The Advice Trap

The Advice Trap will drastically improve your communication skills and make you more likable, thanks to explaining why defaulting to sharing your opinion about everything is a bad idea and how listening until you truly understand people’s needs will make a much bigger positive difference in their lives.

During Stanier’s childhood in Australia, he would often play dress up with his brothers. They could instantly change from being Superman to a train conductor.

He’s since learned that our Advice Monsters also like to play dress-up, and take on three personas:

Tell-It Save-It Control-It

Your Tell-It monster is the most frequent offender and also the loudest. It tries to make you think that it’s your job to have an answer. Recognition and success only come from sharing in the mindset of this demon. It likes the spotlight, comes when you don’t have a lot of time, and makes you think that you know best.

The Save-It monster is a little less outgoing but no less harmful. When you’ve got this costume on, you think that you have to try to help or everything will fall apart. You’re responsible for everyone and everything, including outcomes. It’s common in times of conflict, disguises itself as “being helpful,” and gets you to think you have the most authority.

Your Advice Monster’s last persona is Control-It, which tricks you into thinking you have to stay in control always, no matter what. It seduces you with the idea that it’s possible to handle everything yourself and won’t let you share power. This one usually has a hard time letting go, comes with megalomania, and makes you think you’re the only thing in the way of chaos.

Alright, so we’ve got it all out there on the table and now it’s time to learn how to beat these monsters. In the Olympics, you often see athletes with headphones in before the big event. They’re not just enjoying their tunes or silencing the crowd. They’re getting into the zone, or priming. Richard Thaler discusses this in Nudge. it simply means setting yourself up for success with cues. To make this work for you when trying to listen better, you might try repeating a mantra like “slow down” before speaking. The Art of Learning is another book that Stanier references when talking about how to practice well. Applying the principles it teaches to giving advice, he suggests you should break listening down to the smallest possible pieces. Then, pick just one to focus on and repeat it. It’s not about getting 10,000 hours necessarily, it’s more about how many repetitions you do that determines whether you’ll become a master or not. And finally, Stanier mentions The Power of Habit…