An Advisor’s Advice about Giving Advice

If you thought I was reminiscing about Frank Burns’ (from M*A*S*H) line of “it’s nice to be nice to the nice” when I was deciding on a title for this post, you would be correct and are likely as old as I am. On a serious note, however, since I chose “advisor” as part of my LinkedIn professional headline, I reflected on my philosophies of what makes a good advisor with technical and business professional advice.  Here are several thoughts based on personal experience as advisor, advisee, manager and leader.

Positive and honest tone

There is a negative way and a positive way to tell the same story.  I prefer the positive way, since it is easier for the advisee to listen and absorb the advice without strong emotions getting in the way.  In one instance, I talked to someone who was advising me in the elements of a consulting business.  His advice was extremely useful.  I sent an email to thank him, indicating that his advice could have been delivered as “you dummy, why did you not think of such important things yourself?”  Instead, his approach gave me the wonderful feeling of “I sure feel like a million bucks, learned a lot today, and have a bunch of ideas to consider.”  That is the way I want everyone to feel after they get advice from me, and move forwards positively.

As an advisor, we want to seem like we are all-knowing, and may give advice without direct experience on the topic. I prefer to be absolutely honest under such circumstances, and qualify my responses with “here are my first instincts, but I don’t have specific experience related to your situation.”  In this way, the advisee knows that the advice can be considered but needs better validation.  The reader might be thinking: shouldn’t every piece of advice be validated?  I have found that advisors (me included) speak so confidently of their advice and the advisee can sometimes be overpowered by the advisor confidence, such that the qualifications are needed as a reminder for validation.

Instilling confidence

After thinking about some of the most memorable and useful advice received in the past, two popped up related to instilling confidence on the advisee.

First advice: I was always very nervous in giving presentations, and it showed.  In a presentation skills workshop, the lecturer reminded us that the main reason we are the presenters is that we are the subject matter experts of what we are presenting.  We know a lot more about the subject matter than the audience.  With a well thought-out presentation, there is nothing to be nervous about, and everything to be confident about.  She was absolutely right – I remind myself of this advice often, and also pass that advice on to nervous presenters. 

Second advice: as a manager, don't be afraid to make management decisions and make them as soon as appropriate. Even if you are only 50 percent correct, that's pretty good.  It is easy to delay management decisions, but waiting on a decision can often be quite damaging, since the lack of a decision may put your staff in a confused or insecure state, and no progress is made in any direction.  I got this very useful advice from one of my bosses – it is about the confidence in your management judgement, and not needing to meet the unrealistic expectation that management decisions be correct every time.

Provide good options under the proper context

As an advisor, I strongly feel that a set of options must be presented to the advisee, instead of a steadfast “this is what you must do.”  The options are necessary because the advisee knows the context and situation best, so he must determine what’s best.  But the advisor must have some basic context, or else the options will not be ideal.  In one instance, a staff member asked me to help solve a complex math problem.  I solved his problem and presented the very lengthy solution to him.  I became curious as to why he wanted to solve this problem.  After his explanation, I realized that his original problem could have been solved with something much simpler (just the dot product of two vectors).

In many advisee and advisor discussions, there is tendency to expect advice immediately, to achieve instant gratification for the advisee.  While some immediate advice makes sense, it should not be considered the norm in many situations.  I tend to take my time before speaking, to consider many different aspects, and present better options with some time to think deeper. In some cases, I may even rebut my original advice after some thinking.

Unsolicited advice

It is in my nature to provide recommendations to solve an advisee’s problem.  That is what engineers do when presented with a problem.  However, in many cases, especially relating to frustrations or anger in a professional environment, the advisee may not want advice, and the most important thing is to listen with a confidential and empathic ear.

I give unsolicited advice sparingly, because it can be difficult to judge whether the unsolicited advice is desired, helpful or harmful.  In one instance, I have been involved with the planning of a virtual-reality environment, and I heard whispers about interest in a particular technical approach.  I knew of this approach, and emailed the stakeholders that, while this approach is interesting, it has limitations which cannot be easily overcome in the desired environment.  Before sending the email, I confirmed with a senior stakeholder that this unsolicited advice would be welcomed and desired, since no one has evaluated the technical feasibility yet.

Unsolicited advice can be effective in the form of a gentle or humorous hint.  During my early years as manager, a friend and colleague showed me a book entitled “Don't Sweat the Small Stuff”. He knew of my struggles at work and told me that there is a chapter in which the case example was named Andrew. He was described as a person who worked a ridiculous number of hours, with no social life and no hobbies. Depressed in his job, he quit and then realized that his job was not the problem after all, and tried to get his old job back. My colleague jokingly asked if I was the case example in the book. Without any further encouragement from this colleague, I borrowed that book, and learned quite a number of useful lessons relevant to my struggles.

I hope you enjoyed all the unsolicited advice disguised as a post…