(NYTimes) We Get, and Give, Lots of Bad Advice. Here’s How to Stop.
In this short read in the Times, Adam Grant, an Organization Psychologist, author, and Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania provides basic tips on how to give better advice and make better decisions ourselves. Grant’s recommendations are 100% applicable to career and recruitment related advice, so we find ourselves thinking about how we’ll best apply it to client and candidate conversations.
As Grant says, we get a lot of bad advice on the receiving end. Sometimes it’s because we’re asking Grandma, but more often it’s because we’re just asking the most accessible person or the person we like the most. The best outcome isn’t guarantee in those scenarios. And when we give advice, we sometimes depend too much on our own experience or successes.
When giving advice, Grant recommends avoiding a single recommendation. Rather, help the person you are advising on a career decision by simply giving them perspective or uncovering blind spots. It will help to clarify their thinking and help them to make the best decision, themselves.
If you did make a recommendation, would you follow your own advice, yourself? When you’re in need of career or recruitment advice, Grant recommends stepping back and thinking about things from a third-person perspective. What would you tell someone else in a similar predicament? He says, “listen to the advice you would give to others. It’s usually the advice you need to take yourself.”
From our experience, people make their own decisions – rarely do they jump blindly at the recommendation of others. We are helpful as consultants by providing information, asking questions, and sometimes challenging their perspective, but otherwise resisting the urge to control the situation. Now, if we can apply the same rigor to our own business, we’ll be on our way. Please keep in touch with us throughout 2020 if you need help, have help to give, or simply want to hear about the challenging recruitment problems we’re tackling.