Do you ever just feel like you are going to explode if you don’t offer your advice? I know that I do. As a business coach, my “day job” when I’m not writing this column, my goal is to help my clients by listening to their ideas and offering my suggestions for improvement.
Can you imagine how hard it is for me as a mother-in-law to resist the urge to throw in my “two cents” on just about everything because I THINK I have the answers due to age and experience being on my side? But, I learned early on in my new mother-in-law role not to do what comes naturally to me and to let my son and daughter-in-law figure things out for themselves.
I did some research on what makes people gravitate towards offering unsolicited advice and came up with some information that I found helpful…and I’m going to tell you about it even though you didn’t ask!
Does this sound familiar?
You believe that most people need your care.
You think that you know what’s best in most situations.
You offer advice without being asked.
You become resentful when people don’t want your help.
I’d like you to think about these questions and get back to me at jangelich@gmail.com with your thoughts on why you might be behaving this way and what you have done, if anything, to work on changing your behavior. I will share your suggestions and mine,because I’ve had to work on this myself, in my upcoming columns.
Talk to you soon.
Comments
I think that because we are each unique individuals, we can only really ever see through our own eyes. Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking that we would "do a better job" if we were facing the challenges that another is facing and so we believe that if we offer our advice, we can be of help.
We are almost always wrong. The first problem is that people want to feel capable- it is one of our primary needs. As soon as we offer unsolicited advice, we are sending the message, "you can't do this without help." Just by speaking our words we are undermining the other's value and competence.
If we really care, we will only offer words that support and encourage; that uplift the other, not make them think less of themselves.
We also don't truly know what road the other person is on. Often the goal that we think they are trying to reach is not the real goal at all. Every challenge that we overcome takes us to a new place...a better place.
It's nice to have support, only when we are read
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