I have a close friend who is going through a difficult time.
He called me up to talk about his troubles. I listened for a (short) while, and then I gave him some advice.
That didn't turn out so well. He got upset at me.
So it got me thinking – what are the keys to giving good advice? When should we give it? How should we give it?
I will teach you my 3 Golden Rules for giving advice and 4 reasons why you might want to think twice before the next time you're tempted to give advice.
3 Rules for Giving Advice
The topic for today is giving advice. This is a topic that is fraught with peril. We can often get into trouble when we give advice. I would say we should be extremely cautious unless we're being paid to give advice, unless we're professionals, like a lawyer or a doctor. In those cases, people come to us and pay us to give us advice. Otherwise, we should be very careful giving advice.
Of course, this is paradox, right? Because here I am giving you advice. So take it all with a grain of salt, but you've come here to get advice from me, so that follows one of my tips. Let's start with the three tips for giving advice.
Tip #3: Ask the other person what they think is the best thing to do first.
A person comes to you. You suspect that they might want advice. You suspect that they might benefit from your advice. What's the first thing to do?
Number three on my list is ask them first, because I'm going to count down for three to two to one. This will help you talk the problem over with them and you can hear what they want to do. It may be they've already thought of all the things that you might advise them. They get to lead the way, and you don't ever find yourself in a position of giving advice that might make you look bad or make you seem pushy or a know-it-all. You just let them talk.
So tip number three (counting down to one) – let them talk first, ask them what they think is best.
Tip #2: Ask for permission before giving advice.
I've mentioned this before when I talk about my kids. These days, I don't give advice to my kids unless I first get explicit permission. Giving advice can be face threatening. I’ve made videos about face and face threatening acts and written a long blog article about face threatening acts.
Giving advice threatens the self-image of the other person because it presumes that they don't know the right thing to do and that threatens their desire to feel like a valued, competent person, that's positive face. It also threatens negative face. It threatens their desire to be left alone. Giving advice is an imposition on other people, because they feel like they might have to take the advice or thank you for it. Ask permission first to get clearance before you give advice.
Tip #1: Don't give advice.
That's it. Don’t give advice. Most of the time, people really don't want advice. Most of the time people want you to listen, they want comfort, they want commiseration. They actually don't want your advice. I
f you're tempted to do it, bite your tongue. Do the other steps, ask them what they think is best and so on, but unless you can't possibly help it, don't give advice. You'll be much better off. Your friendships will be healthier. The only caveat to this is if people are begging you for advice or they've given you explicit permission or maybe they're paying you for advice. But otherwise forget about it. Don't give advice.
4 Reasons Not To Give Advice
Listen, comfort, empathize, commiserate. That'll do so much better than giving advice. Why shouldn't you give advice? I listed five reasons why you shouldn't give advice.
Reason #1: We almost never have enough information about the situation to give good advice.
This especially goes for the big decisions in life. Should we take a job? Should we continue in a relationship or get married or get divorced? Should we have that medical test or procedure? Should we move to another city?
We almost never have enough information, even if it's us who is making the decision. We almost never have enough information at that moment to make that decision well. So how can another person who's not even in that situation have enough information? That's the first reason you shouldn't give advice. You almost never have enough information to make the decision well.
Reason #2: Who are you to be giving anybody advice?
Take a look at your own life and how messed up it is. Take a look at the decisions you've made. Remember the time you did that thing that you regret that caused all that trouble? Yeah. Who are you to be giving advice?
A lot of times, we should just try to take care of our own lives. Our own lives are hard enough to run without trying to run anybody else's life. So reason number two for not giving advice is we're in no position to give advice. We've made too many mistakes ourselves.
Reason #3: People don't really want your advice.
They really want someone to talk to, someone that will listen to them, maybe someone who they can talk through their problems with. People want to make decisions on their own, so that's reason number three.
People don't want your advice. They want your friendship and companionship and maybe a shoulder to cry on, an ear that will listen to them.
Reason #4: People don't take advice.
When was the last time you gave anybody advice and they took it? I'm a college professor, I advise lots and lots of students, hundreds and hundreds over my career. I give a lot of advice because it's part of the job. They come to me asking for advice, then I give advice and the vast majority of the time they don't take it.
People do what they're going to do. They do what they want to. They often come in with an idea of what they want to do already, and they want validation for that decision that they've already made. So for all these reasons taken together, I think we're much better off just not giving advice.
Summary
I'll recap my top three rules.
Rule #3: Ask the other person first what they think is the best thing to do.
Rule #2: Ask for explicit permission to give advice.
Rule #1: Don't give advice.
My reasons for not giving advice:
Reason #1: We almost never have enough information about the situation to give good advice.
Reason #2: Who are you to be giving anybody advice?
Reason #3: People don't really want your advice.
Reason #4: People don't take advice.
That is my summary advice on giving advice. I know it's paradoxical that I'm giving advice and the advice is not to give advice, so you could ignore all this, but hopefully you've been entertained. If you have been entertained, sign up for our mailing list. Check out our coaching offer and download the empathy eBook. Read all those other blog articles, we hope you enjoy them.
Go down in the comments and talk about that time you gave advice and someone took it or that time you gave advice and you really regretted it. I wrote this post because someone close to me wanted comfort and commiseration and I gave him advice, and it really didn't work out very well. I thought I would share that wisdom with you. I hope you've enjoyed this brief treatise on not giving advice.