Which Training Background Would Most Likely Be The Most Appropriate For Your Friend?

Idea in Cursory

The Problem

Leaders must learn how to give and receive advice effectively to do their jobs well, but the substitution is hard work on both sides of the table. Doing it desperately can lead to flawed decisions, strained relationships, and stalled careers.

The Solution

Fortunately, you can master the art of advice by adopting a framework of all-time practices, drawn from a substantial torso of research.

The Benefits

By seeking advice from the right people—and in the correct ways—you can develop smarter solutions to problems, deepen your thinking, and sharpen your determination making. And by becoming a better adviser, y'all'll extend your influence and learn from the people who come to y'all for guidance.

Seeking and giving communication are central to effective leadership and decision making. All the same managers seldom view them equally practical skills they tin can learn and improve. Receiving guidance is frequently seen as the passive consumption of wisdom. And advising is typically treated as a matter of "adept judgment"—you either have it or yous don't—rather than a competency to be mastered.

When the exchange is done well, people on both sides of the table benefit. Those who are truly open to guidance (and not just looking for validation) develop meliorate solutions to problems than they would have on their own. They add nuance and texture to their thinking—and, inquiry shows, they tin overcome cerebral biases, self-serving rationales, and other flaws in their logic. Those who give advice effectively wield soft influence—they shape of import decisions while empowering others to act. As engaged listeners, they can also learn a lot from the bug that people bring them. And the rule of reciprocity is a powerful binding strength: Providing skilful advice often creates an implicit debt that recipients will desire to repay.

But communication seekers and givers must clear significant hurdles, such equally a deeply ingrained tendency to prefer their own opinions, irrespective of their merit, and the fact that careful listening is hard, time-consuming piece of work. The whole interaction is a subtle and intricate fine art. On both sides information technology requires emotional intelligence, cocky-awareness, restraint, affairs, and patience. The procedure can derail in many ways, and getting it incorrect can take damaging consequences—misunderstanding and frustration, decision gridlock, subpar solutions, frayed relationships, and thwarted personal evolution—with substantial costs to individuals and their organizations.

Because these essential skills are assumed to sally organically, they're rarely taught; just nosotros've found that they can exist learned and applied to bully effect. So we've drawn on extensive research (ours and others') to identify the most mutual obstacles and some practical guidelines for getting past them. Though heavily disguised, the examples in this article are based on interviewees' real experiences in a range of settings. Of course, advice takes unlike forms in different circumstances. Coaching and mentoring are covered extensively elsewhere, so here we focus on situations that involve big, risky, or emotionally charged decisions—those in which you might consult with someone multiple times—considering leaders struggle with such decisions and must larn to handle them well.

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Why This Is Harder Than It Looks

Whether you're receiving or giving communication, flawed logic and limited information complicate the procedure. Communication seekers must identify their bullheaded spots, recognize when and how to ask for guidance, draw useful insights from the correct people, and overcome an inevitable defensiveness nigh their own views. Advisers, likewise, face myriad challenges as they try to translate messy situations and provide guidance on seemingly intractable bug.

Below we describe the biggest obstacles on both sides. One reason they're and then common is that they're bones—people often don't realize they're getting tripped upwardly—so yous may find it helpful to practice a reality check of your behavior against these lists.

When you lot're seeking advice, watch for these obstacles:

Thinking you already accept the answers.

Every bit people are deciding whether they need assist, they often accept difficulty assessing their ain competence and identify likewise much religion in their intuition. The result is overconfidence and a trend to default to solo determination making on the footing of prior knowledge and assumptions. A related tendency is to ask for communication when ane's real goal is to gain validation or praise. People do this when they strongly believe they've solved the problem only yet want to "bank check the box" with bosses or peers. Or they do it when they take lurking doubts virtually a solution only dread the time and effort it would accept to do ameliorate. It's a dangerous game to play—they risk alienating their advisers when it becomes evident (and it will) that they're requesting guidance just for bear witness or to avoid additional piece of work.

Choosing the wrong advisers.

Sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, conclusion makers stack the deck past turning to like-minded advisers. In a written report of CEOs, for example, those at companies with poor financial performance (measured by marketplace-to-book value) were more likely than those at high-performing ones to seek communication from executives in the same industry and with a similar functional groundwork. The issue was limited strategic alter—less product-market and geographic diversification. What'south more, several field studies confirm that advice seekers are more receptive to guidance from friends or other likable people. Though friendship, accessibility, and nonthreatening personalities all impart high levels of comfort and trust, they accept no relation to the quality or thoughtfulness of the advice.

Seekers also fail to recall creatively plenty nearly the expertise they need—which fields might bring valuable insight, who has solved a similar problem earlier, whose noesis is most relevant, whose experience is the all-time fit—or cast a wide enough net to find it. Unfortunately, to make sense of a messy, volatile globe, leaders often shoehorn people into tidy categories that don't reflect their full range of wisdom. That's a fault President John F. Kennedy made leading up to the Bay of Pigs invasion. He didn't consult Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg for communication, bold that Goldberg lacked a background in military matters. Simply as the journalist David Halberstam describes in The All-time and the Brightest, Goldberg had run guerrilla operations during Earth War II, so he understood that guerrillas were "no good at all in confronting regular units." He explained to the president: "Whenever nosotros used them like that, we'd e'er lose all our people….But you didn't think of that—and you put me in the category of but a Secretary of Labor."

Defining the problem poorly.

Seekers frequently accept trouble reaching a mutual agreement with their directorate—sometimes because of imprecise or ineffective communication, and sometimes because of cognitive or emotional blinders. When communicating ineffectively, they may tell a lengthy, accident-by-blow story that causes listeners to tune out, lose focus, and possibly misidentify the core of the trouble that needs solving. Or they may omit details that reverberate badly on them but are central to seeing the big motion-picture show. Many seekers too have for granted groundwork essentials (often virtually past incidents or organizational politics) that their advisers don't know. Or they may misdefine the trouble past placing arbitrary boundaries around it and excluding important data, which skews their own and their directorate' assessments (a pitfall that the controlling experts Max Bazerman and Dolly Chugh call divisional awareness).

Discounting advice.

Once seekers have communication in hand, their well-nigh common mistake is to undervalue or dismiss information technology. This is a stiff, recurrent finding in organizational behavior research—and so it's pretty safe to assume that you lot're at to the lowest degree susceptible to this problem. For one matter, "egocentric bias" oftentimes clouds seekers' vision—even when people lack expertise, they put more stock in their own opinions than in others' views. For another, seekers understand their own logic but may exist unaware of directorate' reasoning. Or they may go so anchored in their preformed judgments that they can't adjust their thinking when they receive feedback to the contrary. Over fourth dimension, discounting advice can harm important relationships. Advisers notice when they're repeatedly not beingness heard, and it generates mistrust and ill will.

William Lee is i of the foremost intellectual property attorneys in the United States, a former co-managing partner at WilmerHale, and the senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, Harvard University's governing board, so he gives a lot of advice for a living. Because he'due south earned a reputation for doing information technology and then skillfully, Garvin and Margolis included him in their research sample for this article. HBR spoke with Lee about his approach to advising and what he's learned with feel.

HBR: How would yous depict your advising style?

Lee: I try to understand what the other person faces and provide guidance that makes sense from that perspective. My firm represents large clients such as Apple and Intel, just when we're advising institutions like that, we're too advising individuals who piece of work at that place. They accept the visitor'due south best interests in mind, only they take a boss to think nigh, their own goals, their personal lives, their ups and downs. Our communication has to work for them too as for the institution. If we accept something to say that the client CEO won't desire to hear, we take the heat. If we're saying exactly what everyone wants to hear, nosotros let an within person written report that.

How practice you arroyo less formal advising—for instance, when yous're mentoring someone?

Mentoring is the most important kind of advising, in my view. You have to actually go to know the person. I similar to begin with a simple, open-ended question: "How are things?" That lets you know what'south on the other person'southward heed, so you can better understand what the upshot is and how you might help.

What practice you lot await for in an adviser?

