Forcing advice on someone

Don’t force your advice on someone

When someone’s venting, they usually don’t want advice. There’s a good chance they’ve already tried what you’re about to suggest anyway. It’s even worse when someone pretends to know every detail about your situation, or trivializes it by saying something like “All you have to do is…”

How to fix it:

Just listen and prompt them for details. If you have a suggestion, then preface it by saying, “Have you tried X?”

Wait for them to actually ask for advice, or say something like “I just don’t know what to do.”

If you really want to help someone having a rough time, then offer to talk to them more about it later. Be modest. Say something like, “I’ve been through something similar, and I’d be happy to tell you what worked for me.” That last part is crucial — it’s what worked for you.

Giving Advice Is A Waste of Time. Do This Instead.

Jocko Willink | The Debrief

I’ve got this person who’s been frustrated because he feels that every time he offers some advice this other person kind of ignores it, still blames him anyway. There is this person that came to them and asked them for advice. And they said, I don’t want to give you my advice anymore. You don’t listen to me. And even if I offer you something, and it doesn’t work, you still blame me for the problem. So this person has kind of resigned themselves that, I’m not going to help you, I’m not going to work through this with you, I’m tired of you asking me and not doing what I say.

What should I do in this situation?

I told him what he didn’t want to hear. It is a hard thing. The reason why this is hard for anybody that is kind of exhausted by this other person’s behavior, the only issue really that’s going on here is the frustration and the ego of the person giving the advice.

Let me make sure I got the situation. They ask you. They ignore your advice. They do what they want. It doesn’t work. Then they keep coming back to you for advice. And you don’t want to help them anymore.

Who benefits from that? Nobody. Okay, how does the team benefit? The team doesn’t benefit. So what’s the real problem here? The person giving the advice will realize that the problem is their own ego. They come to the conclusion that, in almost every situation where you got a relationship problem, the answer is almost always your own ego. It’s almost always you are the problem in that relationship.

Is it potential that, maybe the advice that you give this other person isn’t that good? Dissect a little bit of,

1. hey maybe that the problem isn’t with them. The problem is with you.
2. If you come to the conclusion that you’re no longer going to participate on this team, you’re no longer to contribute, you’re no longer no longer going to offer what you have, what’s the outcome? The outcome is, that everybody’s going to lose. That frustration, that is your problem.

So the question now is, how do you get past that?

Let’s say I’m trying to give you advice. And you’re not taking the advice. One question I could absolutely ask myself is, I take ownership of that and say, well, maybe my advice isn’t that good. That could be an outcome. And then, what do I do about that? I try and formulate better ideas. But the other thing is, maybe I’m not doing a good job of communicating my advice to you in a way that you actually want to take my advice. And if I can’t communicate something in a way that you want to accept it, then you’re not going to accept it.

One of the most rudimentary mistakes that human beings make is when I say “hey Dave, here’s a better way to do what you’re trying to do”. “Dave, let me give you some advice.”

Now look, if I know you’ve got a big ego and I come to you with let me give you some advice how’s that going to work out? It ain’t going to work out. It ain’t going to work out out. You’re going to say yeah go ahead. And I’m going to tell you my idea. It’s going to bounce off your ego shield like with not even making a dent. It’s not even going to make a dent.

When we start pulling the strings on this, you get to a point where you go, “oh, I don’t have a good enough relationship with you, because if I had a good enough relationship with you, and I gave you advice, you’d be like, oh, I didn’t see it that way.”

If I don’t have that strong enough relationship with you, what I need to do is, actually be more tactful. Imagine the conversation goes like this:

me: Hey Dave, can you explain to me why you're executing it like that, so I can understand it better.
you: You say, well, you know, we're doing it this way because this the most efficient way.
me: Oh hey, the the way you're doing this one part over here, the cycle over here, does that always work the fastest?
you: And you go, yeah it's always the best way.
me: Oh that's awesome. Have you ever seen anyone do it this other way? I was wondering what your opinion was of that?
you: Well, you know I have seen it done better.

And all I’m doing is, just opening up your mind, trying to have a conversation. Instead of me giving you my opinion, I’ve actually flipped the deck over. Now I’m asking you for your opinion. I’m asking you for your opinion, which means that I’m elevating your opinion. Because I’m asking for your opinion, I’m not giving you mine, when I give you my opinion. I’m not elevating my own opinion. I’m going to elevate your opinion. So I say, what do you think about that little part of the project over here, this little cycle, do you think that’s the best way? What’s your opinion on that?

And all of a sudden, we’re having a real conversation about it.

I always go back to Charlie Plum. They, in the Hanoi Hilton, after you was shot down and was a prisoner of war for six years and when they had cellmates. If their cellmate was doing something that annoyed them, if Dave was doing something as my cellmate that annoyed me, it was my fault. And if that’s step number one for you, you’re going to get a lot further in all your relationships. Instead of thinking, “Dave does things that annoy me”, instead, it’s “Dave does something that’s annoys me, and it’s my fault for allowing it to annoy me, and I need to adjust.” Start there. It’s a good place to start.

The beauty of that is, whatever way you look at this, and however you want to pull that threat of that problem, and get to the core of it, every direction you look at it, every way you attack it, it always comes back to you. And that is actually a really good thing, because that means you have all the control over the situation. And if the first approach didn’t work, cool, no factor, take another approach.

Build good relationships. It’s on you.