HOW TO GIVE GOOD ADVICE - Christianity Today

I was having lunch with a psychologist who offers her services part-time to her church. As we talked, she was asking me questions about her cases.

Finally I said, “This is ludicrous. I’ve never studied counseling a day in my life. I’m a businessman, and you’re a Ph.D. in psychology, the head of a clinic. Why are you asking me?”

“There’s a difference between counseling and asking for advice,” she said. “I come to you for good advice.”

I was intrigued with her distinction, and reflecting on it, I think it’s an important one. Sometimes, I suspect, we confuse the two functions.

Advice is suggesting a specific action within a specific time frame, and it deals with factual things: purchases, job changes, decisions.

Counsel is guidance toward a better relationship, attitude, or lifestyle-things that can’t be quantified or tightly scheduled. For instance, counselors can’t promise, “You’ll have a handle on your depression within two months.” When a person wants advice, however, one of the best questions is “How much time do you have to make a decision?”

Often the best counselors are not good advisers. The two functions require different information, experience, and responsibilities. I have a friend who is an excellent investment adviser, but he would be lost trying to counsel a strained marriage. He understands markets, not emotions.

It helps to know which you can do. A man called me recently and said, “Can I talk to you?” We met for lunch, and after an hour, I said, “There’s no point in talking further, because I’ve told you all you can hear.” I cut him short, not to be rude but because he’d asked for advice, I’d given it, and he didn’t want to follow it. 1 know I’m not a counselor, who ministers by listening and helping people work through doubts and fears and habitual problems.

Interestingly, the man called me about three days later. “You kicked me in the pants, and I want to thank you. I finally did what you suggested. It was what I needed to do.”

Counseling is a valuable ministry, but giving advice is a different thing.

What Advice Is Not

Counseling is not the only function that gets confused with giving good advice. Here are some other things advice is not.

Advice is not offering an evaluation. Recently I asked for help with a manuscript and got a letter of “editorial criticism.” Good analysis. Justifiable criticism. But it was not advice. The person gave me some general observations. I needed specific directions. Criticism identifies the problems; advice tells you how to fix them.

Advice is not giving inspiration. Inspiration is wonderful; it makes us feel we can do whatever we set our minds to. Advice or guidance, on the other hand, shows us what to do and tells us we’ll fail if we don’t do certain things. So you don’t find guidance books very popular. The instructions are specific; they call for action. But inspirational books sell.

Advice is not making reflective statements. It is not theoretical musing. Advice concerns one specific matter. Should I buy this house? This car? Should I divorce my wife? Where should my kids go to school? Advice offers a specific answer to a specific question.

Advice is not training. Training offers principles; advice offers techniques. Advice is not “guiding someone’s thinking process.” The goal is for a person to take action, to make one good decision. If you’re riding with someone and giving directions to your house, you say, “Turn here.” You don’t say, “Of these three options, which do you think is best?” and through a long process let him discover he’s missed the street. Often we can be most helpful to certain people just by giving the right answer.

Yes, people come to pastors for counseling or evaluation or training or just to have someone listen. Many times advice would not be well received. But other times people genuinely want advice.

Can I Give Advice?

In order to know whether I can give advice, I ask myself three questions: Do I know enough about the situation? Am I qualified? Do I see viable options to recommend?

Here’s a recent case in point. A rather frantic middle-aged man met me at a reception and said, “Can I ask your advice?” I could see some desperation in his eyes. “My boss has made a decision that’s wrong. And unless he changes it, I’m going to quit. What do you think?” I sensed he was ready for a straight answer.

“Is it the boss’s right to make the decision?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Does he know you think he’s wrong?”

“Sure.”

“Do you very often go in and usurp his desk, or do you let him have his own office?”

“Well,” he said, “I let him have his own office.”

“Then don’t you think you ought to give him the authority to make the decisions he’s responsible for? Unless you want to embezzle your boss’s authority and lose your job, I suggest you let your boss make his own decisions.”

The next week he wrote me a two-page letter thanking me for going to the heart of the problem. All I wanted was to keep him from resigning the next morning or sparking an ugly confrontation. I didn’t care if he said, “Smith told me not to” or “I decided not to.i’ That wasn’t as important as what he actually did (or didn’t do). In this man’s case, I felt I could give advice because he asked me about business, an area in which I’m qualified, and I saw he had a viable option: to stay where he was.

Pastors are often asked for advice, and as I’ve thought about it, the great advice givers I have known have all had some common qualities: the right motive, the required facts, a healthy intuition, and experience. And they’ve known how to combine these ingredients to come up with good advice.

The Right Motive

More bad advice emerges from bad motives than from bad judgment.