Someone who is open and aboveboard. Someone who gives advice that people can act on. (Otherwise it's like telling them, "Get taller" or "Become smarter.") Also, someone who recognizes that every situation is dissimilar. I advise clients. I also advise folks nigh their careers. A lot depends on the circumstances a person faces. When I was younger, and often on the receiving stop, I was probably more inclined to believe that there's one way to call up near issues. Over time I've realized it'southward more complicated than that. I've learned how important listening is.

Listening is a big theme in this commodity—but how do you dwelling in on the right details?

At times the conversation has to be guided. Asking "Have y'all thought of the result this way?" or "How would so-and-and then think about the trouble?" can turn the chat in a dissimilar management. The hardest thing to resist is simply cutting off a wandering narrative and giving the advice. It's much ameliorate to ask questions that let people to attain conclusions themselves. If they do, they'll feel much more confident in the process and the choices they make.

What were some of your toughest experiences?

Near 25 years ago I was the lead trial lawyer in a major case. My 2nd chair was younger, a fine lawyer and a swell person. We worked well together. When he came up for partner, we both knew that the determination was largely up to me. He had great presence, merely his skills weren't the best match for the management the house was headed. Over lunch ane day, we talked openly most it. I told him he'd be enormously successful in a different surround, but not if he stayed with the business firm. He went somewhere else and really thrived there. Information technology was the most difficult conversation I've always had at work, and he later told me the same. But he also said it was the best conversation he's ever had.

Individuals in powerful positions are the worst offenders. Co-ordinate to one experimental study, they feel competitive when they receive advice from experts, which inflates their confidence and leads them to dismiss what the experts are telling them. Loftier-ability participants in the study ignored virtually two-thirds of the communication they received. Other participants (the control and low-power groups) ignored advice well-nigh half as often.

Misjudging the quality of advice.

Most seekers who accept advice take trouble distinguishing the skillful from the bad. Enquiry shows that they value advice more if it comes from a confident source, fifty-fifty though confidence doesn't betoken validity. Conversely, seekers tend to presume that communication is off-base when it veers from the norm or comes from people with whom they've had frequent discord. (Experimental studies show that neither indicates poor quality.) Seekers as well don't comprehend communication when advisers disagree among themselves. And they fail to compensate sufficiently for distorted communication that stems from conflicts of interest, fifty-fifty when their advisers have acknowledged the conflicts and the potential for self-serving motives.

When you're giving advice, be on the lookout man for these tendencies:

Overstepping boundaries.

Though many people give unsolicited advice, information technology's usually considered intrusive and seldom followed. (That stands to reason. We all know what it'south similar to be on the receiving end of "helpful suggestions" we haven't invited and don't really want.) Another way advisers overstep is to chime in when they're not qualified to practise so. Information technology can give them an ego boost in the short run—but at a pregnant cost. People who liberally offer groundless advice quickly lose brownie and influence in their organizations. Even a single instance of bad advice unremarkably leads to a rapid decline in an adviser's standing.

Misdiagnosing the problem.

Directorate must gather intelligence to develop a clearer flick of the problem to be solved. Hither they can slip up in a couple of ways, every bit Edgar Schein, of MIT'southward Sloan School, has pointed out. Starting time, they may ascertain the problem prematurely because they recollect they see similarities with challenges they've faced. (Often those analogies don't agree up when the full scope of the trouble is revealed.) 2d, they sometimes forget that seekers are self-interested parties who may—deliberately or not—nowadays fractional or biased accounts. Taking such accounts at confront value leads to inaccurate assessments and flawed advice. All this is compounded by an irrational only compelling fearfulness of looking incompetent: Advisers tend to avert asking basic, probing questions considering they don't desire to jeopardize their expert condition.

Offer cocky-centered guidance.

Advisers often frame their guidance as "how I would respond if I were in your shoes." This approach is both off-putting and ineffective, because they're clearly non thinking about how the seeker feels, perceives the situation, and understands the choices ahead—the kinds of insights that pb to empathic understanding and useful recommendations. Directorate may also share personal stories and experiences that fail the "doability test" because they simply don't accord with the seeker's level of ability, negotiating skill, organizational savvy, or situational constraints.

Communicating advice poorly.

