Sep 17

Written by: Gary Courtenay
17/09/2008 14:47

My rather shocking and recent discovery is that in general, no matter how good or how well intentioned your advice, people don’t want it and won’t take it even if you give it.
 
In fact in many cases people dislike the process of receiving unsolicited advice and consequently become resistant to it even before it’s been fully explained.
 
I was chatting about this topic the other day with my 15-year-old son. During the conversation he told me that in a recent art lesson at school another boy in his class (who always comes top in art) approached him and made some suggestions about how my lad might make some changes to an art project he was working on.
 
My son told me he responded by telling the other lad he didn’t agree with his ideas and clearly my son had been quite indignant in his reply. However once the ‘would be adviser’ had left the scene my son confessed to me that he thought about what had been said and started to implement some of the ideas he’d been given.
 
Now whilst this story might seem comical I’m sure most of us have been guilty of similar behaviour in the past. It also demonstrates just how resistant we can be to taking advice, even when it’s good advice. This especially applies when the advice comes from our peers i.e. people we see as being roughly equal to us.
 
Happily, attitudes usually reverse when people actually ask for advice of their own volition (i.e. make themselves open to advice). However you should be aware that even when advice is requested recipients will frequently choose not to follow it.  Sometimes they may even purposely modify your advice to the extent where it can be claimed that what they’ve done is not your advice at all (due to some subtle alterations they have made).  Usually this is the ego at work (and yes, we’ve all got one)!!
 
Advice is often interpreted as criticism which in truth it often is. If we’re smart we don’t come out with: “Hey…you’re doing that all wrong, let me tell you what you should be doing” but based on the way many people respond we probably might as well have said it that way. 
 
So how do you give advice to people in a way that it will be well received and thus might have a chance of being acted upon?
 
This I believe is a massive question and already I have found some answers, however I am still working on it and I will report my more detailed findings to you in a future blog entry.

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