Recognise the point of giving advice and you can do it better | Psyche Ideas

Advising is hard. It’s a complex activity that involves negotiating someone’s difficulty in dealing with a problem and their responsibility for dealing with it. Often, it degenerates into telling people what to do or showing off how much we know. Perhaps if more of us understood advising a little better, we could avoid giving overbearing advice and... See more

This example brings home the difference between advising and shared planning. If you and someone else are genuinely doing something together, you’ll treat a practical question about what you both should do as a shared responsibility, and aim to form a shared plan for which you’re both responsible. In contrast, if you are advising someone, you will ... See more

the point of advising is to assist someone in solving a problem without sharing responsibility