Several mistakes fall nether this rubric. Directorate may provide vague recommendations that can easily be misconstrued. (For example, "Align behaviors with goals" might refer to unit goals or company goals, and information technology's not at all articulate what behaviors are in question.) Or, when providing specialized expertise, they may use jargon or other inaccessible language. They may also overwhelm seekers with too many ideas, alternatives, action plans, perspectives, or interpretations. Nothing causes paralysis like a laundry list of options with no explicit guidance on where to start or how to work through and winnow the list.

Mishandling the aftermath.

Though the final decision is not theirs to make, many advisers have law-breaking when their guidance isn't accepted wholesale, curtailing further discussion. This has both short- and long-term costs: in the moment, lost opportunities to provide a full general sense of direction even if some of the seeker's choices are not to their liking; and over fourth dimension, a growing distance between adviser and seeker that may limit the trust and intimacy that prevarication at the middle of effective advising. The reality is that recipients rarely take i person's advice and run with it. More often they modify the advice, combine it with feedback from others, or reject it altogether—and directorate often fail to treat these responses as valuable input in an ongoing conversation.

Best Practices for Seeking and Giving Advice

As a leader and a determination maker, you must "requite as good as you lot become," and vice versa—only how tin can you overcome all those obstacles? Nosotros've identified some guidelines by combining lessons from academic research with the practical wisdom of experts on the footing—people nosotros interviewed considering they are known for their skill at advising. Although they come from a diverseness of fields (technology, fiscal services, constabulary, politics, educational assistants, consulting, and not for profit), we found striking parallels in their behavior throughout the v stages of advising.

Stage 1: Finding the right fit.

Each request for communication is unique, reflecting a distinctive combination of circumstances, personalities, and events. But because time is often of the essence, yous won't want to search anew for potential advisers in every situation. Put together a personal "board" in advance, including people y'all value not simply for their judgment and their ability to continue confidences but also for their diverse strengths, experiences, and points of view. All of them should take your all-time interests at heart and a rails record of being really willing to tell you what you don't want to hear. Try to find at to the lowest degree one person you can plow to in a variety of situations, because that adviser volition develop a multifaceted sense of the problems you confront and your natural proclivities and biases.

When selecting an adviser (or multiple advisers) from that board for your immediate needs, determine how you'd like her to help and why. Sometimes you'll desire a sounding board—someone who can heed carefully to assistance analyze and sharpen your thinking. At other times you'll desire to examination a path or an alternative you've tentatively chosen. Or you may desire someone who can expand your frame of reference, drawing on rich experience and expertise to unveil dimensions of the problem that you did not see. Or perhaps you're looking for process guidance—a manner of navigating through a ticklish situation—or assist generating noun ideas. The better yous sympathize what yous need, the meliorate your selection will be—and the better equipped your adviser will exist to support yous.

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Have this instance: A regional supply chain head at a medical supply company was asked by the chief procurement officeholder to play hardball with a local authorities that was perpetually late paying for purchases. As the accounts receivable kept stacking upward, the CPO suggested choking off supply—just the managing director worried that government officials would plow that into a cause célèbre. It was a high-stakes situation, and he needed guidance. When considering potential directorate, he knew he wanted people who could provide scale. Were his concerns justified or blown out of proportion? The person with the most-relevant experience, he decided, was a managing director who oversaw supply chain in a similarly sensitive region. He also turned to a colleague with experience analyzing risks beyond borders. As a result, he was able to make a balanced recommendation to the CPO: that they canvass multiple regional heads well-nigh his proposed plan to choke off supply. And on the footing of their input, the CPO decided not to move alee with his program.

As the supply chain manager realized, no single adviser tin can be helpful in all situations, and the most readily accessible i might not be the correct fit. Try to pinpoint what you don't know and how that accords with the knowledge and experiences of the people you might turn to. As the Harvard Business School professor C. Roland Christensen frequently observed, "When you pick your advisers, yous choice your advice." Your goal is to observe a match between your deficiencies, limitations, or uncertainties and their experiences, expertise, or knowledge base. Avoid picking advisers primarily for their conviction, likability, friendship, or reinforcing points of view—every bit noted earlier, those are not proxies for quality.