Often I see advice given that comes from a motive of keeping another person dependent. I recently met a middle-aged man who is still controlled by his father. His father is strong and capable but has never wanted his children to be self-sufficient. He’s structured their lives so they’re dependent on him financially and emotionally. They live well, but they’re desperately afraid they couldn’t continue without their father making all their major decisions. I said to myself, His father has him tied by a gold chain. A gold chain is difficult to break. Any advice the son gets from his father needs to be understood in light of the father’s desire to remain chief of the clan.

In churches, some pastors give the impression that you must come to them for the correct interpretation of Scripture, that it’s impossible to read and understand the Bible for yourself. They keep people dependent, preventing them from gaining confidence in their own ability to know God. To me, it’s dishonest to create a dependent relationship out of an opportunity to help.

There are other improper motives. For example, I’ve known people whose major concern was protecting their own reputation, so they give ambivalent messages. Some economists are guilty of this. Like the Oracles of Delphi, the advice can later be interpreted either way. To me, this means a person wants to look smart but not be responsible for the advice. Or it may mean the advice giver doesn’t want to say, “I don’t know.” Sometimes the best advice I can give is “Ask somebody else.” It is humbling, but it does show honest motives.

Other people are advicaholics, compelled to give advice, to demonstrate their knowledge. Generally they’re not satisfied with themselves, so they dish out directions to others. Sitting in the stands, they tell the quarterback how to run the game. The player can’t hear the counsel, but they give it anyway. They’re not helping at all. They’re simply displaying their knowledge, which is a bad motive.

The right motive: simply a desire to help others- giving help that truly is help.

The Required Facts

Since the facts are so essential to good advice, I not only ask for them but test them. I’ve learned that the facts are not always apparent. Often they’re colored by anxiety and supposition.

I must feel confident that I have the necessary facts and not just a fictionalized account of the situation. Often I’ll ask a person to repeat certain parts of the story to see if the details and emotions come out the same.

I’ll also try to determine the elements on which others depend. For instance, people often ask if they should quit their jobs. My first question is “Do you have another to go to?” Rarely should a person leave a job without another one lined up.

So I don’t hesitate to ask questions about the facts I need to improve the advice.

Healthy Intuition

Another ingredient to giving good advice is healthy intuition. Developing your imagination is the key step here, because intuition requires you to draw up an imaginary scenario from present to future. It sounds technical, but it’s not.

Fred Smith is president of Fred Smith Associates, Dallas, Texas.

Quite often someone tells me what he’s planning, and I say, “I could never see you doing that.” He’s just violated my scenario for him. Or I might say, “I can see you doing this very effectively.”

Intuition is the ability to imagine the possible scenarios and see the one that is the most practical, the most attractive, the most profitable. Imagination enters because there may be several scenarios to choose from, and it’s important to see them all to find the best, the one that fits just a little better. It’s like buying a suit of clothes. You try on three or four suits, any one of which would be okay, but one makes you look a little better.

My wife often says, “I don’t like this dress because it’s not me.” She has a scenario of what she ought to look like. She buys clothes that fit her image.

In giving advice, it’s important to see the scenario from the other person’s viewpoint, not your own. It must be logical to that person, not necessarily to you. If it’s logical to you but not to the other, and if you base your advice on it, the person will never fit himself into it or carry it out. Part of intuition is to think, What value structure is this person operating from?

I was listening to a documentary on India. I’ve never desired to visit India because of the overwhelming poverty, and I was intrigued to hear an Indian lawyer interviewed. He was asked, “You’re a wealthy man. How can you see poverty-stricken people every day and never do anything for them?’

“Why should I?” he said. “A thousand births ago I was one of them, and in a thousand deaths they will be me.” To him it was perfect logic. That is how he dealt with their poverty and his own wealth. Giving advice to such a person would have to involve using his scenario as a starting point.

Scenarios and intuition, of course, can be subjective and inaccurate. As a Christian, I would take issue with that lawyer. It’s possible to have selfdeceiving scenarios. That’s why we need to develop healthy intuition. Because of my ancestor Adam, I’ve inherited a fallen human nature that is unable to be totally honest, but because of Christ’s influence in my life, I’m able not to be dishonest with myself.

That’s not double talk. It simply means if we examine ourselves carefully, we can usually recognize the prejudices and preferences that might throw off our intuition.

It also means we can guard ourselves from corrupting influences. One of the most common today, for instance, is a misunderstanding of tolerance. If I observe that someone is not working up to speed, some dear soul will tell me, “You shouldn’t be critical.” It isn’t a matter of being critical; it’s a matter of being honest. Good intuition requires you to stay as honest and objective as you can. You have to be careful to keep your own heart in good condition, because your heart is more powerful than your mind in affecting your intuition.

Wine tasters have to protect their taste buds. They won’t eat garlic or other strong spices because they want to taste the wine honestly. People who have to match color hues don’t stay up all night watching TV. They protect their eyes. Intuition has to be protected the same way-from hostilities, prejudices, and negative, cancerous emotions. You want to know when you are seeing things clearly.

Many times intuition is based on observation of body language, attitude, or choice of clothes.

