Is It Ever Right To Give Unsolicited Advice?
Is it ever right to tell someone something they don’t want to hear?
I was in the supermarket on Friday with my youngest boy. It’s his treat day. He gets to choose a Lego mini-figure (and he’s more than a little obsessed with Lego).
So there we are. He’s fingering all the packets to make sure he gets exactly what he wants. I’m reading the books and trying not to lose patience with the time he’s taking.
The scenario emerges…
And next to us a conversation strikes up. A little girl, probably around 5 years old. With someone I guess is her grandmother.
They’re debating whether she can have the Lego princess set she clearly desperately wants. Grandma tries to talk her out of it…
“But what will you do with it once you’ve built it?”
Grandma is holding a CD of a boy band that she thinks the girl will enjoy more.
My youngest and I exchange rueful looks.
“I’ll play with it.” she replies with a forlorn look. Even at five she can see the way this conversation is going to turn out.
My experience…
Now my guy plays with his Lego for hours and hours. He creates whole worlds. Battles usually. He obsesses and looks up ideas on YouTube. He creates and re-creates.
So I know that it’s pretty likely that this little girl will get continuing hours of enjoyment from her Lego. It isn’t just about making it. It really is about playing with it – just like she said.
Do I say anything?
I am desperate to interrupt and give my opinion. But I don’t. I keep quiet. It isn’t really my business.
Eventually they walk off.
“How did that turn out?” I ask my guy.
“Oh the grandma went on so much that she persuaded the girl to get the CD.” A pause. “But mum,” he says “she WOULD have played with it!”
“I know” I commiserate. Both of us wanted to say something. But the moment has passed. And I guess we couldn’t find the right words. Or even know whether it was appropriate to say anything.
So what was the right thing to do here?
Am I being coloured by my experience with my child? He would have got hours more fun from the Lego than the CD. But of course, he isn’t everyone.
Maybe grandma did know best?
Do you ever give unsolicited advice? Or get asked for advice?
This scenario, or similar, comes up a lot when we coach and mentor other people. Or simply in our day to day conversation. When we’re asked for advice, we want to give it. We want to share our opinions. Help people make the right choices.
We think we know best.
I remember a conversation with a new client I had a couple of years ago. He’d managed to get some time with a hot shot businessman. A self-made millionaire. Who gave him a lot of advice about what he should be doing. He told me all of these grand plans. But I could see his heart wasn’t in it. He was never going to implement someone else’s advice. Either the advice or the timing of it was wrong.
It’s natural
It’s a natural instinct to want to share our experience. To want to help people make the “best” choices. And it isn’t always easy to remember that our experience isn’t going to be everyone’s experience.
And I know that no matter how frustrating it might be, if I offer someone advice on their business that they aren’t ready for, then it won’t help them. And worse – it might even delay or prevent them from making what is the right choice for them. Sometimes, we just have to let people make their own mistakes. Learn from their own experience.
Do you agree?
What do you think?
Is it better to let people come to their own conclusions? And how can we intervene without seeming inappropriate. How can we offer choices without influencing?
Was I right to stay quiet?
What would you have done? How do you react when you see someone making what you think is a mistake? I’d love you to leave a comment and let me know!
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I think if it comes from a good place, and you have a relevant insight into the situation, then unsolicited advice is a good thing. Delivery, of course, is a whole other ball of beeswax!
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I love that – yes it’s all in the delivery!
cathyp recently posted… A Simple Shift In Your Story…
I am the queen of giving unsolicited advice. I’m not suggesting this is a good strategy, it’s just one that I seem to unwittingly do. Often. And generally with poor result.
I’ve been trying to adopt a more active listening approach that I’m (honestly) learning from my son’s preschool teacher. She’s the zen master of active listening and with great result. “What do you think we should do about that? OK, what do you think will happen if we try that plan? Does anybody else have any other suggestions?”
And whenever she DOES give advice she’s very gentle about it. “I’m thinking that maybe we need more information. How could we get more information about this?”
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Sounds like you are doing more active listening that you’re giving yourself credit for. I know what you mean about those people who are great at it and seem to just coach and coax us round to the “right” answer… Definitely to be admired.
Cathy
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One could argue that speaking out loud and demonstrating an obvious need for guidance is soliciting advice. I, however, believe that most of the time people not only don’t want to hear ideas contrary to their current understanding, but they take offense at the suggestion that they might not be doing “the best that they can”. This is especially true when you are very close to the person giving you advice (think: parent, spouse, best friend etc…). The fact is: people want to know that you love them, unconditionally, not that you think they could use an upgrade or that there is room for improvement in their personalities.
