Advice giving: A subtle pathway to power | Hacker News Reader

Advice giving: A subtle pathway to power

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102 pointsvinnyglennon34 comments

i find receiving advice to be difficult because the other person essentially places himself above you. That is why i try to be careful with dishing out too much advice. But sometimes its necessary. and sometimes i just cannot help it.

if i give advice, i try to do it in a non-personal way. like 'i just found a cool trick to do y' rather than 'you are doing it like x, but doing y would be better'.

I do too, but I’ve recently found out that’s really hard to do if there’s a completely different but much better way.

After going ballistic on 'stupid' people on twitter and getting quite negative feedback on such, I'm done giving advice.

People were propagating wrong information in my specialty and I lost it. I even provided them with factual/math proof and it didnt matter.

Now I'm over it, if they want to find the information, they can. Otherwise they get to fail without my help.

Group dynamics come into play as well. I guess everyone at one time or another has made a comment that has been ignored or disparaged, only for one of the in-crowd to make the exact same statement and receive a positive response. I've learnt over time to spot toxic situations like this and remove myself from them, but sometimes circumstances make that impossible, which is depressing.

How you deliver the advice is as important as what advice you give. There's a difference between:

"Hey, I saw your thoughts on X, but actually here's some info that says you're incorrect"

and

"You're wrong. Here is proof, please read it and stop spreading worthless information"

Based on the tone of your comment, is it possible that your delivery may be too harsh?

"Hey, I saw your thoughts on X, but actually here's some info that says you're incorrect"

How about "here's some info that..." anything but offering proof that they are incorrect.

Interpersonal skills really come into play. Every situation is different. What you are describing sounds like an interaction with an equal. Which might end up having to be more of a sales pitch for your idea than giving advice. There are plenty of situations where the difference in experience calls for a more assertive approach. Senior dev to junior dev, or even expert to client. Selling an idea takes time, and if you were hired to be the expert you sometimes have to just insist and give strong advice in the interest of efficiency. Not everyone junior will be convinced by authority, but enough are that it saves a great deal of time.

It's amazing - and sad - how powerful the ego (for want of a better term) can be. A colleague complained about a nasty rash from using a particular cleaning fluid during DIY and when I suggested, in a very gentle way, a far gentler yet comparably effective alternative he seemed annoyed by the suggestion of something that would help him. Some people will just throw things back in your face even when your advice is well intentioned, freely given, and beneficial to them in an immediately apparent way.

Context is important. Your colleague got a nasty rash from what they did. You offering an alternative could be received as criticism or even blaming them for the rash. The time for offering corrections is probably not while they are suffering the consequences of their action.

You are right of course - people can be tricky in such situations.

It's also possible that the person you're replying to is completely tone deaf to the signals they've been sending out and people are lashing out of them due to an ongoing pattern of behavior.

Usually when someone says "I've been completely normal -- I don't understand why people are so sensitive!" it's a red flag that that sort of thing has been going on.

I see your point, but he had not finished the job and so my advice was potentially of real benefit! My workplace is a bit cliquey and no doubt if I were in the circle of trust things would be different. I guess the one positive is that next time I know to let him suffer in ignorance :|

Often (usually?) when someone is coming to complain to you, they are looking for your listening/sympathy/validation/support, not your advice. If they wanted your advice they would typically ask for it explicitly. Unsolicited advice can come across as very unsympathetic and patronizing, and can really piss someone off if they were already in a bad mood (which is pretty common for people complaining about stuff).

A more appropriate response is something like “Wow, that sounds pretty uncomfortable.” Then you let them talk for a while. Listen sympathetically and let them say everything they wanted to say before trying to interrupt, and make sure they are receptive before offering unsolicited advice. Usually if you listen to their venting for a while they will feel better than when they started.

[Apologies for offering unsolicited critical advice in response to your complaints about your colleague. :) ]

How sure are you that he was annoyed by the suggestion? Maybe he was just annoyed that no one had told him about it sooner.

I face this issue frequently, and one thing that I find helps is acknowledge what's happening:

1. If you're talking to an actual equal, and you're not sure but you're trying to be helpful, then prefacing with that is good. "Look, you know way more about your problem than I do, but when you asked for advice [they did ask for the advice, right?] the first dumb idea I had was _____"

2. Sometimes you actually are "above" the other person in the context of the advice you're giving. You're actually just an expert and they aren't, for example. In that case you have a couple options that are context dependent.

One is to just ask: "Do you mind if I give you some unsolicited advice that maybe you already thought of?"

The other is to lampshade it. This works best in cases where the power difference is just objectively obvious. I use this exact phrasing with my daughter: "Do you mind if I patronize you a little? If anyone can patronize anyone it's a father and his daughter, right?" But it works with others as well, for example I'm often in the position of giving life advice to undergrads, and I might say something like "Do you mind if I old-man-patronize you a little? It might be helpful!"

