Greetings from Barcelona ☀️
🙌Many thanks for reading The Quest.
If you are joining for the first time, welcome to our deep dive into facilitation, learning, and how to live a creative life.
Let’s jump right in!
😕How do you know when to listen and when to give advice?
I have a confession to make.
When someone tells me a problem they are facing, my first impulse is to want to help them solve it. More often than not it comes in the form of advice.
I realized that my advice was mostly unwanted.
It wasn’t until years of freely giving advice that I realized that it was mostly unsolicited and unappreciated. And because I believed that I had really good advice to give, well, that was a hard pill for me to swallow.
I’ve had to train myself out of jumping in with advice.
As a facilitator, I’ve had to train myself out of jumping in with advice and develop habits of listening and asking better questions.
It’s been a crucial part of my development as a facilitator (parent, partner, and being a better person)
Why? I realized that by jumping in too quickly with advice, what I am really saying is that “you can’t figure this out by yourself.” It can feel frustrating and even disempowering for the person you are talking to.
But there is a caveat.
Sometimes the person who you are speaking to actually does want advice. I realized that my pendulum had swung too far in the opposite direction to avoiding giving advice at all cost. And learned that defaulting to only listening when someone is looking for advice can also be frustrating.
🤔How do you know when to listen and when to give advice?
That’s our Quest for this week🔎
👉How to Tame Your Advice Monster
👉How and When to Give Advice
👉HBR Tips for Active Listening
Plus
👉A really easy way to add animations to your emails and presentations
👹How to Tame Your Advice Monster – TED Talk
If you don’t think you have an advice-giving habit, check out this hilarious TED Talk by The Coaching Habit author Michael Bungay Stanier.
He calls it the “advice monster”. And it usually creeps up out of the shadows when someone starts talking wanting to “add value”. (That’s exactly what mine does!😅)
He runs through 3 challenges with advice-giving👇
1/ You are busy solving the wrong problem. The first challenge is rarely the real challenge.
2/ Your advice is not nearly as good as you think it is. Especially when you think you give good advice.
3/ Your advice can be disempowering. It can be received as “you can’t figure this out yourself.”
To tame your advice monster you have to understand it👇
Your advice monster has 3 different personas:
1/ Tell. If you don’t have all the answers you have failed.
2/ Save it. Your job is to rescue everybody.
3/ Control it. The only way you win is to control at all times.
How can you tame your advice monster?
Replace your advice-giving habit with a new habit 👉stay curious a little bit longer.
Here’s what he clarified for me: The problem isn’t with advice. It’s when giving advice becomes your default response.
Check out the full 14 min TED talk 👉 here.
What’s your advice monster like? Mine is a combo of persona 1 & 2.
🗣️How and When to Give Advice – 6 Tips
An article by Nicole Pajer that gives advice on how and when to give advice (and if that’s not meta I don’t know what is😅).
She gives us 6 tips for advice giving👇
1/ Your default mode should be to not give advice.
2/ Just because someone’s upset doesn’t mean they are looking for advice.
3/ Don’t give advice just to make yourself feel better.
4/ Know when to back off.
5/ When in doubt, ask.
Read the full article 👉 here.
What signals tell you when to listen and when to give advice?
👂HBR’s Advice on How to Become a Better Listener
One way to tame your advice monster is to become a better listener.
This HBR article offers 9 tips for getting good at active listening. That means listening with the intent to understand, not to respond.
Here are 3 tips that I found especially helpful👇
1/ Don’t “put it in your own words” unless you need to.
Check your understanding of what the other person is saying by repeating what they have said in their words. This helps to reduce emotional friction and mental load on both parties.
2/ Ask more questions than you think you need to.
This helps the other person feel listened to, ensures that you understand their message, and serves as a prompt to make sure important details are not overlooked.
3/ Acknowledge shortcomings.
If you know going into a conversation that you may be on the top of your listening game – because you are tired, you are unfamiliar with the topic, or any other reason – let the other person know. If you didn’t understand what they said, ask them to repeat it.
Read the full article 👉 here.
What has helped you become a better listener?
🛠️Tool of the Week: How to Add Easy Animations
Thanks to Quest reader @karaminder for turning me on to lottiefiles.com. You can sign up for a free account and access fun animations to add to emails and presentations like this one 👇
💌Thanks for reading The Quest
I always love hearing your feedback and suggestions. Just hit reply to share your thoughts and ideas.
🙌Special shout out to Lux and Tina in New Jersey, Barry & Michaele in Bracebridge, Charlotte in the UK, Joan in Mansfield, and Delia in London for letting me know that another benefit of Mural is that it interfaces with Zoom breakout groups.
Visit my website for ways we can work together 👉 here.
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Creatively yours,
