Narrator: Imagine a manager in a critical team meeting. An employee raises a difficult problem, looking for guidance. What is the manager’s first, almost uncontrollable, instinct? It’s to jump in, to provide a solution, to fix the issue, to give advice. This impulse feels helpful, productive, and even necessary. But what if this very instinct is the single biggest thing holding the team back? What if the rush to give advice is actually disempowering employees, solving the wrong problems, and limiting an organization's potential for change?

In his book, The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious & Change the Way You Lead Forever, author Michael Bungay Stanier argues that our deep-seated habit of advice-giving is a leadership dysfunction. He reveals that to truly lead, develop others, and solve complex challenges, we must learn to tame our inner "Advice Monster" and replace the urge to answer with the discipline of curiosity.

Narrator: At the heart of the Advice Trap is a creature Stanier calls the "Advice Monster." This is the inner voice that whispers, "I’m about to add some value to this conversation!" the moment someone starts talking about a challenge. This monster has three primary personas. The "Tell-It" persona believes it knows best and must share its wisdom. The "Save-It" persona feels a duty to rescue everyone from failure. And the "Control-It" persona believes that to maintain order, it must direct every outcome.

While these impulses often come from a good place, they are profoundly counterproductive. The book points to research from leadership expert Joe Folkman, who found that leaders who default to giving advice are often ineffective at developing others, tend to resist feedback themselves, and are ultimately less likable. Giving advice, Stanier explains, sends a subtle but powerful message: it undermines the other person's autonomy and capability. It implies that they aren't smart enough to figure it out on their own. This demotivates employees by stripping them of what researcher Daniel H. Pink identifies as the core drivers of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The result is a team that becomes dependent, less engaged, and less innovative.

Narrator: Stanier makes a critical distinction between two types of change. "Easy Change" is like adding a new app to your phone; it’s a new skill that builds on your existing framework. "Hard Change," however, is like installing a new operating system. It requires a fundamental shift in your beliefs, identity, and ingrained behaviors. Taming the Advice Monster is a Hard Change.

This is because the Advice Monster offers immediate rewards to what Stanier calls "Present You." Giving advice feels good; it provides a quick hit of status and a sense of being useful. Resisting this urge requires prioritizing "Future You"—the more patient, curious, and effective leader you want to become. This internal battle is perfectly illustrated by the famous Stanford Marshmallow Test. In the experiment, children were offered one marshmallow immediately or two if they could wait fifteen minutes. The children who successfully delayed gratification for the bigger, long-term reward tended to have better life outcomes. Similarly, taming the Advice Monster means forgoing the single-marshmallow hit of giving advice now for the two-marshmallow reward of a more empowered and capable team later.

Narrator: The practical antidote to the Advice Trap is simple in theory but difficult in practice: stay curious a little longer. The goal is not to eliminate advice-giving entirely, but to slow down the rush to action. Stanier recaps the core principles from his previous book, The Coaching Habit: Be Lazy, Be Curious, Be Often. "Be Lazy" means resisting the urge to do the work for others. "Be Curious" means defaulting to questions. "Be Often" means turning coaching into a daily, informal practice, not a formal event.

To stay curious, leaders must learn to spot and avoid what Stanier calls "Foggy-fiers"—six common conversational patterns that prevent you from getting to the real challenge. These include "twirling" (endless, circling stories), "coaching the ghost" (talking about someone who isn't in the room), and "popcorning" (jumping from one unfinished topic to another). By recognizing these patterns, a leader can use simple, powerful questions like, "What's the real challenge here for you?" to cut through the fog and help the other person gain clarity for themselves.

Narrator: Even with the best questions, a conversation will fail if the other person doesn't feel safe. The brain is constantly scanning for social threats, and if it detects one, it will shut down. To prevent this, Stanier introduces the TERA framework, a tool for increasing psychological safety and keeping people engaged. TERA stands for Tribe, Expectation, Rank, and Autonomy.

• Tribe asks, "Are you with me or against me?" Leaders can increase a sense of tribe by finding common ground and using inclusive language like "we" and "us." * Expectation asks, "Do I know what's going to happen?" Providing clarity about the process and purpose of a conversation lowers anxiety. * Rank asks, "Are you more or less important than me?" A leader can elevate the other person's rank by asking for their opinion first or admitting they don't have the answer. * Autonomy asks, "Do I have a choice?" Offering even small choices gives people a sense of control.

Stanier tells a story of using TERA moments during large keynote speeches. By sharing a personal story (Tribe), outlining the talk's structure (Expectation), acknowledging the audience's expertise (Rank), and using interactive polls (Autonomy), he keeps thousands of people engaged. These same micro-moves can make one-on-one conversations feel less like an interrogation and more like a collaborative exploration.

Narrator: Reading about coaching is not the same as being a coach. The Advice Trap emphasizes that building a coaching habit requires deliberate, consistent practice. Stanier draws on the work of Josh Waitzkin, the chess prodigy and martial arts world champion, who describes mastery as the process of "making smaller circles." This means breaking down a complex skill into its fundamental components and practicing them with intense focus until they become second nature.

For coaching, this might mean focusing on just one thing for a week, such as asking "And what else?" in every conversation. Or it could mean practicing the skill of generous silence, resisting the urge to fill the space after asking a question. The book also highlights the importance of feedback. This involves both "fast feedback" in the moment and "slow feedback" through later reflection. By practicing in feedback-rich environments—with trusted allies or even in "hopeless" relationships where there's nothing to lose—a leader can accelerate their learning. As a U.S. Navy SEAL maxim states, "We don’t rise to the occasion. We fall to the level of our training." Mastery is built not in grand gestures, but in thousands of small, mindful repetitions.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from The Advice Trap is that effective leadership in the modern world is defined less by having the right answers and more by having the right questions. The true work of a leader is not to be the hero who solves every problem, but to be the coach who cultivates the potential in others so they can solve problems themselves. This requires a courageous shift in identity—from expert to explorer, from teller to listener.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge, best captured by the author's personal metaphor of being "naked onstage." It’s a call to step out of the comfort of being the expert, embrace the vulnerability of not knowing, and trust that your team can and will rise to the occasion. The ultimate question is not whether you can learn a few new coaching questions, but whether you are willing to tame the monster of your own ego to unlock the brilliance in those you lead.