I think most of the weird power dynamics and discomfort come from assuming something is common knowledge when it isn't. It may be true that I'm better than you, and even that each of us knows it, but if we haven't mutually acknowledged it to each other and made it common knowledge, then it'll strike an awkward chord when I act like it's true... unless I put it right out there in common knowledge before I start.

The same is true if we're equals but I'm giving you advice anyway--it's awkward because... maybe I think we're not equals? If I preface with "we're equals, and in fact you know more than I do here because you're the one in the situation" then it's clear where I'm coming from and it's not awkward.

Finally, all the different ways of prefacing above critically give the other person the opportunity to say "actually, no, don't," so they have dignity and agency in the exchange.

This is really good advice, thank you.

> I think most of the weird power dynamics and discomfort come from assuming something is common knowledge when it isn't.

Other weird dynamics and discomfort comes from assuming when something isn't common knowledge when it is. "Have you tried X"? No shit, X is the first thing that I tried.

I think this is just another example of lack of common knowledge. Something isn't common knowledge unless everyone knows it and everyone also knows that everyone knows it.

"Have you tried X"? No shit, X is the first thing that I tried." is classic lack of common knowledge. You thought trying X being the first thing was common knowledge, but it wasn't, so your "advisor" suggested it. You both knew X is the first thing to try, but he didn't know for sure that you knew that, so he started there. And now you're imagining they think you're an idiot, and it's not in common knowledge that you're an idiot (probably because it's not true), so it rankles.

As an advisor I would start this exchange with: "Ok, so I assume you've tried all the normal things like X?"

Literally saying you're assuming something both puts the thing in common knowledge and acknowledges that it wasn't before, even though you probably both individually know the thing.

"Yes, of course." "Ok, what about..." -- much smoother!

"Actually, no! Of course X, now that you say it!" "Great!" -- also much smoother!

The abstract talks a lot about advice giving creating a sense of power.

But does it also create power?

I don't know enough about this field to answer that question for myself, so I'm raising it to the HN hivemind.

Couldn’t it be a self-fulfilling situation? If you feel empowered, you’d be more likely to act boldly, and boldness is a source of power.

Depends on your status. Boldness can you get you fired.

That’s just being bold beyond your means.

Which probably means someone felt threatened ... which means power?

I also think the headline seems misleading, even if you start reading the first few paragraphs.

I think advice giving doesn't necessarily confer power. Especially if you're always handing out unwanted advice, a lot of people don't like that. They get hurt in their pride because they believe they can do it without you.

If you want to exercise power through advice you have to ask good questions to find out whether the advised person actually needs your advice, and in which area specifically. You have to get to a point where they actually ask for it.

There are also other reasons to dislike unsolicited advice.

* It robs you of possibility to figure it out for yourself and think for yourself. It kills pleasure or achievement of whatever activity you are doing. It prevents learning.

* You look less capable to third parties. That actually matters.

* It is often wrong, as whoever gives that advice does not have full information. As in, I am doing it this way and not that way for a reason and really really don't care about defending my choices to strangers who are no more qualified then me.

I think the base assumption with advice giving, when considered a positive, should be that the recipient asked for advice.

Well, creating confidence usually creates power. So probably the receiver will gain power, while the advise giver will lose power.

It's probably more complicated due to good advise yielding respect on the receiver side and sometimes both are having observers that might consider the advise giver being in a higher position. Also in hierarchic cultures the advise giver can modify the available future choices of the advise receiver, especially when there are observers.

Optimism can create money out of nothing. Literally. The stock market is driven off optimism.

Persuasion is the most powerful force on the planet.

I think money is actually a zero-sum game :)

"One of the magical things about economics is that you can create an economic asset out of nothing but persuasion. For example, if you persuade people to be more optimistic about the economy, people invest more money, buy more products, create more jobs, and generally manifest the better economy from their own expectations. " - Scott Adams

I think it does. A big part of leadership is just about having a clear sense of what the hell is going on and what you're going to do about it. So if people come to you to advice, they confer leadership to you and create a dynamic.

I mean, at least in tech, a leader is often someone who knows a thing or two. How should I build my application? I don't know, ask Jack, the senior dev. He knows all about that sort of thing and can tell you what to do.

It creates power in the advice-seeker by making the advice-giver invested.

It can serve as an indicator of ongoing dynamics.

If used to gain power, it's going to blow up in your face. From the psychoanalytic point of view, verbalizing solutions before the patient is ready is like the #1 worst thing someone can do, and the largest generator of resistance out there. Just don't.

Check Carl Rogers, if you're interested ("Client-Centered Therapy", "Counseling and Psychotherapy")

I was curious, but they don't mention increasing affiliation (another of the 3 needs). If advise is accepted it may also provide validation to the advice giver - is that a sense of power? I guess I'm a little disappointed that they only used one scale.

I was happy to see p<0.001 for a change!

Someone just read The Prince.

Maybe so, but please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. Especially of other people's work—this is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

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