The how to give advice hierarchy is illuminating in the sense that it immediately brings to mind situations or people for each level.
This is something I've heard from a number of sources, most notably Adam Grant and Yuval Noah Harrari that it's important to first check if someone really wants your input or is looking for someone who'll just listen. One sign that someone is fishing for support (not so much looking for your opinion) is when they lead you with their view. The best description of this I've read is from Annie Duke, who calls this way of asking for advice 'infecting someone with your view.' Lastly, I think what is necessary on the part of the advice seeker is make explicit 3 things (your goals, your constraints, and your objectives/priorities). For example, your wife may ask you ' Should I keep these shoes or return them?' You'll say something based on how it looks, assuming how it looks is that matters. But your wife may be looking for comfort or for versatility or something else. When we give advice, we are tempted to believe that omission of information means something's not important. But that's not always the case. People simply forget, r they don't know better about how to ask for advice.
"Lastly, I think what is necessary on the part of the advice seeker is make explicit 3 things (your goals, your constraints, and your objectives/priorities)"
This sounds like a fairly good reference to start from. But if it's not in place in a conversation, how do you (person advising) establish it without interrupting / discouraging the person seeking 'advice' ? It's the start when someone is in 'flow'.
Perhaps it will stump the advice seeker but we'll only know if that's the base case by doing it more often. My sense is that the advice seeker will always state their goal ('I want your help with this or that') So it's generally between constraints and priorities that information is omitted. The vaguer the ask, the more the information left out.
'I want your help with this or that' is a better case scenario. I find it challenging when the conversation is just a laydown of a problem / situation and I am expected to react!
The assumption here is that the advice seeker knows what they want. If we remove that filter, the nature of conversations where someone's asking you for advice expands. Someone may just use the opportunity of the conversation to figure out how to articulate the problem, someone may just be thinking out loud, etc.
Let me throw two other thoughts in the mix.
1) Good advice isn't free. But it isn't just not free in the usual sense of you gotta pay with money or some resource. It's not free in the sense that you gotta pay with clarity of thought to receive good advice.
2) I think the quality of advice tracks closely with the quality of question asked or problem framed. Is it possible to get good advice to a poorly stated ask? I doubt but i would like to think about it some more.
Pritesh ...Your Monday morning treat is something that i look forward to...And believe me your contents is very unique in the sense that it touches really myriad topics.
Keep up the Josh and the vigour.
Like they say in the Armed Forces 'You can't keep a good guy down for long".
The how to give advice hierarchy is illuminating in the sense that it immediately brings to mind situations or people for each level.
This is something I've heard from a number of sources, most notably Adam Grant and Yuval Noah Harrari that it's important to first check if someone really wants your input or is looking for someone who'll just listen. One sign that someone is fishing for support (not so much looking for your opinion) is when they lead you with their view. The best description of this I've read is from Annie Duke, who calls this way of asking for advice 'infecting someone with your view.' Lastly, I think what is necessary on the part of the advice seeker is make explicit 3 things (your goals, your constraints, and your objectives/priorities). For example, your wife may ask you ' Should I keep these shoes or return them?' You'll say something based on how it looks, assuming how it looks is that matters. But your wife may be looking for comfort or for versatility or something else. When we give advice, we are tempted to believe that omission of information means something's not important. But that's not always the case. People simply forget, r they don't know better about how to ask for advice.
"Lastly, I think what is necessary on the part of the advice seeker is make explicit 3 things (your goals, your constraints, and your objectives/priorities)"
This sounds like a fairly good reference to start from. But if it's not in place in a conversation, how do you (person advising) establish it without interrupting / discouraging the person seeking 'advice' ? It's the start when someone is in 'flow'.
Perhaps it will stump the advice seeker but we'll only know if that's the base case by doing it more often. My sense is that the advice seeker will always state their goal ('I want your help with this or that') So it's generally between constraints and priorities that information is omitted. The vaguer the ask, the more the information left out.
'I want your help with this or that' is a better case scenario. I find it challenging when the conversation is just a laydown of a problem / situation and I am expected to react!
The assumption here is that the advice seeker knows what they want. If we remove that filter, the nature of conversations where someone's asking you for advice expands. Someone may just use the opportunity of the conversation to figure out how to articulate the problem, someone may just be thinking out loud, etc.
Let me throw two other thoughts in the mix.
1) Good advice isn't free. But it isn't just not free in the usual sense of you gotta pay with money or some resource. It's not free in the sense that you gotta pay with clarity of thought to receive good advice.
2) I think the quality of advice tracks closely with the quality of question asked or problem framed. Is it possible to get good advice to a poorly stated ask? I doubt but i would like to think about it some more.
Pritesh ...Your Monday morning treat is something that i look forward to...And believe me your contents is very unique in the sense that it touches really myriad topics.
Keep up the Josh and the vigour.
Like they say in the Armed Forces 'You can't keep a good guy down for long".
Kudos to the effort.
Thanks a lot Saurabh for your encouragement & feedback. It's been fun curating these posts. And surely keeping up the josh & vigour! :)