Employing Differences, Episode 121: Should I give advice?

Paul: 0:09

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Karen: 0:15

I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:16

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:18

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Should I give advice?"

Paul: 0:27

So one of the things that is interesting – in the consulting relationship generally – but in any sort of helping relationship where you're working with another person where there may be some sort of imbalance in the amount of knowledge you have about a particular thing – someone has some expertise, some knowledge to bring to bear – is that there will often be a moment in that where if you're the person who sees the thing that the other person doesn't seem to notice, you may be tempted to give some advice. And we say tempted because sometimes you should do that and sometimes you should resist that temptation. This is a hard won lesson. Ahat Karen and I want to explore here today is: What is advice? What do we mean by that? What are the signs that advice would actually be helpful? And what are the signs that it might not be helpful in the particular situation that you're in?

Karen: 1:29

Yeah. So I think the first thing that may not be obvious here, but I want to make it obvious is, "Ask yourself the question." If you are contemplating giving advice – and I think my frame on that is telling someone else what you think they should do – if you're anywhere near that kind of frame, ask yourself, "Is this actually a good idea?" And I will tell you, if you need extra practice on this hang out with teenagers. Raising teenagers probably taught me as much about this as anything. But there is this piece about pausing to say... You know, in a culture where advice giving is rampant, and it happens all the time, and certainly we grew up with adults who give us advice all the time. And we think now we're an adult, we'll give advice all the time. Just that first step of saying,"Is this a moment where advice is the thing that will be helpful? Is this piece of advice a thing that would be helpful?" But actually is advice at all a thing that would be helpful right here and right now, I think, is the starting point. So that we don't just fall into the habit of doing something that not only isn't helpful, but frankly, is often frustrating, offensive, taking up resources that really are needed somewhere else. It's often not only not helpful, actually, it's harmful to the situation a lot of the time.

Paul: 3:02

I think a key thing there– if you've listened to the show, you can predict what we're gonna say – a key thing there is being aware of that you're doing it, being aware of how often you do it. Michael Bungay Stanier talks about "taming the Advice Monster." Many of us have an Advice Monster inside of us that just kind of shows up. Being aware of that. How often do you give advice? Suggestions for what you might do is kind of where my go to is. So if you often find yourself saying things like, "Well, you know what you should do is..." or "If I were you, I would..." Anytime you're providing these suggestions of things that people might do, this is often advice. I think part of it is becoming aware of how often do you do that and what are some of your alternatives. Oftentimes, we do it because it's very natural for us. But we don't realize that we have other things that we could do. We could do things like offer an observation. We could offer information instead of advice."Here's a thing that I'm noticing is happening." Because sometimes the other person doesn't necessarily need to know what to do; they need to know what's happening. They need to know what's actually occurring in the situation. In coaching we'll sometimes talk about different moves that you can make. So sometimes it's advice or suggestions are a useful move. Observations are sometimes a useful move. Sometimes what a person is really looking for is encouragement or support. What I think is key and what's getting to what you were talking about is tuning into what does the other person need. What do they want? What are they open to in that moment? Because you might have some amazing advice that would be perfect for them. But if they're not in a situation where they can receive that – where they're not open to it – you could say all the words you want, and it's not going to change what they do in the future. It doesn't really matter. And so I think that's a key part. Being aware of what do you tend to do? What are your some of your alternatives, but also what is the other person you're about to give advice to want and need?

Karen: 5:30

Yeah, and I think that last piece is super key. They're related in that the more that I have a tendency to just give advice, the less likely I am to be good at discerning whether it's what somebody else needs. If I'm giving advice all the time and I'm jumping towards that, that's a particularly strong cue that I might be out of alignment with what that other person needs. But going into that what that other person wants or needs, I want to point out here that that's a different statement than what they tell you they want or need. And certainly, as a consultant coming in, people ask me all the time, "What should we do?" Or an even more loaded version of,"There's this thing we want to do. Isn't that the right thing?" Aren't you going to tell us we should, fill in the blank, whatever it is. My answer to that tends to be, "I don't get to tell you what you should do. I'm not you. I'm not a member of your group. I'm not in your relationships. What I can tell you is what I think the likely outcome will be if you do X or Y, or Z." Because I've lived this. Because I've seen it in other contexts. I mean, this is why you hire me, because I have experience and I know some things you don't know. But there's a nuance there about, I'm not telling you you should do this or if you should do that. What I can tell you is, "I think if you do this thing that the outcome is likely to be this thing." And I can say that even if I know the outcome that I'm describing is absolutely something they don't want. And then the other frame that I put with that is, "And I can't say whether it's worth it to you." You want to do this thing, and these are the good things that will come of it, and these are the reasons you want to do it. And I think you're gonna have this other set of outcomes that you're not counting on. But I'm not going to tell you whether that's a good idea or not, because I can't weigh what's most important to you. And so there's that space of – for me – really profound respect of saying I don't get to decide what's good for another person or what's right for another person, even if I have more information than they have, or if I have perspective that they don't have about how things might come out for them.

