By waiting until someone asks for it.
Ask HN: How do you give advice?
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#12Advice is not given; it is received. The first step to consider is if the person is open for a conversation, and if the time is right. Learning doesn't happen when you want it; it happens when they are ready for it. Be thoughtful and respectful to the other person's state of mind, and approach it with empathy. The second thing to consider is how to approach the topic. Unless you have a strong emotional bond with the…
Someone explained to me that communication is done by the receiver. If I say something and the person listening didn’t understand, that’s akin to mailing a letter to the wrong address.
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#13You can't really just give people advice unless they ask for it. You can however ask people if it's okay to give them advice or how you can do that best.
Sometimes it is even useful to ask said person who might benefit from advice for advice. That opens the conversation to being receptive of each other's advice.
Lastly, you should probably question yourself regarding why your advice should be accepted in the first place. Majority of the time people will figure it out and your inaction of giving said advice is actually more helpful in the long run.
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#14I just had to write this up because we run roundtables and mentors at my conference SaaS Connect which is finally happening again next week after 3 years and I had forgotten.
First make sure you have permission to offer advice. But remember…
No one likes advice. You cannot really know what is going on in someone else’s world. It’s easy to get it wrong. And advice isn’t about controlling people despite what another person said; that would be very aggressive and really an intervention not advice giving.
Instead ground your responses in your own experiences. You can never be wrong about yourself.
Tell relevant stories from your own experience.
Share resources that may be relevant.
Work through your own mental models you might apply in this situation. That isn’t telling people your mental framework is correct though you may believe it deeply. It’s saying “I use this framework. This is how I’d apply it.”
This gives the listener what they are really after when asking for advice. Insight into how you think. It’s a mystery to them and pulling back the curtain is a wonder.
They will learn and take what they can from the experience.
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#15Socratic method
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#16First, understand that you are trying to control them. This might sound odd, but it's true. You're trying to change their behaviour because you'd prefer it another way. Maybe that's because you want to be a good person or it hurts you to see them fail, but ultimately you have selfish motives. Secondly, realise that many people in their life have tried to control them before. They didn't all have pure motives. Many of…
Advice is not an attempt to control someone, it's sharing your perspective, which may be incomplete, and trying to provide additional useful information for making a decision.
Persuasion on the other hand is certainly an attempt to influence someone's behavior.
Persuasion and advice are not the same thing.
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#17By waiting until someone asks for it.
This is the only good answer I've seen in this thread. If you're thrusting advice on someone who isn't asking for it then you might as well go learn some sales because that's what you're doing.
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#18First, understand that you are trying to control them. This might sound odd, but it's true. You're trying to change their behaviour because you'd prefer it another way. Maybe that's because you want to be a good person or it hurts you to see them fail, but ultimately you have selfish motives. Secondly, realise that many people in their life have tried to control them before. They didn't all have pure motives. Many of…
I came to post - don't be so invested in the advise you offer that you get upset when they don't follow it - but you explained it much better.
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#19Don’t give advice unless someone asks… but since you did, first there are a lot of ways to give advice but here’s what works for me.
Frame it with “I can tell you what works for me, but everyone is different and there are a lot of ways to do things… ”
Re: Ask HN: How do you give advice?
#20>>Could you share your stories and thoughts on what you do to make your advice easier to accept?
Wait until it is asked for.