When the roles are reversed and you're approached for advice, ask yourself whether you are indeed a skilful fit. Do you have the right background to help in this item state of affairs? Tin can y'all dedicate enough time and effort to nourish to the seeker'southward concerns? It'southward much better to refuse the request than to give uninformed advice, rush the advisee, be distracted in meetings, or notice belatedly in the process that y'all take fiddling of value to offering. Inquire why the advisee sought y'all out—but remember that you are in the best position to assess whether your judgment and experience are relevant. Saying no is a service too, and you tin can farther help by identifying other sources of expertise. Even if you are well qualified to serve as an adviser, consider recommending some other people to bring in complementary or culling views. That will give the seeker a more textured agreement of the challenges and choices.

Stage ii: Developing a shared understanding.

At this stage your primary goal as an advice seeker is to convey just enough information for your adviser to grasp the problem you face, why it poses a challenge, and where yous hope to end up. That will allow her to offer informed, unbiased recommendations without getting lost in the weeds. So ground your narrative with telling details and provide context—merely avoid taking her on a lengthy bout of antecedents, diverse interpretations, and potential consequences. Otherwise you lot may distract her from the central problems or lose her interest.

When yous're approached for advice, ask yourself whether you're indeed a practiced fit. Do you accept the right background? Tin can y'all dedicate enough time and attempt to attend to the seeker'southward concerns?

In the telling, you may need to acknowledge some uncomfortable truths well-nigh your behavior or weaknesses. Your discomfort with revealing certain information may actually signal its importance to fleshing out the story. An adviser can be simply as good as the personal and organizational portrait she has to work with, so share all fundamental details—even those that are unflattering or difficult to hash out. Information technology will help her get past your biases and bullheaded spots.

Equally an adviser, you'll want to become a complete flick while too expanding the seeker'south understanding, all in a reasonable amount of time. So set the stage for openness and efficiency: Pick a place that will costless you both from distractions and permit sufficient (but not unlimited) fourth dimension for a robust discussion. Privacy and confidentiality are essential. Create a "condom zone" where you can both speak openly. Hear the seeker out, allowing his story to emerge with minimal intervention. Suspend judgment and resist the urge to provide firsthand feedback and direction: You don't all the same know enough to offering thoughtful communication. Jumping to conclusions or recommendations typically signals a flawed or incomplete diagnosis, so get together more information. Begin with broad, open-ended questions—such every bit "How are you feeling about this?"—because they establish rapport, uncover what is truly on the seeker's heed, and often take you correct to the heart of the thing. (Anthropologists call these "grand tour questions" and suggest using them as a starting signal for interviews.) Follow upward by drawing out supporting details and additional context to aid the seeker move across a self-serving account.

In our interviews with advisers, ii people shared stories about seekers who had come to them for affirmation, already intent on a course of activity. Both seekers had (and thus articulated) just a partial view of the problem; the advisers said they had to tease out the rest through patient research earlier they could begin to formulate sound communication and motion the seekers from affirmation mode to a dawning and 18-carat agreement of the challenges they faced.

Determine the seeker'south personal interests and goals and compare them with those of the organization. Consider, in the words of one of our experts, giving "homework assignments" to farther the seeker's thinking ("Come back to me adjacent calendar week with 5 reasons why moving to Dallas would be a good idea"). Finally, deepen your own agreement as well, by inquiring about root causes, potential consequences, and other pertinent issues not explicitly mentioned. They'll speak volumes if y'all tin get them out in the open. The stated problem may exist only a symptom of these underlying issues.

Once you've done all that, you lot'll be well plenty informed to agree or disagree with the seeker on a key question that is seldom asked: What role should you play? Should you serve as a sounding board, provide reassurance, mankind out the motion-picture show the seeker has of this sort of situation, or present fresh insights and options? Discuss your conclusions with your advisee to ensure a shared understanding of what's needed.

Phase 3: Crafting alternatives.

Because decision making improves dramatically when diverse options are bachelor, seekers and advisers should work together to come up up with more than one possibility. Fifty-fifty go/no-get decisions yield improved results when nuanced alternatives are described and considered.

