Too Many Advisors Spoils The Leader

The most useful advice I could give anyone starting out in anything, is to seek as much advice as you can. Preferably from people with differing opinions, including some who you may already believe you won't agree with. In fact especially them, as "yes men" aren't helpful, you want people who challenge you, although that can be hard to take at first.

The second piece of advice I would give is take it all with a pinch of salt. Only take on board and action advice if it's amazing and feels right for you. Don't just do something because a mentor told you to.

No one is travelling on the same journey in life as you are.

Quite simply, no one knows the best decision for yourself than you.

When you listen to advice from people you admire, either via books, a talk, even face to face, it is only their opinions based on the life they have lived.

We all have our own values. People giving out advice do it for a number a reasons including they feel they have wisdom that is useful to others, through to making themselves look smart and are purely doing it for their own ego.

It can be hard to know what to do with all these different opinions. Especially as some may come from people you highly trust, but may not make be right for you in a particular instance. Or the opposite, someone you previously thought was insane actually has a worthy point.

As a leader though you have to make your own decisions and stick by them. A poor leader will blame others. You can change your mind, but it should be your decision to.

I find two methods work best. I'll call one "the gut", the other "the mind". One day I'll name them something nicer :-) But they describe the methods simply and clearly.

The Gut

This is where you think about all the differing opinions you've been given and thought each through carefully. They may have been flowing through your mind throughout the day, it's not a process where you create a list, but you let the different opinions flow through your mind for a few days. You just let it happen, don't over think. If the decision doesn't sit well with you, fill you with confidence, but instead dread, a feeling of uneasiness then it's likely the wrong one. Or at least not right for now.

Sometimes you have to make some very hard decisions, and if you've got two choices, the better one will stand out. You will feel it, in your gut.

Don't rush important decisions with your gut though.

The Mind

This one I would say is the best but it takes time to master, but can produce results fast. Our brains are amazingly complex machines and we still don't know how they work.

This one works by using a form of mantra meditation, I've not tried with mindfulness techniques, but it could work. I'm not going to go into the details of each, but instead how you enter the meditation and how you leave it.

You enter the mediation with your mind in a flurry and all the thoughts, decisions, anger, frustrations all grabbing for some of your mental time.

This meditation will be quite hard, your body will resist, but nothing good in life comes easy.

When you leave the meditation, after 20 mins or so, you will (hopefully) feel calmer than when you went in. All these choices will have flown around your head so many times as you drift in and out of the mantra.

Often at about the 15 min mark you start to feel it working. It's important you do it for the full allocated time, even if you feel 100% confident with some of the thoughts you've been having, as you want to finish in a calm state.

Both of these techniques produce similar outcomes. Neither is necessarily the best for one person, maybe both don't work. The Mind definitely requires learning a mantra technique such as Transcendental Meditation.

Personally I fell The Gut is quicker and easier for small decisions, but The Mind is much more powerful but takes practice & commitment, but can produce some amazing results.

Obviously you can't use these techniques all the time, especially for trivial decisions, but when you feel overloaded and confused about making the right decision I find one of the above works well.

I've had many discussions with various advisors about many things, both "professional" advisors and people who just have an opinion.

The best advisors though are those you can disagree with and who challenge your thinking. That's when real progress happens.

IMAGE CREDIT: Finland's Shouting Men's Choir