"Advice is like snow;
The softer it falls,
The longer it dwells upon,
And the deeper it sinks into the mind."
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Picture this: busy day at work.
You’re in full flow and crushing your task list.
A team member stops by or sends you a Slack and says:
Hey, you’re terrific at this thing that I’m struggling with. Can I get your advice on something?
Before you had a chance to remind that person they have a brain and an internet connection of their own, your inner pleaser has already responded with:
Of course. What’s the problem?
Congratulations, you just got yourself stuck in the advice trap again.
Your desire to ‘rescue’ means you’re about to waste twenty minutes of your time dishing out advice to someone who’ll be damned if they’ll ever follow it.
The advice trap
In his book, The Advice Trap, author Michael Bungay Stanier distinguishes between being useful and being ‘helpful’, with the stress on the quotation marks.
Being useful involves assisting others based on their actual needs, empowering them to find solutions themselves, and helping them build their own skills.
That kind of usefulness requires coach-like behaviour because instead of telling people what to do, you create the conditions for them to come up with solutions themselves.
Being ‘helpful’, on the other hand, is often more problematic for both you as the rescuer and whoever is the recipient of your supposed altruism.
As the rescuer, offering advice or solutions feels good on the surface.
It helps others move along and allows you to demonstrate just how much value you offer.
It also saves everybody time because you don’t have to explain something new or teach someone to do it themselves.
And let’s face it, being the one with all the answers feeds the ego; by clinging to your knowledge, you’ll remain a top dog in the hierarchy.
But once your reputation for being a fixer grows, so does the number of requests for you to fix, and that reputation can be harmful when you’re in a leadership position.
Indeed, some leaders I talk to often complain about their team being so dependent that they spend most of their time hand-holding and day-to-day managing rather than doing what they are paid to do, which is strategising and visioning.
They’ve become so involved in fixing things that they’ve caused their own development to stall, robbing everyone else on their team of the opportunity to develop too.
Perhaps the saddest indictment on rescuers is that their input is likely to be quite poor in any case because, without fully understanding the context or root cause, any advice is likely to be ineffective and badly tailored at best.
How to stop yourself from rescuing others
If, like me, you combine a strong desire for validation with being an absolute know-it-all, any request for help will look like those three-day-old risotto leftovers in the back of the fridge after a big night out.
You know it will end badly, but you just can’t help yourself.
But unless you release yourself from this rescuer identity, you’re in danger of running out of energy and burning yourself out.
You might even damage your relationships because, as the eternal problem-solver, there’s a real chance people will start to take you for granted or even resent you.
So, what do you do when someone comes to you for help?
Shoo them out of your office and tell them to go and figure it out themselves?
Well, yes….
Aside from being a little more humble and acknowledging that often you’re not as clever as you think you are, here are a few coach-like questions you can ask anyone who’s after your time and energy.
Each question will prevent you from shifting into default rescuer mode while helping the other person build their internal problem-solving capacity.
Best of all, people will think twice before bothering you again.
Question #1. Tell me more?
Instead of rushing to offer your uninformed advice, always ask for more context first.
In the thousands of coaching hours I’ve racked up, I’ve learned that whenever someone tells you their problem, it’s rarely the real problem.
Most of the time, deeper challenges lurk beneath, and being more coach-like as a colleague, manager or leader can help others lift the curtain on what’s really holding them back.
Asking follow-up questions also allows you to be a little more ‘lazy’ as Bungay Stanier calls it, forcing others to do more of the heavy lifting themselves before you step in.
Question #2. Before I step in, can you come back to me with a solution?
Ask the person what ideas they’ve researched themselves at this point before you offer any advice.
If they tell you they haven’t got the faintest idea, politely ask them to come back once they’ve identified a few potential solutions.
Avoid offering suggestions like “Have you thought about doing X?” or “Have you looked into doing Y?” too early because, again, you’re simply rescuing someone from having to do their own thinking.
Only once they’ve shared the potential solutions they’ve come up with should you consider adding value by offering your insights.
Question #3. What do you want me to do about this?
Perhaps slightly counterintuitive, but asking, ‘How can I help?’ or, more bluntly, ‘What do you want me to do about this?’ will make it less likely you’ll jump in head-first.
This question forces someone to formulate a specific request for you and will prevent you from volunteering before knowing what’s expected from you.
It requires them to either clearly articulate what they would like you to do to help solving their challenge or, indeed, admit that they merely wanted to vent.
Besides, an explicit request is always easier to say no to than a vague one.
Question #4. Do you want to vent or move forward?
As I said earlier, people often aren’t looking to you for solutions; they’ve merely come to get something off their chest.
If you find the other person getting frustrated by your well-meaning advice, it means they were probably hoping for an emotional rather than a practical conversation.
If your time is precious, it’s therefore good to know from the outset whether this person wants to move forward or simply trash-talk Susan from Accounts.
There is nothing wrong with lightening the emotional load for others, as long as you set clear boundaries, particularly if you’re a time-constrained empath.
Question #5. Can I leave it with you to move this forward?
How about making your default answer to most requests a polite no from now on?
The art of saying no is one of the most important things you can learn for your personal and professional growth because it allows you to be strategic with your energy.
Do you feel genuinely obligated or are you simply saying yes out of a desire to be helpful?
If a yes is likely to take you away from more important responsibilities, then it’s okay to decline.
Also, remember the power of a qualified yes – “If I take on this task for you, what else would you like me to drop?”
Question #6. Can I chip in here for a second?
Over the years, I’ve become pretty good at recognising when people are a little stuck in their narrative.
They talk quickly and usually in great detail about their challenge and how it affects them.
The fluency of their words tells me that whichever explorative question I asked is clearly not helping them generate many new insights – they’re simply rehashing a story they’ve repeatedly been telling themselves (and others, most likely).
When you hear someone catch their breath, take the liberty to redirect the conversation with a question that is likely to be more successful in getting them to learn something new about their situation.
You have my permission to interrupt.
Indeed, “Can I chip in here for a second?” is not a genuine question – it’s a statement of your intent to interrupt and to move the conversation forward.
It will only work if you follow it up by actively talking over them.
Conclusion: become a solution-enabler rather than a solution-provider
At work or in your personal life, it’s not your responsibility to solve other people’s problems.
If you genuinely care about others, stop yourself from being ‘helpful’ and instead increase their capacity to solve their own problems.
Rather than automatically rushing to spoon-feed someone with your advice, take a breath; seek their permission to help them explore by asking open-ended questions.
Then guide them towards coming up with a solution on their own.
It’ll lighten the load for you while building other people’s internal capacity.
And don’t worry, plenty more opportunities for us know-it-alls to be useful elsewhere.