It is very rare for someone to genuinely desire significant life choice advice and even rarer for them to take any prolonged action on that advice. That being said, I need all the help I can get and I hope that at least a small fraction of the greatly valuable information I get by reading blogs, talking to my family and friends, and taking continuing education courses will “stick”. It is my sincere desire to develope better habits and become a more kind, compassionate, healthier, spiritually evolved and financially stable person. One thing I have learned is that due to the nature of our individuality, one human beings best formula for success will hardly ever have great benefit to another, without at least some substantial modification.
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Philip – that’s spot on – we need to understand other people’s experiences but then we need to adapt to our own circumstances (and personalities). I too don’t think we can just take on someone else’s model for success – thanks for the reminder on that one!
Cathy
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Hi Cathy
Great question!
My experience of advice giving is that it is often more about the giver than the receiver … you know the quote via I-forget-who about “all advice is autobiographical” but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t resonate with the receiver too.
Perhaps its about how to give it? Changing it from a “you should” to a “you could” has the potential to make it more about sharing information that could be considered in the decision making or planning process.
At the same time, there is something going on between the girl and the grandmother that needs to work its way out between them. What can a stranger say that wouldn’t sound completely “you should” in that situation? We are all on our own learning journey. I hope that little girl learns to hold fast on the things she prefers!!! She will get loads of practice at having to defend her choices.
great question. thanks for asking it.
Yup – sometimes hard to remember but when we’re on the receiving end of the unsolicited advice it’s usually all about the person giving it.
Now my other half said that I should have told the grandma not to buy the lego if she valued her bank balance – that definitely reflects our experience!!
Cathy
cathyp recently posted… Speaking
Hello Cathy,
This is a catch twenty situation. I think you did the right thing by not giving any advice. People are weird, you just never know what you’re dealing with. You could’ve had said something coming from a good place and you just never know this grandma maybe never had toys growing up and would’ve taken whatever you said personally and told you where to get of. Maybe her grand-daughter wanting a lego princess just didn’t resonate with her. It’s a shame because all little girls love having some sort of item associated with being a princess.
Hi Jenn
If we dont even try to share the love, we live in our own little bubbles and become isolated. I’d probably chip in. However knowing how expensive Lego is I might take a view on whether Gran’s motive was that she just couldn’t afford it, which would be sad but understandable. On the other hand Cathy’s little guy might have sold her on the cheaper figures. Its good to talk even to weird people
Hi Cathy… I think there is a way to give advice without ever actually giving it.
For example… you could have pretended to get mad at your own son for never putting down his legos…
“You never stop playing with those things, and you need to do your homework, so I forbid you to have any more legos… when will you learn to put them down!”
Who knows… the grandma may have given you unsolicited advice… (…but seriously… A BOY BAND?!?!) crazy grandma…
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Without knowing the grandmother or the child, it’s hard to say. I know with my own sons, they get so many toys that they either don’t play with or lose pieces. Perhaps the grandmother knew that although the girl *said* she would play with them, they would just be scattered pieces collecting dust and not getting used.
Giving unsolicited advice can be a challenge. Just this last week, I was in a discussion with someone about some troubles she was having in a business she and her husband owned. I kept trying to encourage her to look for the abundance in the potential buyers if she could just find them, but her mindset was tuned to “agreement with lack”, so the advice fell on deaf ears.
We should judge each situation and determine are we giving the advice from our own experiences or is our advice something that could truly help. It could very well be that the unsolicited advice is more from what we expect to happen rather than what might be true for the person we are giving the advice to.
Thanks for the great question, Cathy!
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Grady – this is such a good approach. What we mean in good faith is always going to be coloured by our own experience. Better to pose the questions when we can – a well-framed question can be worth a million words of advice.
Thanks for coming over and joining the conversation
Cathy
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Personally when I was a kid I loved Fischer Technik, Lego and Meccano too. i think you can still get the former Fischer Technik kits.
They were brilliant and I totally agree with your lad. Much more creativity from actually building something and using your imagination than listening to a CD from a “flash in the pan” Boy-Band, who nobody will remember the following year.
Look on You Tube and see how many “ahem adults2 play with Lego. There is one chap who has built a fully working model of an automatic gearbox too !
Can’t do that with a CD, although I suppose you could listen to it once and then use it as a frisbee.
Very difficult question. In that situation, I don’t think I would have.
Problem is, if people don’t ask they are rarely receptive, if ever. (Even when people ask for advice, they hardly ever take it.)
The only thing I’ve found that *sometimes* works is to relate it to myself, i.e.: “This might not apply to you, but what I’ve found to work really well for me is…”.
At least that way, you avoid them getting the feeling that they’re being told what to do.
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