Have this case from our interviews: A consumer products division head at an electronics company decided to relocate his marketing group to improve collaboration with engineering. He was eager to adopt this industry trend because of its potential to speed up product development and get everyone thinking about more-targeted offerings. But his marketing VP felt it would put besides much distance between her staff and sales.

Then the division head turned to a trusted colleague, the master operating officer, for advice on how to deal with marketing. The COO agreed that the motility made sense and worked with the sectionalisation head to generate ideas for getting the marketing VP on board—without resorting to fiat. For instance, the division caput might endeavor sharing the proposal at modest cantankerous-functional meetings and then that the VP could hear her direct reports discuss the merits of existence closer to the engineers. They could also meet with major retail customers or Wall Street analysts—either could annotate on how competitors were benefiting from this approach. Talking to the COO expanded the division head's perspective—he could now see options beyond 1-on-one conversations with the VP.

If yous're seeking advice, prefer an analytic, probing mindset to identify and weigh multiple choices. Certainly offer up your own ideas, but also listen to your adviser's suggestions, especially those that may take y'all in a different direction altogether. Imagine how you might apply those recommendations—but subject area them to a lot of poking and prodding as well. You lot desire to play out what you would actually exercise. Inquire pointed questions nigh the costs and benefits of each, the underlying rationale, the relevance of the advice to your situation (to confirm that your adviser isn't forcing his preferred principles and prior experiences to fit), the tactics for implementing the ideas, what repercussions might follow, and any contingencies yous should prepare for. In short, scrutinize the communication every bit closely every bit your adviser scrutinized your description of the problem to be solved. The ensuing discussion will prepare you to overcome implementation hurdles.

If you're the adviser, think of yourself every bit a driving teacher. While you provide oversight and guidance, your ultimate goal is to empower the seeker to deed independently. Our interviewees were unanimous in proverb, essentially, "It's the seeker'due south task to detect the path forward." You can never fully step into the advisee'south shoes, and it is important to acknowledge that conspicuously. Equally y'all're helping her generate viable choices, spell out the thinking behind each possibility. Describe the principles that are shaping your communication, along with any experiences you are bringing to acquit or using as analogies. Articulating your idea process—and your possible biases—can help both you and the seeker determine how well your reasoning and perspective fit the state of affairs. If you are senior to the seeker, you can shrink the power deviation and increase the likelihood that your advice volition be useful by explicitly asking what doesn't seem quite correct.

Stage 4: Converging on a decision.

When information technology'due south time to narrow down options and choose a grade of activity, seekers oftentimes fall casualty to confirmation bias, picking the "easy way out," or other forms of flawed reasoning. Then test your thinking past reviewing discarded or briefly considered options and by asking your adviser to play devil'southward advocate. And don't hesitate to solicit a 2d or third stance at this phase—particularly if y'all remain uncertain. This tin first whatever biases or conflicts of interest your adviser may take. Experimental prove suggests that two opinions are generally enough to yield near of the benefits of having multiple advisers. But for complex, ambiguous, highly visible, or contested bug, or when implementation is likely to be complicated, a few additional points of view are ofttimes helpful. No thing how unsettling or urgent the state of affairs, resist the impulse to jump on the simplest, most readily available solution.

You may want to combine recommendations from multiple advisers with your own insights to form a hybrid solution. A squad leader at a consulting firm did this when she was having a hard time managing projection meetings. Veterans and newcomers would appoint in endless debate, each faction convinced that the other didn't "get it." Because the leader communicated well with everybody 1-on-ane, she considered reducing the group meetings and managing the project in hub-and-spoke fashion.

Her directorate provided a range of reactions. One emphasized the importance of allowing the grouping to hash out the client's challenges rather than only argue nearly competing solutions. Some other said that the 2 camps needed to hear each other to broaden their perspectives. And a third suggested openly discussing the team's dysfunction. The leader drew on all three pieces of advice. After explaining in a serial of one-on-ones how the next projection meeting would be run and why, she brought her squad together and asked individuals with varying levels of expertise and feel to share their views of the client's challenges. Debate didn't disappear, but it was far more constructive: Team members arrived at a collective understanding of the problems to be solved. At the cease they talked about how they might have more meetings like that ane.

