You must have had a time when a friend called you in the hour of personal crisis asking, explicitly or implicitly, for guidance and help. Sometimes you might have been in the best position to advise because you yourself had been in a similar situation recently. And other times, you might have been totally dumb-founded, not able to say anything useful to console a friend in need. In such situations, varying array of thoughts might have popped in your head –
“Stupid guy! He can’t even handle such a simple thing? Why did he have to get married!?”
or “Gosh! What can I say to that? I struggle with it myself everyday!”
or “You asked me for advice and now you don’t event want to listen to what I have to say! What the hell!”
This last one (and its variants) is sadly only too common when the person asking for advice is just ranting about the problem and seems to be hardly interested in the possible solutions are you providing him/her. It is quite annoying. Though, we are all guilty of doing it every once in a while. Why? Let’s find out the answer to this (and more).
First, let’s look at the different situations you are called upon to give advice –
1) Explicit advice seeking
Just because the person asking for your suggestions or guidance has specified the subject on which she needs advice doesn’t mean that it’s a straightforward matter. In the simplest case, she has done her homework and has identified the very specific point she is struggling with. And that’s exactly you need to give advice on. For example, she has shortlisted, after weeks of hard work, three universities for her doctorate but now can’t decide which one to pick.
In other cases, the advice-seeker is asking for advice on something specific but that’s not his real problem. He is asking about which suit he should be wearing to a party when he is not even sure of going to the party at all. In this case, you might need to guide him to the right question first.
And more often than not, the advice-seeker doesn’t actually need any advice at all. They might have formulated their thoughts in a question form but what they really need is someone to listen to their problem with sympathy and no judgement. Other times, the advice-seeker is just looking to validate his decision (or would be decision) and cares about your suggestions only when they approve the said decision. And lastly, sometimes, the request for advice is just an excuse to show-off one’s recent achievements. “I just won a McArthur genius grant. How do I keep the press away!?”
2) Implicit advice seeking
You would think that we humans are smart, smart enough to ask advice explicitly when we need it. But that’s not the case. Sometimes we ourselves don’t know that we need advice. I myself have lost my way in the forest while trekking because I thought I was going the right way as per the map on my phone, only realizing quite late that I was going in a totally wrong direction. You don’t always know you’ve made a mistake or have lost your way. Even when someone points it out, you might not realize it. That’s why, a lot of times, children hate when their parents point out their mistakes or warn them of some potential danger. “Can they stop lecturing me all the time?” they think. Only at a later stage in life, they realize that there was at least some merit to what the parents said.
Other times we are utterly egotistical. Even when we know we need help, we don’t ask for it. A bird or a monkey would happily use the danger calls from an individual of the same species to its save itself from a predator without feeling like a “schmuck who needs someone else’s advice to live life”. But we humans care very much about power, hierarchy and ego when seeking advice or following it.
There is an American VTV show I used to watch – Modern Family. In one of the episodes, Claire is mad at her husband, Phil, because he would “take everyone’s advice but hers”. This is human power dynamics at play. When you take advice of a colleague, you aren’t relinquishing any power (unless the colleague is your “competition” or your subordinate) but when it’s your spouse, you fear that seeking or following his/her advice would make you lose face. In most human societies, males have traditionally occupied a more powerful position in families or societies at large. So, this power dynamics of advice seeking and following is even more prominent. Also, when an advice comes from a colleague or a friend, it’s benign but when it comes from your spouse, it feels like nagging or controlling. Also, because you live with your spouse and not with colleagues or friends, you fear that if you followed your spouse’s advice, you might have to follow all pieces of advice as long as you live.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have no fear of losing power to strangers and that’s why we have hardly any qualms when seeking advice from random people on the internet, who don’t know anything about our personalities or circumstances.
It’s because of this oblivion to our own situations and this power politics that we don’t always explicitly ask for advice. We just tell our story to our spouse, a friend, a colleague, or our therapist, sometimes just to “get it all out” and other times, secretly hoping to receive helpful words of wisdom.
3) No advice seeking
In extreme circumstances of being oblivious to their problems or being too proud to ask for help or not knowing whom to ask for help, people don’t seek any advice and try to figure out all on their own. And if you see someone like that, the very human instinct of helping out kicks in. Most times, it’s received in a very thankful manner. For example by a tourist at a complete lost trying to buying the public transport ticket in a foreign city. Some other times, however, the advice receiver may take offence. He/she might think that you are being pedantic and treating them as stupid, weak or incompetent. Again, the example of a parent and a child comes to mind. As a child, I was personally very proud of my academic prowess, so proud that if my siblings or my father tried to help me out, I would feel small. “I would’ve figured it out on my own!” I would shout in frustration.
To be continued …