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Too Much Advice?

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What happens with unsolicited advice? 

Probably nothing. If you didn't ask for a piece of advice, why would you take it?

Well, then what happens to advice that you do ask for? Isn't that a whole different matter? Different, yes, and yet often the outcome is the same: advice given and then ignored.

It's easy to give advice because we all have opinions on everything, even stuff we don't know anything about. Taking advice is harder because A) the advice we get is often wrong, B) the advice we get is usually hard, and C) the advice we get often doesn't work.

As someone who is sometimes paid to give advice I've had to learn the primary consultant's rule of advice giving: first ask the questions and then let the client determine the best advice. It takes longer. It can take much longer. It's not immediately satisfying, but it works much better.

I'm working on slowing down my approach to giving advice and yet I still go too fast sometimes. How about you?

Here's what I'm currently going to try the next time someone asks me for advice: pause, silently count to five, and then ask "what do you think you should do?" followed by whatever additional questions come up. 

Sometimes slower is better, and bad advice is seldom useful.

-- doug smith



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