Paul: 7:56

That condition of mutual respect is one of the things that's really important. If I'm being asked for advice, I absolutely have to respect that you have a way deeper understanding of your situation than I do.I can't over inflate my own sense of knowledge. And oftentimes, if you're asking for advice, it's because you respect that I have something to say. That's one of the conditions that I often look at when helping doesn't go well is, "Is there a mutual respect there?" Because I find that that advice giving – and helping more generally – works best in a partnership. Where we have a sense of "we're both in this together," rather than the thing

that can very easily happen: 8:46

the person asking for advice abdicates all responsibility for the outcome to the person giving the advice. "Just tell me what to do. I'm not going to be involved in this at all, just tell me what I should do and I'll just go do it." That's generally not going to work. And I think it works similarly badly when the advice-giver is the person saying, "Ignore everything that you know, just do what I tell you. I know what's best, even though I don't live in your situation. Even though I don't really understand the nuance of what's going on, I'm the expert." There's not a lot of mutual respect going on in that situation. But being in that partnership, where we have not only his mutual respect but also this mutual purpose. I think we both need to be oriented towards the same kind of outcome in order for that to work. And so often that's one of the things I'll check on. If we don't agree what I'm here to help with – what I would be advising you about – then it's not a good place for it. We need to start at an earlier spot. I shouldn't be giving advice if we don't agree on our shared purpose.

Karen: 10:04

I think that sense of partnership and alignment... And this is one of these things that we tend to think about hierarchy. We have this very hierarchical frame, because we all grew up in that kind of world. With very few exceptions in the planet today, we grew up in hierarchical environments. And so we think of the hierarchy of expert coach, expert doctor, expert therapist, expert teacher, expert boss, and less expert "helpee", to say it that way. There is a power differential and there is an expectation that the expert knows best and that the helpee knows less. And that's not the same as the partnership that you're talking about. If we can shift our thinking to where we can make space for one person has more knowledge, has expertise, is perhaps an expert in a certain way but the other person is still equal. There's not a power differential, there's not a value differential, there's not an importance differential, and it's just that they know different things. So you may bring me in because I'm an expert in co-housing, I've worked with a lot of communities, I know a lot about how those work. But I am not a member of your community. I don't live in your community all day, every day. And even if I did, I'm not you. I'm not in your chair, experiencing what you're experiencing. When I go to a doctor, I want you to be the expert on what the medical texts are, but I'm the expert on this body and what it's been through. I expect a partnership there and I look hard for doctors who know how to do that, because they don't all. But some do. I think in that same way, when I come in and an expert kind of a role, I try to be very aware that I bring a chunk of expertise that's missing, but I'm not actually the expert on what's going on there. Because I'm the visitor here.

Paul: 12:13

I think that one of the things that helps to create that sense of partnership when you are the adviser, when you are the person who's tempted to give advice, is a dose of humility, of recognizing the limits of your own knowledge. Now, you do need to know what you know. You do need to be able to say, "This is what I know." To go back to your example earlier, and I love the way that you do this, this is one of my favorite framings of this, being able to say, "In my experience, if you do this thing, you're likely to get this result."" Now that doesn't discount your experience, but it also doesn't overstate it. There's a humility about it that says, "I can't guarantee that that's going to happen. It's not always going to happen. But I also know that if I don't bring it up, that's a problem. And so I want you to at least think about it." And then you're in the place of "Well, now the other person gets to decide what do they want to do with that information?" And I think that's the other piece of humility, being able to say, "We can bring our expertise, but ultimately the person we are giving advice to, they need to own what they're doing with it." And if they either choose not to follow the advice, or do follow the advice and they get a bad result– what we said was going to happen, it turns out the opposite of what we thought – we have to own that both of those are possibilities and that doesn't make us a bad person. It's like, "You asked me for advice. I gave you the best information that I had. You might still not choose to do it, and that doesn't mean that I'm a bad consultant or a bad coach or a bad person. You're the decision maker." I think what's important about advice is recognizing it is just that. You are an advisor. You are not the person who's deciding. So part of "Should I give advice?" I think is, "Can I approach the situation with humility?" But can I also recognize what my role in this actually is? I'm not a decider. I'm not a director. I'm not a tyrant. I'm an advisor. And so how can it be as helpful in that role as possible?

