Bad Advice: Small Business Tips from a Small Business Coach

As a small business coach, I am asked for small business tips all the time. “Tip” is a code word for advice. I don’t give advice; me giving advice inherently would be bad advice.  When faced with a decision, asking for and taking advice (see it’s meaning here) plants a seed that will grow and ultimately destroy your small business. Imagine, something as simple as taking advice from a fellow small business owner resulting in losing everything you have spent your life working for?

If you wish to avoid that, keep reading. Before you do, check out last weeks blog, so you are clear on what the word “decision” means when I use it.

In this week’s blog, I’ll describe what the drama triangle is and how it explains what truly occurs when you seek for and offer advise. I will coach you through some real-world applications (from my own experience) on how to empower yourself, ask the correct questions, leave the drama triangle, and enter the empowerment triangle after challenging you to think about how you use the phrase “advice” as well as when you ask for and provide it. I felt completely empowered in every area of my life when I applied this idea to my business, my life, my family, and my role as a man with a purpose. The same thing will happen to you. This is a fact, not advise or my view.

Tweet: Never ask for advice, never give advice, as @TheRock says “it doesn’t matter what you think!” Your advice only disempowers the advice seeker

Most people seek guidance when they are faced with a difficulty, crisis, or opportunity. Asking someone else for their advice on what you ought to pick, implement, or do places the responsibility for resolving your issue on them. When they offer you advise, they take on the role of the savior, solving your situation. By the way, the villain who caused the issue is typically present. The drama triangle is the name for this situation. The basic idea is that nobody accepts ownership of or responsibility for the task of solving a problem. The problem must be fixed, and fixing it is a good purpose. However, the approach breeds drama, lack of accountability, and a vicious loop regardless of the quality of the advise.

Let me share an example. As a small business coach, I work weekly with CEOs and small business leaders. I was on a call with a CEO when he asked me “what I thought” about the comp plan for his sales team. My initial reaction is to answer his question, that’s what I do, I am the ‘fix your problem/answer guy’, right? Wrong, I am a coach, not an advice giver. Fixing my clients problem makes me the hero and him the victim. The villain is this evil broken comp plan that is wrecking his business.

My opinion of his compensation structure is irrelevant. It is not my business, my compensation scheme, or my sales manager. It is my duty to motivate and excite my client to decide what the real problem is (which by the way, had nothing to do with his comp plan). Even if the comp plan was the real problem, I have no business opining on something that was never really mine to begin with.

I challenged my client to stop asking questions about the comp plan, and tell me why that question matters anyway. As we discussed this, I reflected some of my clients language back to him on our Skype call. I basically asked a question, he gave me feedback, and I shared his language back to him. I typed his responses word for word on our Skype chat. I asked, ‘Why does the comp plan matter?’ Then I asked, ‘Can I share an experience with you?’ Since I have experience with comp plans, not that it matters in this case, as well as what the real issue was (his behavioral and language patterns and programming), this makes me relevant to speak into his life. Since he pays me a boat load of money to coach him, I would be doing a great disservice to him if I did anything other than coach him.

A breakthrough occurred during an intense, emotionally charged, and difficult exchange. The epiphany concerned what he as a man truly feels to be true about his value to the world, his family, his business, and community. The early issues he sought guidance on were really symptoms of a more serious illness: a pervasive false confidence in his own value. I would have done him a lot of harm if I had addressed his comp plan issue, hung up, taken his money, and then reveled in my heroics. He hung up the phone, though, fired up and eager to go out and win again.

  • Ask yourself: “Why is this person asking me for advice?” Before you open your mouth, respond to the text, email, etc., consider this: do you have any credibility and real world experience surrounding the real issue to speak into this person’s life?
  • If the answer is yes, acknowledge and appreciate that they came to you and then decide if you accept the responsibility at the time to help them. If you a accept, continue on, if you do not, make it clear you do not accept the responsibility at that time.
  • Realize the initial question, most of the time, is not the real issue. There is always a question behind the question.  Your role as a coach is to dig and find the real issue.  You do so by implementing the following:
  • Reflect and repeat the question back to the person asking it to clarify that you understand the question.  Example, “So you are asking me what I think you should change about your comp plan?”  Once there is clarification:
  • Ask Why, “Why does the comp plan matter, and is your question really about the comp plan?”  Keep asking why.  Never stop asking why. At this moment you will feel a sense of frustration, energy shift, and challenge being injected into the conversation.
  • Remember that humans all respond differently to challenge, confrontation and problems (I speak a lot about this in my “Your Leadership Language” Interactive Keynote). The conversation will play out based on how you and the person you are coaching respond to confrontation and challenge.
  • Dig deeper until the issue’s source is revealed. Consider how each “why” inquiry requires you to remove a small amount of soil from a tree’s base in order to reveal a root.
  • Identify the root as being empowering or disempowering.  It is your duty to coach, not be the hero.  You must lead the person to the root.  Many times you must circle around the tree and approach it from different angles until the person sees the root.  Once the person sees the root, ask them to decide what they do with the root.
  • If, and only when, they decide to cut out or keep the root, hold them accountable to doing just that.  Never do it for them.  Give them the ax, let them swing it.

Remember this:

Tweet: Never ask for advice, never give advice, as @TheRock says “it doesn’t matter what you think!” Your advice only disempowers the advice seeker

Decide right now if you are ever again going to ask for advice and/or give advice? Remember last weeks blog. Draw a line in the sand.  Make a decision, right now.  What did you decide? What does this decision look like moving forward in your identity as a man/woman, your life, your family and your business. Share your thoughts below…………………………………………

It doesn’t matter what you think! Share your experience instead. If you are not getting caffeinated with me on a weekly basis, click the cup of coffee above to do so.

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