Lowering the Defense
I can't think of anything more personal.
How I see or do my work is completely mine. My body, mind, and life force is unique to me (and my time) and no matter how much shared experience we may have, others will never fully understand the way I see the world. When trying to navigate through a challenge it is me and only me that is qualified to assess the best action. Yet, it is almost impossible to solve anything by oneself. We have warped views on reality, a range of bias as well as botchy memories. So, we read books, listen to podcasts, and read blogs (😉) to find patterns and proof of methodologies we can replicate and apply to better ourselves and situation. We also talk.
Remember the time you were having a coffee/beer with a friend and they complained about a colleague at work. The person was negative and making your friend's life hell. Your friend is explaining how they are at their wits end, stressed out, and don't know what to do.
What happens next is one of the most crucial exchanges we have as humans.
Reflect on the last time you were in this situation. What did you say? What was your reply? What was the first thing out of your mouth?
Experience tells me you probably wanted to help. And, in doing so you told the person what they should or could do. We simply cannot seem to help it. It can be because of what Psychologists call Codependency - a focus on helping or fixing other people's problems to feel useful or needed or to manipulate others to do what we want them to do. Sometimes, we just don't know what else to say - it is simply a habit we picked up from generations before us.
But, what is wrong with giving our friend-in-need advice to help them? What is the problem with that? It turns out there are many, especially in a professional settings...
Michael Bungay Stanier, writes in his book The Advice Trap how advice does not work for many reasons:
You're solving the wrong problem - the problem shared is rarely the core or only problem, making your advice mute.
You're proposing a mediocre solution - without a full picture of nuances and facts, with plenty of bias, baggage and assumptions it would be a miracle if your advice was on point and fully rounded.
You're advice demotivates the person - you leave little room for autonomy and learning when giving advice. You inadvertently send a signal that the person is incapable to figure it out themselves and disempower them.
You're advice creates overwhelm for you - you have taken on the decision making role for others. That is a lot of responsibility to shoulder. Especially when it becomes systematic.
You're creating a messy team culture - a team of colleagues giving and receiving advice as a default tend blur the lines of roles and responsibilities, and often work on misaligned tasks with little clarity.
You're limiting change capability - advice dependent workplaces are wasteful, rigid, have lowered innovation and are poor at scaling.
Advice is a temptation best avoided. If not all the time then certainly most of the time. Our advice is rarely met with optimism and buy-in. In fact, it is likely to raise people's defensive mechanisms and shut down any form of collaborative discussion.
Walking into a discussion I like to create an 'Advice Free Zone' in my mind. I know when I am in this mode of thinking I am at my best and the conversation flows much better. It is a simple tool to spark excitement, energy, and creativity. Reframing our thoughts into questions, even about how the person is feeling creates connection which all further points of a discussion are built upon.
Our challenges (and solutions) are more personal than we are willing to admit. Embracing this as an individual is possibly empowering, but as a listener/friend/colleague it is a necessity. We are never fully qualified to give advice, at least off the bat - even when the person is directly asking you to 'tell me what to do!'
Avoid the temptation and see collaboration catch on all around you. Or, maybe a better way to say it would be:
How would it look to avoid the temptation of advice?
What increases in collaboration would occur with more curiosity?
What would more questions and less advice mean for your team culture?
