.

KINDLE CUSTOMER

Brilliant! So helpful

Written in a witty, breezy, conversational style, youll laugh while learning. Please. For the sake of the crappy work cultures out there. And for your own sake of avoiding another miserable coaching session: BUY THIS BOOK .

STEPHEN M.

Lead with what instead of why

This is one of the most important business books Ive read in a very long whileanditll likely be one of the most important ones youll read during your career. I only wish that I had stumbled onto this book earlierwhat a difference it would have made for the people Ive managed on the teams Ive run.

STEPHEN HOWELL

The worst book ever written

The worst book ever written!

SUNNY DAVIS

Go to TheAdviceTrap.com to download resources, place bulk orders, book Michael Bungay Stanier for keynote speeches, and learn more about Box of Crayons training programs.

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

Be Humble,
Stay Curious
& Change
the Way You
Lead Forever

Copyright 2020 by Michael Bungay Stanier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

The Advice Trap, The Coaching Habit, Tame Your Advice Monster, The Coaching Bookends, Be Lazy. Be Curious. Be Often., Easy Change and Hard Change, the New Habit Formula, TERA , the TERA Quotient, and Future You Leadership are trademarks that are either registered or used by Box of Crayons.

Cataloguing in publication information is available from Library and Archives Canada.
ISBN 978-1-989025-75-8 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-989603-33-8 (ebook)

Box of Crayons Press
137 Marion Street
Toronto ON Canada M R E
www.MBS.works

Page Two
www.pagetwo.com

Edited by Amanda Lewis
Copyedited by John Sweet
Proofread by Alison Strobel
Cover and interior design by Peter Cocking
Ebook by Bright Wing Books (brightwing.ca )
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books
Distributed in the US and internationally by Publishers Group West, a division of Ingram

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T his book is dedicated to Peter Block. More than ten years ago, he was kind enough to write a blurb for my first book, Get Unstuck & Get Going . Most blurbs tend to be a little shallow, and fair enough: theyre meant to help sell a book with some razzle-dazzle. Peters was different. He wrote, There is a quiet political message... that coaching is available to all of us and is not a profession, but a way of being with each other.

That observation has become the raison dtre for the work I do, and the work we do at Box of Crayons. We want to democratize coaching, because the capacity to stay curious longer can lift us all. Peter first pointed out this calling to me, and for that Im grateful.

The Advice Trap gives you the tools to make curiosity an everyday leadership behaviour.

And will convince you exactly why saying less and asking more matters.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. you can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

Naguib Mahfouz

Introduction

M y previous book, The Coaching Habit , was about everyday people coaching everyday people. It taught the seven key questions you need to be more coach-like, and how to ask them so theyre most effective. The summary, in case you havent read it: by saying less and asking more, you can work less hard and have more impact. Building a coaching habit is about staying curious a little longer and rushing to advice-giving a little more slowly.

That books been a great success: more than half a million copies have been sold, and its being used in organizations and countries around the world. But it turns out that being more coach-like and staying curious a little longer is harder than most of us thought. No matter our good intentions, we love to give advice. We love it. As soon as someone starts talking, our plan to be curious goes out the door and our Advice Monster looms out of our subconscious, rubbing its hands and declaring, Im about to add some value to this conversation! Yes. I. Am!

This is the Advice Trap: when giving advice is your default management style. Im willing to bet youre ensnared in this trap, and that a typical interaction with you looks like this...