This is actually good advice.
We have 14 chickens that we have raised from 1-3 days old. The earlier you can start, the better. We have EE, OE, Dominique, Speckled Sussex, BCM and a Silver Leghorn. We have found that the individual personality matters more than the breed. All of our chickens are friendly and can be handled, but not all are lap chickens. The lap chickens are 3 of our EE, both Dominique and our Leghorn. The rest prefer to sit around us vs on our laps. Some of those like being pet and some do not.
We started by holding their food in our hands and patiently waiting for them to eat. Patience is the key. You have to wait for them to come to you at first. If you try to grab them too much, they won't come to you at all. Also, they seem to be able to sense why we are going to pick them up. Even our lap chickens, who let us pick them up for snuggles, will run from us if they think we are going to do something unpleasant like give medication or put them in the run early.
The important thing to remember is that having cuddly chickens takes many hours of bonding. Treats are useful, but it is mainly spending a lot of quiet time with your flock, much of it on the ground at their level.
). Sitting at their level and hand feeding really seemed to help. They just gradually went from standing beside us to standing and then sitting on us. 
I don't know if it would work with adult hens, but starting when ours were little, we had a "no pecking order around the humans" rule. If one bird tried pecking another while they were on or immediately around us, they received a gentle finger peck from us. We will still rarely have to enforce this rule, but they grew up with it, so our flock accepts it.
