How to Give Good Advice

Have you ever had the experience of trying to help another person, but your well-intentioned advice seemed to fall on deaf ears?

Did you have the sense that you could see exactly what the problem was and what needed to be done to fix it? Was it a mystery as to why the whole thing seemed so obvious to you yet was completely unfathomable to the person you were helping?

Or perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of such advice. Have you ever had a friend, parent, coach, or colleague say something like “Look, you just need to…”?

When you heard that, did the lights come on for you? Did you find yourself thinking a thought along the lines of “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Or, instead, were your thoughts more like “It’s not that simple” or “They just don’t get it,” or any kind of thought that put a halt to the “help” that was being directed your way?

Wouldn’t it be great if those people with knowledge and expertise in particular areas could get other people to pay more attention to them and adopt the solutions they have crafted?

Perhaps the task would be easier to accomplish if we understood what makes good advice good. Having some sense of the goodness of good advice might help with the uptake and effectiveness of people’s recommendations.

Could we agree that, essentially, advice is good when it helps improve things or make things better?

So good advice helps a person solve a problem or figure something out or do better than they were doing before. The goodness, then, arises from the results of the advice, not the advice itself.

This means that if you want your advice to be appreciated, it has to improve things in some way for the person you’re advising. The fine print here is that it is only the other person who knows if things are getting better.

Of course, by implication, the flip side is that bad, poor, or misguided advice is advice that doesn’t help a person do things better than before or otherwise solve the problem they are confronted with. Advice that is not good might slow things down or distract you.

A point of clarification might be useful here. Although it’s probably very obvious, I think it’s worth stating anyway: Advice itself is never helpful or unhelpful. It’s the following of advice that produces terrific or not-so-amazing outcomes.

Assistance is typically sought when someone is experiencing some kind of difficulty that they have been unable to resolve on their own. Perhaps they’ve tried numerous things and gathered information and ideas from different sources, but the problem has persisted.

Or maybe they’ve just been putting up with a less-than-satisfactory situation for some time and have finally reached their threshold where change is now considered imperative.

Whatever the actual scenario, the general dynamic is that something about a person’s life is not as they would like it to be, and, for some reason, they have been unable to rectify the situation.

We could summarise this by saying that people have certain expectations, preferences, or goals that are not being fulfilled. Anything that contributes to correcting this situation will be experienced as helpful.

It is critical to understand, though, that problems of day-to-day living are only ever individually experienced. We can’t ever really genuinely experience any aspect of another person’s life.

Different people can certainly be exposed to the same events and circumstances—except that they won’t be the same events and circumstances because each individual will experience them differently. Have you ever had a friend get completely bent out of shape over something that seemed inconsequential to you?

Or, conversely, have you had friends of yours not understand what you were getting so upset about over something they considered trivial?

It will always be the case that what bothers some people won’t bother others. That should in no way minimise the botheration for those who are troubled. Trouble is trouble regardless of how it might seem from the outside.

So, the value of the advice is determined entirely by the receiver of the advice rather than the giver of the advice. Good advice helps a person live life more like they want to. Advice that isn’t so good gets in the way of that.

The trick is that no one, except the individual concerned, knows what their ideal life is. And sometimes, even that person has a stronger sense of what the ideal life isn’t rather than what it could or should be.

Perhaps you’ve picked up by now that there is no way to give advice that can guarantee it will be received as well. The goodness is determined entirely by the receiver of the advice. Perhaps the title for this article should really be “How to Give Advice That Will Be Received As Helpful.”

The only way to do that is to understand the world of the other person from their point of view. Unfortunately, obtaining that understanding is impossible. This is not to say that all advice is bad. It is clearly the case that some people sometimes are able to take suggestions and ideas from others to make their life more like they want it to be.

The message is that it is not the advice giver who makes the advice good. It can certainly feel good to be giving someone else advice. With just a few crafty sentences, people can feel wise and caring and helpful all at the same time. The confidence and conviction of the adviser, however, is a very poor gauge of how helpful the advice is going to be.

Advice that is judged to be goodwill involves far more listening, learning, and questioning than telling or guiding. In order to help more than hinder we need a generous dollop of humility about our ignorance of how other people could or should live their lives.

Being part of the solution rather than the problem involves recognizing that the troubled person is the master builder, architect, and ultimate arbiter of when a solution is a solution.

Having lots of ideas and options to consider might be useful, but it will also be necessary for the ones seeking help to have the time, space, and freedom to ponder each alternative in a way and a timeframe that is right for them.