Tips for Filtering Advice
// What’s the best way to evaluate the advice you’re receiving? And how can you be more effective at offering helpful advice to others? Andrea gives three practical considerations for assessing counsel that we receive or give so that we inspire healthy growth.
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Transcript
Hey, there! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. This morning I was on a call with someone who just wanted to know about our origin story, how we came to do what we do. I’ve had a couple of these calls recently with listeners, with people who have just been wondering about themselves and how they should get started and that sort of thing, but really curious about how we got to the place where we are now.
We’ve actually talked about this before and so I’m not going to go into how we got to where we are. But what it does bring up for me is just how many people have helped us along the way, and the fact that we have needed that help. We couldn’t just figure it out all on our own but we were able to ask the advice, the opinions, and just ask for help from other people who have gone before us, who have done things like this before.
I’ve interviewed some of these people over the years; Angelique Rewers, Amy Porterfield, some of these people that I’ve learned so much from, and I’m so grateful for their help. And the fact is that we all need people in our lives who can show us the path, illuminate things for us, and sometimes it has to do with business, sometimes it has to do with parenting.
There have been so many times I have been so grateful for our parents who can give us advice. We don’t have either of our moms around anymore, and no grandmas. Even though my mom is around, she’s in the nursing home, but she’s not able to give us advice like she used to. Sometimes I just really wish I could go and call her up or go visit her and tell her what’s going on and see what kind of advice she has, or share from her experience.
And these times when people that we know and love can offer us themselves, offer their advice to us is so beautiful. It’s such a wonderful way that we can pass on the legacy of the things that we have gained. I feel like it makes so much of our lives and our experience, even if it was a hard experience, it makes it matter in a different way when we can pass it on to somebody else. So, I really value the ability to give and receive advice from others. But I’ve also had times when I’ve been really unhappy with the advice that I’ve gotten, or the way that people have talked to me and shared with me their advice.
So I guess today I wanted to take a moment for us to take a step back and really think about the kind of advice that we get and give. I’m sure we can look at it both ways, like what kind of advice it is and then how to filter that advice. Because one of the things that I’ve noticed here, in the last year or so with me is that I haven’t needed as much advice as I did when I first started out my business.
Actually, there have been times when I could make a decision for myself and really didn’t need to ask someone else, but my go-to was to ask. I think it is a little bit like raising children. As we’re raising the children, they need all kinds of help. And they need help with everything, they need to be told what to do in many ways, or they need advice from their parents. And then as they’re growing up, as they start to do things on their own, they really need to stop listening to our advice all the time and start to think for themselves.
As they do that, this is such a beautiful thing about growing up and even parenting, is watching your kids be able to think for themselves and make great decisions for themselves. I guess I was thinking about that and how that’s so much like starting a business or whatever it might be in your life but certainly for me with the whole starting the business thing and how much I needed advice at first. And then as I move on, as I continue to move forward, I need less and less advice, and I need to trust myself more and more with the things that I have learned and listen to my own voice a little more.
Can you relate to any of this? Maybe there are things in your life and your experience of influence of some kind, where maybe you’ve gotten and received a lot of really good advice over the years, but now you need to start to really think for yourself and step out on your own a little bit more. Or maybe you’re the opposite of that, maybe you started out really confident, and hearing from others, hearing feedback from others could actually help you to be more self-aware and more aware of those around you, and more effective.
So, both are incredibly important here. The feedback from others that might come in the form of advice, or it might come in the form of just awareness about something that’s going on that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen ourselves. And then also this needing to listen to our own voice, our own inner voice, making decisions for ourselves.
So, how do we filter advice? Let’s start with a couple of categories of advice. I think of this, and at least for now, for today, we’re going to use these two categories. First of all, there’s instruction on how to do things and then there’s the advice that has to do with direction, which is choosing what to do: what is the decision that I’m going to make, what will I do next, or what direction will I go? Now, how to do something, the instruction, this is something that we need a lot of this when we don’t know, when we haven’t been there before, when we haven’t walked down this path before – we need to know things.
