Your advice don't matter
- 23 Nov, 2020
Suppose Michael was eating lunch with his best friend Sam
Sam looked like something was on his mind and was not paying attention in the conversation the conversation at all
Michael then started to ask him questions and try to listen,
Michael: “Hey you’re not paying attention to the food at all what’s on your mind?”
Sam: “I am torn, I feel like my life is not going the way I want it to and I am not moving forward at all. What should I do?”
Michael: “That’s easy, career is the most important focus you need to have right now. Focus on that first, once you have money everything else will fall into place”
Sam: “I guess that makes sense”
This is typically how a normal conversation will go between friends who lack the listening skills.
What went wrong
Michael was offering to listen, but in reality, he was offering to give advice. He never truly listened and understand the real reason behind Sam’s thoughts and feelings
Michael felt like he knew exactly what was going and had to jump in and offer help to Sam
This is very common for a lot of novice listeners out there
Have you ever get super excited feeling that you knew what is going and felt the urge to quickly jump in and offer advice and tips?
It may sound good on the surface, but in reality this is not doing any good for 2 reasons:
- You did not fully listen and understand the other person
- Your advice and tips don’t matter
1. You did not fully listen and understand the other person
Before you decide to give advice to someone you must fully understand what is gong on. You cannot just go half way throughout the diagnosis and jump to conclusions immediately
The goal of listening is to listen and understand completely
Sometimes even if you know what is going on, you still must continue to listen and let them finish their thoughts completely
You are here to listen
You are here to understand
You are here to give them a mental therapy
Any interruption to their thoughts will stop you from achieving the goal of listening
A doctor cannot give prescription to the patient if he does not do a full diagnosis on the patients and knows what is going on
If he jumps into conclusions right away, he will give the wrong medicine to the patient
The wrong medicine will not help anyone although it is filled with good intentions
Same with the advice that you are giving to your friend when listening
And here’ comes the next shocking part
2. Your advice and tips don’t matter
Unless if the person is asking you advice on technical skills such as:
- how to kick better in kickboxing, or
- how to get your next client in consulting
Unless if you actually achieved success in these technical skills, THEN your advice and tips actually matter
What it comes to relationships and decisions on what the person truly wants in life, your advice and tips don’t matter
This one is a hard one to swallow for the ego
It is also very counterintuitive too
Yes, you don’t matter in their world
You are not the center of their world
You are not that person
You don’t know what he/she truly wants
How can you tell them what they want to do when they are the ones who knows what they want the best?
The answer is you don’t!
Then what must are we supposed to do?
Solution
When someone comes to you and ask you “what should I do?”
It is actually a trick question
You never tell them what to do
Your job is to help guide them to understand themselves first
Then you turn the table around and ask “what do you think you should do?”
No ego
No giving advice and tips
Because these two don’t matter at all in helping them
How conversation should have gone
Let’s revisit the conversation between Michael and Sam and see what should have happened:
Michael: “Hey you’re not paying attention to the food at all what’s on your mind?”
Sam: “I am torn, I feel like my life is not going the way I want it to and I am not moving forward at all. What should I do?”
Michael: “So you are feeling like you are stuck?”
Sam: “Yeah. Nothing is going the way i wanted it to. I wanted to get master’s degree to improve my career but never really got to it.”
Michael: “Why were you not able to get to it?”
Sam: “Because what I really want is not master’s degree”
Michael: “What did you really want?”
Sam: “I want to settle down and have a family more than anything else”
Michael: “So what you want is to find your love and have family together”
Sam: “Yes! That is exactly it”
This story is very similar to a conversation I had with a friend with exception of few things
Without careful listening and guidance to the answers, Michael would have given the wrong advice to Sam all along
With careful listening and guidance, Michael was able to:
- Help Sam uncover his true desires, what he really wants
- Help Sam to get to come to his own conclusion and answer to his question “what should I do?”
- Give Sam a mental therapy knowing that he has a safe place to share his intimate deep thoughts and desires that he never knew existed
Remember this:
Your advice and tip don’t matter
By not giving advice to the listenee
You open up room to let the person explore his own mind and
You let him come up with his own decisions
You complete your job as a listener
