Giving Valuable Advice

Leaders have a natural instant to want to help others, they do so through various channels: giving advice, feedback conversations, coaching and mentoring. Each channel has its purpose for a specific outcome, and they all work wonders in showing support. In this blog, we focus on one of the most common yet most challenging forms of support: giving advice, but not any advice, a valuable advice.

Giving advice might sound simple but doing it well is easier said than done. More often than not, when we give advice, we tend to advise people based on what has worked best for us. We draw on our own experiences and try to inject our personal preferences when advising others, which is not necessarily a bad thing to do just as long as the circumstances and preferences of those we are advising match our own; if not, our good intended advise might come across as irrelevant, misleading, or at worst, unempathetic to the situation of the recipient. Instead of it being helpful, the advice confuses those seeking it leaving them in a worse-off position.

To prevent this from happening, leaders need to shift their mindset. First and foremost, they must remove themselves completely from the equation and think about the characteristics, tendencies and preferences of the person they are about to advise. What uplifts them, what worries them or causes them to doubt their path, what makes them sad.

Next, they need to know the individual circumstances of those they are about to advise; what implications the advice would have on them; what are their best-case and the worst-case outcomes. What resources they have and most importantly, who is in their support cycle?

Finally, leaders need to help others consider available options; they can do so by asking probing questions to reveal all possibilities. Perhaps encourage them to develop lists of pros and cons to better guide them through the decision-making process. Then, leaders must step back and let those responsible for making a decision make it!

Your role as a leader is to offer support and encouragement to help them pick the best option for themselves. They have to live with their decision, not you, hence they must be comfortable with potential consequences. If doubt lingers, suggest they take a break and come back to the decision later.

If they make an unsuitable decision and need to revert their course of action, do not blame them for making a “wrong” decision! Circumstances change and decisions must adapt accordingly.

In the end, valuable advice is not about sharing what worked for you personally—it’s about guiding them to discover what works best for them.