Giving advice feels productive. Someone brings you a problem, you recognize something familiar, and your mind immediately starts looking for a solution. Within a few seconds, you may already have a recommendation based on your own experience. The instinct usually comes from a good place. When we think we can help someone avoid a mistake or solve a problem faster, we naturally want to share what we know.
The problem is that the first version of a problem is not always the real problem. This happens often in leadership and mentorship because people tend to describe what they can see first. Someone might say they are struggling with an employee, considering leaving a job, having trouble growing a business, or feeling overwhelmed by a project. If we immediately start offering solutions, we may end up giving perfectly reasonable advice for a situation that does not actually exist.
Good advice requires a little more patience. Before deciding what someone should do, we need to understand what is really happening.
The First Problem You Hear May Not Be the Real One
Imagine someone tells a mentor they are thinking about leaving their job because they don’t feel they are progressing. There are plenty of obvious suggestions. They could ask for a promotion, look for another company, take a course, speak with their manager, or start exploring a different career.
Any of those suggestions might be useful, but they could also miss the point entirely. Perhaps the person is progressing but has started comparing their career with friends who moved faster. Maybe they enjoy the work but have a difficult relationship with one colleague. They may have recently been given more responsibility and discovered that the next step on their career ladder is not something they actually want.
Instead of immediately asking what the person should do, it is more useful to ask what is making them feel that way. One additional question can completely change the conversation.
This matters particularly for leaders because managers have considerable influence over how people experience their work. Gallup has reported that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. When someone has that much influence over another person’s experience at work, taking the time to understand a problem before responding becomes especially important.
Our Own Experience Can Get in the Way
One of the easiest mistakes to make when giving advice is assuming another person’s situation is the same as what we experienced. The similarities can be convincing enough that we stop looking for the differences.
A young entrepreneur might say they are struggling to find customers, and an experienced founder immediately remembers facing the same problem years earlier. The founder may be tempted to explain exactly what worked for them and encourage the younger entrepreneur to follow the same approach.
Personal experience can be extremely valuable, but treat it as a reference point rather than a set of instructions. The businesses may serve different customers, operate in different industries, have different resources, or be trying to achieve completely different things.
A better response might be to explain that you have experienced something similar but want to understand more about the current situation before sharing what worked for you. That small change keeps the conversation focused on the person asking for help instead of turning it into a story about the person giving the advice.
Most of us have probably experienced the opposite. We ask someone a question and suddenly find ourselves listening to a long explanation of what they did 15 years ago. The story may be interesting, but somewhere along the way, our original problem has disappeared.
Listening Is Part of Solving the Problem
People sometimes treat listening as the polite part of a conversation that happens before the useful advice begins. In reality, listening helps you figure out what advice might actually help.
Gallup research has found a strong relationship between employees feeling heard by their managers and their trust in organizational leadership. That should not be surprising. People are more likely to take advice seriously when they believe the person offering it understands their circumstances rather than simply waiting for an opportunity to speak.
This matters even more in mentorship because two people can enter the same conversation with very different goals and backgrounds. Leaders such as Hong Wei Liao, whose work has involved business, mentorship, and community initiatives, may interact with established entrepreneurs, young people, community leaders, and people still deciding what direction they want to pursue. Advice that makes sense for someone with decades of experience may be completely inappropriate for someone taking their first steps.
The only reliable way to understand those differences is to ask questions and listen to the answers.
Better Questions Usually Lead to Better Advice
Becoming a better listener does not mean turning every conversation into a lengthy interview. A few thoughtful questions can reveal a surprising amount about what is actually happening.
One useful place to start is by asking what the person has already tried. This prevents the awkward situation where you enthusiastically recommend something they attempted three months ago without success. It also helps you understand how they have approached the problem so far.
Next, ask what they believe is causing the problem. Their explanation may not tell the whole story, but it reveals how they currently understand the situation. From there, it can be helpful to ask what a successful outcome would look like.
That last question is easy to overlook. A leader might assume an employee wants a promotion when the employee actually wants greater flexibility. A mentor might assume an entrepreneur wants rapid growth when the entrepreneur would rather build a stable company that provides a comfortable living without consuming every evening and weekend.
Once you understand the desired outcome, you can ask what is standing in the way. The answer could involve money, time, confidence, skills, another person, or simply uncertainty about which direction to take. Each of those problems requires a very different response.
Sometimes People Are Not Asking for a Solution
Another lesson worth remembering: not everyone who talks about a problem is immediately asking you to solve it. Sometimes people need to explain a situation before they can understand it themselves.
Jumping straight into advice can interrupt that process. A simple question such as, “Would you like my thoughts, or would you rather talk this through first?” can make the conversation much easier for both people.
There is a tradeoff here. Leaders cannot listen forever when a decision needs to be made. If an employee is dealing with a serious performance issue, a manager eventually needs to provide clear direction. A mentor may also recognize a risk that the other person genuinely has not considered.
Listening does not mean avoiding difficult advice. It means making sure the advice responds to the situation that actually exists.
Give People Options Instead of Instructions
Once the problem is clear, useful advice does not always have to produce one answer. In many situations, it is more helpful to explain several realistic options and the tradeoffs involved with each.
Someone considering leaving a job, for example, might stay and ask for different responsibilities, begin exploring other opportunities while remaining employed, or make a larger career change. Each choice carries different risks and benefits. The right answer depends on the person’s priorities, responsibilities, finances, and tolerance for uncertainty.
Offering options also leaves room for the person to make their own decision. This is particularly important in mentorship. The goal should not be to create someone who becomes excellent at following a mentor’s instructions. Good mentorship should help people make better decisions when the mentor is no longer in the room.
Ask Three Questions Before Giving One Answer
A simple habit can improve the quality of advice almost immediately. The next time someone asks for your opinion, resist the urge to answer right away and ask three questions first.
Find out what is happening, what they have already tried, and what they actually want to happen next. Then summarize what you think you heard. If the person responds that you haven’t quite understood, that is valuable information. It means you discovered the misunderstanding before building an entire solution around it.
When you finally offer advice, explain which parts come from your own experience and which parts are simply your judgment based on what you have heard. If you do not know enough to give a useful answer, saying so can be more helpful than pretending to have one.
The best mentors and leaders are not valuable because they can produce an answer within five seconds. They are valuable because they know that five seconds is often far too soon.
A fast solution can sound impressive, but it only becomes good advice when it solves the problem the other person was actually trying to solve.