Right now, we’re working on a bid for government contracts. I’ve never done a government contract before. I’m looking at these words going, “Oh, my gosh, this is a foreign language, I don’t have any idea what this means.” And thankfully, I’ve been able to be in touch with somebody who has been able to help me with this. So, somebody who has gone before, done that before, they know all about this. And they’re able to advise me on how to read this, how to interpret the words on the page and the expectations, how to proceed, what to make sure to include in a bid for government contracts, that sort of thing.
So, the instruction that I’m receiving is advice and it is incredibly helpful. It is, “You could do it this way,” or “you could do it this way.” “I would do it this way because of x, y, and z.” That is more about how to do something. And there might be a few little decisions in there that you have to make.
But really, when I’m on Zoom with the consultant that I’m working with on this, I just say, “Okay, so where are we at? What do you think I should do here?” Click. I don’t really care. I trust him. I know that he knows what he’s talking about. And sure, I can make a different decision but why would I? He knows what he’s doing. I can trust him with these little things especially. So there’s that kind of advice, the instruction of learning how to do something.
But then there’s the advice that has to do with your direction. Where are you going to go? What choices will you make that will determine your future? And these are the things that are a little more complicated. So, in this case, it might be about what direction do you want to take your team? What is the next priority? How do you want to proceed? Who will you choose to be on this project or how will you move forward? And this is definitely advice that has more to do with direction.
And I want to suggest that when we’re first starting something, when we are just getting to know a new environment or a new path of some kind, that at this point in time, it’s really helpful to have somebody there, a mentor that can guide us, that can suggest things, can share their experience. You can go to them and say, “Here are my options, what should I choose?” And maybe they would be able to illuminate for you the right path.
But not all advice is helpful. Not all advice givers are the kind of people that we should be listening to. And this is where it gets a little complicated, because there are some people who are so confident! They portray this confidence about their subject matter or about their experience, and they use such confidence that they are sure of the direction that you should go. And it feels like they know what they’re talking about, and I should just do what they suggest. But when do you need to insert your own voice and listen to your own self?
I really do find this a little more complicated because there are times when I feel like I need to really listen to those around me. And yet, there are times when I have received advice that I thought, “Wait a second. Does that mesh with what I already know? Do I agree with this advice? How do I know whether or not to receive it?” So, I want to suggest, based on our Deep Impact method, I want to suggest three questions that you can ask yourself to know whether or not and how to filter the advice of others, especially the direction-giving kind of advice.
If you’re familiar with the Deep Impact method, there are three things we used to say, safe, celebrated, and challenged. In order to make a big difference in the way that other people receive what we have to share with them, they need to feel safe. They need to know that we care about them, that we’re here for them. They need to feel celebrated, like “Yeah, what you do matters.”
And we’ve changed that word “celebrate” to “significant.” So, if you have heard us talk about this before instead of “safe, celebrated, and challenged,” now we’re saying safe, significant, and challenged. That middle piece of it is really about whether or not the other person matters, whether or not we believe that their voice matters, and that what they do matters, all that kind of stuff and that we’re communicating that with them when we’re trying to make a difference by sharing some piece of advice or feedback.
So Safe – I’m for you. Significant – I believe that you matter and I respect you. And then Challenged – this is where we bring in that piece of advice or feedback that could make a difference for them. And for challenge, basically, what we’re saying is “You have what it takes to make this next step, to take this next step and make this move. And so, I really believe in you.”
And I go into more detail about those three things in our Deep Impact method free course on our website. So, if you come to the show notes or if you go to our website, wherever, it’s all over the place, you can go and look for that free course on the Deep Impact method. And it’s just like a 20, 25-minute video that goes into a little more depth on the shifts that take place within people to help them to feel safe, significant, and challenged. All right, so go do that, make sure you go do that.