If you're a seeker of advice, don't hesitate to solicit a 2nd or third opinion—particularly if you remain uncertain. This can offset any biases or conflicts of interest your adviser may have.

If you're an adviser, your goal at this stage is to work with the advisee to explore all the options at hand earlier she makes a option. Talk through the most probable outcomes of each possibility, assessing the relative pros and cons and ensuring that the chat remains a dialogue rather than a monologue. Pose hypotheticals—"Imagine it's a year from now, and yous did burn that talented simply difficult managing director. What might happen? How bad, or good, could things get?"—to tease out probable implications. Then focus the discussion on a course of activity. This might entail making the case for a unmarried option, or you might suggest experimenting with a few ideas.

Pause frequently to gauge how comfortable the seeker is with the proffered advice and the extent to which she accepts the underlying rationale. Work together to bring to the surface unstated assumptions, lingering doubts, and unresolved questions. At the same fourth dimension, recognize that "I don't know" is a fine respond if yous tin can't predict the touch of certain options, especially if you make clear recommendations on how to learn more virtually the alternatives.

Follow-up meetings are ofttimes essential for firming up advisees' choices and developing detailed action plans. So make yourself bachelor for description and elaboration. That said, seekers sometimes come up back for more and more conversations to delay decision making. If you suspect that'south happening, either say and so and ask what might be done to movement things forward, or encourage the seeker to try out a solution and bank check in with you about how it went.

Stage 5: Putting advice into action.

As a seeker, you'll need to human action on the advice you lot've received and make existent-fourth dimension adjustments. Advice is best treated as conditional and contingent: Information technology should be a bicycle of guidance, action, learning, and farther guidance—not a fixed path forwards. Particularly if the advisory procedure has occurred over an extended flow, circumstances may take inverse by the time you are fix to human activity.

So follow up for further advice if needed. You may benefit from multiple meetings, especially if you take gleaned new information from your first steps forward or have a serial of decisions to brand. Information technology'due south too considerate and helpful to let your adviser know what you've done and how it'south working out. Information technology's a way of expressing your gratitude, strengthening the relationship, and helping the adviser learn likewise.

If you lot're the adviser, step dorsum from the process at this stage. Reaffirm that it'south up to the seeker to move forrad. Both the decision and the consequences are his, non yours, and must be recognized equally such. That will help ensure personal accountability and prevent misplaced blame if things don't piece of work out every bit hoped. But remain open to providing additional guidance as events unfold. Peculiarly in fluid, speedily changing situations, even the best communication tin can quickly become irrelevant. To the extent that you're willing to help with midcourse corrections, convey your availability.

Though seekers and directorate work together to solve problems, they accept different vantage points. Recent social psychology research shows that people in an advisory role focus on overarching purpose (why an action should exist performed), whereas recipients of advice—who usually confront an impending decision—are more concerned with tactics (how to get things done). An private is likely to think idealistically as an adviser but pragmatically as a seeker, fifty-fifty when confronting the same challenge.

Suppose a hiring director must decide whether to fill a fundamental role with an outside candidate or promote an ambitious employee from within. If yous're advising that manager, y'all may see the claim of bringing in a fresh perspective and the salubrious shake-up it could provide. But if you're the one seeking guidance, you may be more inclined to see the challenges of getting an outsider integrated and poised to deliver and also the time saved and the boost to morale of going with an insider. Keeping both perspectives in mind, no matter which is yours, will help you lot accomplish mutual understanding, identify the key priority driving the determination (reducing time and effort to integrate? bringing in a fresh perspective?), and prepare for the downsides of any selection.

Overall, our guidelines for both seekers and advisers amount to a fundamental shift in approach. Although people typically focus on the content of advice, those who are nigh skilled attend just as much to how they advise as to what they advise. Information technology'south a mistake to think of advice equally a one-and-done transaction. Skilled advising is more than the dispensing and accepting of wisdom; it'south a creative, collaborative process—a matter of striving, on both sides, to ameliorate understand problems and craft promising paths forward. And that often requires an ongoing conversation.

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2015 result of Harvard Business Review.