Advice: Giving and Seeking

Nothing is easier than offering advice, solicited or otherwise too. In this piece special effort will be made not to talk about officially designated ‘Advisers’, whose job description is to offer advice.

Many receive advice and guidance, only a few profit from it. Bad- or ill-intentioned advice is the worst enemy of a manager/leader. Advice should be to help, not to please the recipient. (Hope, Imran Khan would be reading this…). Anyone with a minuscule grain of ego would never welcome advice. As said by Lord Chesterfield, advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least.

Regrettably, those giving counsel are not the most competent, intelligent or brilliant; their advice has to be only heard and expunged from the memory pad, forever. But to make this judgement requires skill and training in the understanding of the human psyche. Here all leaders and managers lose because human nature loves flattery and who knows the best about this weakness than the advisers.

So what is offered has either an inbuilt conflict of interest or in the minimum it is loaded with negativity, which unfortunately remains mostly in obscurity, to the leader. IK’s actions in the last four years are flooding the mind of this scribe! By the way all sympathies are with IK, a man who genuinely means well for the country, but is surrounded by ill-tempered advisers.

Even the cunning and foxy manager is happy to extend advice occasionally, in contradiction to their self-interest. Jane Austen writes in Persuasion, that “it was perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides”.

The positive or negative consequences of an advice will determine its truthfulness or otherwise is obviously not an advice to act upon. Advice has to be honest. A shot in the dark is not an advice but a game of dice.

Within the realm of management and workplace environment, the giving and the seeking of advice leads to better understanding of the issues, leading to better and informed decision making. A problem that cannot be cracked by a single individual, due to several reasons, inclusive of the lack of training, information or understanding, must be handled by those in possession of relevant experience; this can happen in corporate cultures where there is willingness to seek aid and direction from other colleagues, without any sense of inadequacy or feelings of being compromised.

“It is an easy thing for one whose foot/is on the outside of certainty/to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer” (David Greene). The morals derived from two Aesop’s fables are never trust the advice of a man in difficulties (The fox and the goat); and, distrust interested advice (The fox without a tail). It follows that advice of any colleague who is seeking to save his/her skin or those whose advice violates the concept of conflict of interest, shouldn’t be relied upon. I always give good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself. (Oscar Wilde).

Managers are sometimes shy and reluctant to seek advice. They suffer from insecurities. To accept that they do not know a particular aspect of business or transaction requires moral courage. Most fail this standard of test. The admittance to being devoid of a particular skill set requires an environment of learning culture within the entity.

In an organisation, where learning and development activities are predominantly visible, there is greater likelihood of workers, who would voluntarily be willing to seek advice, by lowering their guards and defences, for resolving issues.

Some people in leadership positions, be it leadership in the world of politics, corporates or social organisations, have arrogance as their best friend and companion. Those suffering from this ailment will invariably refuse to seek advice, any hand-out or be guided. This category of managers consider this to be-littling to their leadership positions. No individuals, cannot be  Know-All’s or be island by themselves, the quicker this reality dawns upon the leader, the better it is for the entity, including nations. The value of interdependence must be extolled at the senior management level, which eventually lead to cascading this thought and would go down the hierarchical levels, ultimately contributing towards a culture of sharing and giving.

Those managers and all other staff members too, who are confident about their competence will never hesitate to teach by way of advice or prescribe an action to colleagues. The giving of advice is actually a process of transferring unique knowledge and experience possessed by one to others. The managers who are proficient willingly share by continually counselling their reports.

This process of giving advice can also be in the ambit of informal settings. No meetings are to be called, where there would be an agenda item, “Advice on….”; instead it may say,

“Discussion on…”. Advice is given most effectively during the course of the daily grind. In handling everyday and usual issues and also those that are not part of business as usual, advice from the ablest is best had by merely watching how the manager handles the matter. This unsaid advice. This is very effective.

There are some coworkers who refuse to seek advice; if the supervisor forces it upon them, it is received with much reluctance. The best advice comes from those who know the subject and such in any organisation are a handful few. Their importance to the organisation must be recognised. Encouraging those who offer training/advice voluntarily must be part of the entity’s culture.

The attitude that the only thing given freely is advice must be shunned. There is a proverb among the people of Malagasy; advice is strange; if welcome it stays for the night; if not welcome, he returns the same day.

Listening to advice must be distinguished from paying undue attention to the rumour miles and hearsay. A manager who builds to every man’s advice will be a crooked house, is a wheel known adage. No individual should seek advice from all and sundry.

There is also a breed of managers that abound in several organisations, who prefer not to offer counsel to anyone; even while they may be witnessing someone, who is walking off the cliff, they choose to remain silent. Sadistic pleasure is their mantra of living and a very bad one to live with. The need to voluntarily offer good advice, guidance and counsel cannot be underscored.

Robert Burton: Who cannot give good counsel? It is cheap, it costs them nothing. Advice must always be given timely and proactively, not when disaster looms. Advice after injury is like medicine after death.

The responsibility for creating a culture of giving and seeking advice without fear of reprisals or negative reactions is the task of the senior management. To those who avoid seeking advice; I advise that it is best to be a one minute fool than be a lifetime fool.

(The writer is a senior banker)