Think about the last time someone gave you advice, asked for or not. Now think about whether you took it. Most people don’t and, if it is unsolicited, the advice can lead to resentment. Now think about the last time you gave advice that someone actually followed, and it didn’t go the way you expected. That outcome is on you too, at least in part, and it cost you something in the relationship. Advice feels like help. Often it isn’t.

You don’t have the full picture

Every person carries a set of experiences, relationships, values, and pressures that shaped the decision in front of them. You can see the surface. You cannot see all of that. When you give advice, you are making a recommendation based on incomplete information, filtered through your own experiences rather than theirs. What worked for you, or what seems obvious from the outside, may be entirely wrong for someone navigating a situation you only partially understand. The confidence with which advice is given is rarely proportional to how much the advisor actually knows.

Even when they ask, they may not want an answer

When someone comes to you with a problem, they are not always asking for a solution. Research in psychology consistently shows that people seeking advice on significant topics, relationships, careers, major life decisions, are frequently looking for validation of a conclusion they have already reached. Giving them a different answer doesn’t change their mind. It creates friction. The more direct and confident your advice, the more likely they are to defend their original position rather than reconsider it. You haven’t helped them think more clearly. You’ve given them something to push against.

The hidden liability

There is a risk in giving advice that most people don’t consider until it’s too late. If someone takes your advice and it goes poorly, you are implicated in that outcome. The relationship absorbs the damage. Even if your advice was reasonable, even if they asked for it, the association between your recommendation and their negative result is difficult to separate. You offered certainty in a situation where you didn’t have it, and now the cost is shared. This is true whether the advice was solicited or not.

The alternative: ask, don’t tell

The most useful thing you can do when someone brings you a problem is ask better questions. Not to stall or deflect, but because questions do something advice cannot: they help the other person access what they already know. Most people, given the right questions and enough space, will arrive at a better answer than anything you could have given them. That answer will also be theirs, which means they are far more likely to act on it and own the outcome. This is the foundation of motivational interviewing, a clinical framework used in medicine, counseling, and coaching, built entirely on the principle that lasting change comes from within, not from instruction.

The exceptions

None of this applies when someone is at genuine risk of harm, to themselves or others. When the stakes are that high, staying silent in the name of respecting their autonomy is not wisdom. It is a failure. In those cases, say what needs to be said directly, and if appropriate, involve someone with the authority or expertise to help. The goal is still their wellbeing, but the method has to change when the stakes demand it. Another exception is a parent advising a minor or young adult child. This is a legitimate exception because the nature of the parent-child relationship is for the parent to guide the child on how to navigate life.

What it does for the relationship

Consistently supporting someone’s ability to find their own answers, rather than handing them yours, builds a different kind of trust. They come to you not because you will tell them what to do, but because talking to you helps them think. That is a far more durable role in someone’s life than being the person who always has an opinion. And it spares you the liability of being the person whose opinion they followed when things went wrong. So when you catch yourself saying ‘you should’, stop and consider if there is a better way to handle the situation.

Three questions worth sitting with this week:

1.    Think of the last time you gave advice on something significant. Did you have the full picture, or were you working from what you could see?

2.    When you bring a problem to someone you trust, what are you actually looking for: a solution, or someone who will help you think it through?

3.    Is there a relationship in your life where replacing ‘You should’ with ‘What do you think you’ll do?’ might change the dynamic?

Three things worth your time this week:

📚  Read

The Advice Trap by Michael Bungay Stanier (2020) — an entire book about one habit: taming what Bungay Stanier calls your Advice Monster, the reflex to jump in with answers the moment someone brings you a problem. His prescription mirrors this issue’s argument almost exactly: stay curious a little longer, rush to advice-giving a little more slowly. Short, practical, and immediately applicable.

🧠  Concept worth knowing

Projection — the psychological tendency, first described by Freud as a defense mechanism, to attribute your own feelings, motives, and unresolved conflicts to other people. Advice is one of its favorite disguises. The counsel you are most eager to give is often addressed to a past version of yourself, not the person in front of you — which is exactly why it misses: it answers your situation, not theirs. A useful check before offering an opinion: is this about them, or about me?

📊  Stat worth sharing

People barely take advice — even when they ask for it. A meta-analysis of 129 studies covering more than 17,000 participants found that people move only about 39% of the way toward an advisor’s suggestion, holding on to roughly 60% of their original opinion, even though weighting the two equally would produce better decisions. The kicker: what determined whether people listened wasn’t how accurate the advisor actually was — only how credible they seemed. (Source: “A meta-analysis of the weight of advice in decision-making,” Current Psychology, 2022.)

Zoom out. See what’s possible.

— Chuck