But this is an application of the Deep Impact method. So, when you’re receiving advice, the first question that you could ask yourself is, “Are they for me? Are they for me and my cause,” whatever that might be? Whether that’s your team, whether that’s your business, whether they’re your causes, your family, whatever it might be, are they for me or are they just here to have some other kind of agenda?
And so, when we’re taking advice that has to do with this direction- giving, the illuminating path, that sort of thing, if the other person doesn’t communicate and doesn’t feel like they’re actually for you and what you’re trying to accomplish, that they might have their own agenda, then they’re not putting you in a position where you feel safe. And it is okay to question that. It is okay to say, “I’m not so sure I should be listening to this person at all in the first place.”
The second question has to do with that next level of significance. “Do they respect me? Does this other person respect me or are they talking down to me? Are they looking at me as though I am below them in some capacity?” I believe that no matter how high up in the organization you might be, you can talk to people on the same level. You don’t talk down to people. There’s no reason for a CEO to talk down to whoever might be on the working level of their organization. There is no need to talk down to people. So, does this other person actually respects me?
Now, something about this one, I think you could ask the other person if they respected you and they might always say yes. But how can the other person respect you if they don’t know you? I’ve run into this before in various settings, and somebody might think that they know me. They’re making assumptions about me. Maybe I’ve even shared something with them that then they assumed something about me, that I don’t know something more, that I haven’t experienced something. And so, therefore, I must not know anything about this particular subject.
I’m sure you have experienced that as well, where people make assumptions about you and what you know and what you’ve experienced. And then they go on to talk down to you because they think that they’re respecting you, but they’re really not because they don’t know you. So, if somebody comes to you with advice and they have not asked you questions, they’ve not explored this subject with you at all, they’re just here to tell you what to do then they do not respect you.
They might respect what they think they know of you. They might say that they respect to you, but that is not real respect. You can’t respect something that you don’t understand. So, what does exploring this look like? It usually looks like actually asking and listening. Asking questions that are usually open-ended gives people a chance to share their experience instead of asking yes or no questions. “Have you done this before?” That’s a yes or no question. But that doesn’t necessarily help you to understand their whole experience around something. Maybe they haven’t done this particular thing but they’ve done something like it.
“So tell me your experience with this subject.” That’s a totally different question than saying, “Have you done this before,” because we’re saying yes or no to the “Have you done this before” question. The other one allows the other person to explore. “My experience is that I’ve done something that was very similar to this. And this is what happened at that point in time, and I’m not really sure how to make the connection between what I did before and what this would be. Can you help me to see that?”
And the person who is there, who’s gone before, who’s here as the guide can then say, “Oh, sure. Yeah, actually, I see that there are a lot of connections between what you’ve done before and this experience that we’re looking at now.” And they can help make those connections and help illuminate that path. If I didn’t respect you and I just said, “Have you done this before?” And you say, “No.” Then I make all these assumptions that you must be starting on square one. Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re starting on square 10. Maybe we’re so far along we don’t have to go through all of the little details of how you got to square 10.
But we have an idea of, “Okay, I have explored this with you.” The person who’s willing to explore it says, “Okay, great, we’ve explored this. I have a better sense of where you’re coming from,” instead of making assumptions about where you’re coming from. So that piece of it is pretty big to me. When we’re working with clients this is huge to me. I think a lot of times clients, they have a need, they have a problem that’s going on, and they want a solution to that problem in the moment. They want to know what they can do to change it.
But usually there isn’t just a simple answer to a problem that a client might have. Instead, I want to make sure that I understand the context and we explore the actual place where they are right now, and where they’ve been, and where they want to go. so that I illuminate the right path, not so that I give them the right advice or tell them what to do in the right way but so that I illuminate the right path.
So I can share with them, “Okay, so it looks like, based on where you’ve been and where you want to go and where you’re at right now, the next step could look like x, y or z.” “And if you went the x route, this is what would happen. If you went the y route, this might be what happens. And if you went the z route, this might be what happens. Do you see the same thing? Do you see that?” Allow the other person to think for themselves and see the path, the different paths that are in front of them so that they can make a decision.