Karen: 14:28

Yeah, and I think that humility is at all stages. So I will say I have an ego that loves to be asked for expert advice. Isn't it so fun? That is probably why I go into consulting. And to counter that with the humility that says,"Even if they're asking for advice, very often the very best advice I can give is to say, 'My advice is don't ask me for advice. My advice is let me help you think through this. Let me help facilitate process, go ask someone else.'" And I get asked often for advice beyond the scope of where I have expertise. So I can tell you this much. But the main thing I should tell you is overall some framing to help you when you go ask the person who actually knows. But just that humility all the way through of it may not be that what I know is helpful. It may not be that it what I know turns out to be what I think it will turn out to be. It may not be that the person involved is going to be ready to do the thing that I think would be most helpful. That happens in my line of work a lot, actually, that I suggest something and they go,"Yeah, I'm sure that it'd be great, but I can't bring myself to do it." Okay. And just to carry that all the way through of, as you say, showing up with what I have, and also being ready to just really name what I don't have, or when the thing that you're asking me for – which is advice – is actually not the thing that I think will help you.

Paul: 16:07

It is important to consider your alternatives to advice – even when people are asking for it. And just because you pursue one of those alternatives to start with doesn't mean you have to stay there. I do this all the time. People are like, "What do you think we should do?" And I'm like, "Well, let me understand a little bit more about your situation." And we'll do a couple of things and sometimes it becomes obvious there is something that I know about that they don't that would be super useful to them. But I want to discover that first. I always have the option to give advice later. I don't necessarily feel like I have to start with it. And oftentimes, by starting with it, we kind of closeddown a lot of pathways. But I think that the other thing that I find very useful to do is when I do give advice, I try to give it in very short chunks, a nd then I ask,"What do you think about that?" Because then that starts to bring out all of the things that you just talked about. The whole, "I think that's a great idea, but I couldn't bring myself to do that." And we now get into a whole other path. And so it's not just, "I'm gonna drop the advice, and then walk away." A "take it or leave it" sort of thing. For me advice-giving is the beginning of a next part of a conversation. And if I'm not ready to do that, then I probably shouldn't be giving advice. If I'm not ready to say,"One of the things I'm noticing about your situation is this. You might consider doing this thing. That would entail this, this, and that. What do you think about that?" If I'm not ready to do that, I probably shouldn't even start.

Karen: 17:49

So I feel like one of the themes through this is that if you're thinking, "Well, I could give a piece of advice," meaning"I could tell someone what they should do," that's almost never a good idea. In our experience, it's always a conversation. And there's the conversation before and there may be an element of giving some information or some guidance or some predictions in the mix, and then there's some processing to do after as well.

Paul: 18:22

Yeah, exactly. It's part of the dialogue. So to sort of track where we've been here, when we think about the question, and I find myself going, "Should I give advice in this situation?" part of the thing that I want to be aware of is, "How often do I tend to do that?" Am I doing it just because it's my natural tendency? Or am I doing it out of a sense that it would actually be useful to this person that I'm talking to? And that they would be open to it? Not just that they're asking for it, but that they could actually take it in. That it could actually be useful. That I've considered my other alternatives, and I've come to the conclusion of, "Yeah, okay. I have some expertise that I can bring here." We talked also about the importance of the dynamics around it, of making sure that you're in a situation where you have that mutual respect for each other about what each of you brings to this, and a shared sense of purpose about why you're sharing this advice, what it is they're actually trying to get done that your advice is supposed to be helping them with and moving them towards. And really bringing into that also this sense of humility about what is the limits that I know what's actually going to happen here. Framing it in a way that you're not overstating your own expertise, but not understating it either. Bringing it authentically and then seeing what the other person wants to do with it. Advice as the middle of the conversation, not as the just the beginning or the end. We find that those are the things that are useful to ask yourself. When you're considering this question of"Should I give advice?"

Karen: 20:00

That's gonna do it for us today. Until next time I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 20:04

And I'm Paul Tevis. And this has been Employing Differences.