Unsolicited advice

“Can I give you some advice?”

Over time, I’ve learned to never ask the above question. Nearly everyone will answer “Sure” to be polite, so giving unsolicited advice might seem quite productive at first. It may even feel good since we think we've helped someone. There's just one problem: unsolicited advice is almost always unheeded.

I make a living by charging a lot of money to guide people on their graduate business applications. My day-to-day job involves answering numerous questions, and naturally I give a lot of advice. I've gradually noticed an interesting phenomenon - unless my advice is in response to a question that someone had asked, they don't listen!

Examples abound:

• "I think you should do a mock exam each day for at least three consecutive days before the real exam."
• "Please add X people on LinkedIn per week, since you will need to do this later anyway."
• "To get better at video essays and interviews, record videos of your practice responses."

And so on. In recent weeks, I've freely given the above advice at least once, and I'm quite sure it has not been followed. (Keep in mind that this is my area of expertise, so most people should probably heed what I say.)

I've thought about why this might be the case, and I think I've come up with a plausible explanation: it's already difficult to change when we want to change, so when we're asked to change without even the intrinsic motivation of wanting to do so in the first place, it's just nearly impossible.

This is why it's so rare to meet someone who is truly good at taking feedback and using it to improve. When I do meet such a person, he or she stands out in a very positive way - and I'm always quite certain that this person will find long-term success both professionally and personally.

All this leads me to mentally remind myself constantly to avoid giving advice that no one asked for. Furthermore, I am learning to be more easygoing when others challenge or disregard my ideas. It's just another instance of the serenity prayer: accept peacefully that which cannot be changed.

Of course, the above goes out the window when we really need to (read: want to) convince someone to change. I have no good answer for how to do this. However, let's embark on a journey in logic to see if we can get closer to an effective strategy.

1. "Can I give you some advice?" does not work, so don't ask this question.
2. The inversion is to only offer advice when someone asks for it.
3. Therefore, if we have advice we want to give someone, we should wait for them to ask for advice first.
4. Then perhaps a better question we should ask is an internal one to ourselves: "What needs to happen before this person would be motivated to seriously ask us for advice?"