We talked about this in Lifeline, the course for women who are experiencing domestic violence or domestic abuse and coercive control. We don’t tell people what to do. Rosanne doesn’t go in that course and say, “Okay, so if this is your experience then you need to do x, y, and z.” She doesn’t tell you what to do. She shows you what you could do so that you can make a clear decision for yourself.
Somebody who is really good at giving advice doesn’t just give advice. They’re not a “Dear Annie.” You know, “Question: I’ve got this question about this problem. What should I do?” And then they have this great response. My grandma used to have Dear Annie columns on her refrigerator. I just remembered that. She would have these newspaper clippings of these really great Dear Annie columns that she loved the answers to, and I love my grandma so much. She’s gone now. It’s just a fun memory, but we love the idea of having the answer right there for us.
But the better Voice of Influence kind of path is the path that says, “Here are the options. You choose.” We believe in agency at Voice of Influence. We believe in the importance and incredible value of agency. And so, each person needs to be able to choose their own path, rather than just listening to what somebody else tells them to do and following through with it.
So, this piece of respect and understanding, making sure that they respect you and not just who they think you are but where you really are. So they have to be able to see that. And if they really do take some time to explore that with you then it’s probably worth listening to what they have to say.
The last piece is challenge – do they really think that I have what it takes or are they trying to be the hero for me? Are they trying to save me? Are they trying to take this over and take care of it for me because they don’t actually think that I can handle this myself?
Oh, my goodness, does this one matter! When somebody comes to you – let’s say you’re the leader of this team, and you have responsibility, you have a responsibility for your team, and the direction that your team goes. And then somebody else comes in and says, “Look, you guys are on this new path. You don’t know anything about this. Let me tell you what to do.” That is jarring. It is disconcerting. It causes a person to take a step back and “Oh my goodness, maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe I don’t know where we’re going. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to lead.”
When somebody is giving you advice, if you end up saying those things to yourself, then you’re working with somebody who is a bad advice giver. If your response is, “You know what, I can do this! Yeah, I have what it takes to do this,” then you’re working with a good advice giver, somebody that you can trust when it comes to filtering advice. It is really wise to think about this in terms of whether or not you feel safe, significant and challenged in the advice giver’s presence. And, how do you make other people feel?
So, let’s flip this around, if you are the advice giver how do you approach other people? Are you helping them to go through these internal shifts of feeling safe, significant, and challenged? Are you for them? Are you truly for them, or do you have an agenda? Do you think that you’re better than everyone else around you, than the person that you’re giving advice to? Do you respect them? Do you really understand where they’re coming from and where they’re trying to go? Are you illuminating a path with your challenge and the different options that they have, or are you just telling somebody what to do and stepping in and taking over?
Giving and receiving advice is such a huge part of our learning and development and our growth as people, our growth as a team, our growth as an organization, our growth in the world. Being able to tackle problems together and see things from other people’s perspectives is incredibly valuable, and yet we’re not very good at doing this sometimes.
So, when it comes to you and when you’re listening to advice, when you’re giving advice, let’s have a deeper impact on each other, helping each other to feel safe, significant, challenged, and truly believing these things about each other so that we can move forward.
I really believe that a voice of true influence is someone who helps the other person find and use their own inner voice. A Voice of Influence doesn’t tell people what to do. A Voice of Influence helps others to decide what to do. There is a really big difference between those two things.
So when you’re helping somebody else to decide, when you are giving advice of some kind, helping illuminate a path – you are showing options. You are helping people draw conclusions. You are helping people to see connections, helping people to listen to their own inner voice, the experiences that they’ve had in the past, what do they really want? What do they really believe? What are they going to choose to do?
When you have that kind of influence, you are going to make a Deep Impact in the world. And when other people do that for you, they are going to have a Deep Impact on you.
Be sure to go to voiceofinfluence.net and find the Deep Impact method free course. We would love to have you take it and give us your feedback. We’d love to hear it, because your voice matters!
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