Once I was with a father and son during a tense confrontation. I felt the young man was lying. When I eventually said so, he admitted it. He later told his father, “That man can read minds!” No, I can’t read minds, but I noticed he had a tic in his face every time he got on a certain subject. My eyes saw the tic. My intuition perceived the spirit.

Others have done the same with me. At a social occasion, I was conversing with a psychiatrist. He was pressing me on a particular business point. I didn’t know much about it, but I figured he knew even less, so I was talking like an expert. He kept challenging me.

Later I asked him, “Why did you keep pushing me like that?”

“Because you didn’t know what you were talking about,” he laughed.

“How did you know?” I asked. “That’s a business subject. You’re no businessman.”

“Simple,” he said. “The level of your voice changed. You became nervous, and you raised the intensity of your vocal tone.”

He was absolutely right about my bluffing. Part of it was observation, but part of it was his healthy intuition.

Experience

While speaking at a retreat for young career people, I often heard them say, “I need an older friend.” Upon investigating further, I found what they meant was, ‘At times I really need advice from someone with experience.”

What does it mean to benefit from someone else’s experience? Experience tempers our intuition and helps apply it. There are several areas in which experience becomes valuable in giving advice.

Experience helps us know how much people can accomplish. It doesn’t do any good to give advice to someane who is incapable of following it. Telling a polio victim how to run a marathon is cruel. Advice must be tailored to a person’s capabilities. Many times people don’t know their own limits.

Every spring break, a number of college kids are killed because, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, they think they can jump from one building to the next. Good advice is based on what experience has shown the person can do and how much effort the person will put into something.

If a person has never read the Bible two days in a row, it would be a mistake to advise him to start a year-long reading schedule. You would be setting him up for failure. Until you see the desire, drive, and character develop, it would be better to say, “Why don’t you try to read the Gospels this month?” Or set up something every day for a week. We don’t give advice to create failures. We give advice to create successes.

Experience helps us work with emotions. There are times when advice can be straightforward and other times when it needs to be indirect. If no major emotional issues are involved, advice can be given directly. When there is some overriding emotional barrier to carrying out the advice-such as hostility or doubt or fear-the indirect approach is probably best. This, of course, is what the prophet Nathan used when he confronted David about his sin with sathsheba. He told a story so he could get to his conclusion before the king grew angry and threw him out.

You also see this with golf caddies. When a golfer is doubtful about what club to use, the good caddy will confidently hand him one and say, “Just make a smooth swing.” He gets the golfer’s mind off whether or not he’s got the right club. He knows the most important thing is concentrating on hitting the ball well. Sometimes after the golfer swings, the caddy will mutter, “Be the right stick! Be the right stick!” But before the swing, his advice is indirect to prevent emotional ambivalence.

Sometimes I meet a person who knows what to do but is afraid. He simply needs buttressing. A blunt Don’t be afraid” isn’t very helpful. In situations like this, I often tell a story. For instance: “I was talking to a young man just like you-smart, quick, ambitious, going to go a long way. But he was stumped by a major decision. He questioned whether the timing was right, whether he was capable. I suspected it was more a matter of fearing the unknown than timing or capability. I told him so, he made the decision, and he didn’t regret it.” Other times I’ll offer a verse of Scripture or a quotation from Shakespeare. If a person has doubts, an indirect word is often all that’s necessary. I call this my “billiard advice”-my bank shots.

Experience lets us know when not to give advice. Advice must be given in the area of our experience.

One common mistake, for instance, is assuming that because we know Scripture, we’re qualified to extrapolate Scripture onto a specific business decision. But knowledge of the Bible doesn’t qualify a person to give advice on a particular mutual fund. Again, advice means one situation, one time, one action.

Inexperience is a curable trait. But until you gain experience in a particular area, it’s usually best not to give advice. If you needed surgery and went to a doctor, you’d want to know if he’d ever done this particular operation before. If he didn’t tell you, you’d have a right to be upset.

In giving advice, there’s nothing wrong with being honest. I often use the phrase, “I’m really not the person you ought to ask.” Recently when I was asked for advice about a financial matter, I said, “I’m sorry. I’m not current on that.” I could have offered general statements about it, but the person wanted advice for a particular situation. So I politely suggested she find someone who was current.

My Advice for Advice Givers

Here is some advice for potential advice givers.

Analyze your experiences. While experience is a valuable tool, it can also lead to bad advice if you don’t know how to use it. Some experiences get tangled in nostalgia, and memories distort facts. If you listen to old ballplayers, you know what I mean. Some of the longest home runs were hit by men who never got to the majors. For experience to be helpful, you have to know what actually happened.

In addition, we have to be careful because there’s a great desire in most of us to repeat our successes. But few situations are identical, and we cannot assume the differences are unimportant. For instance, you successfully raised money in one church, and you try to do it the same way in the next church. But the personalities are different, the environment is different, the times are different. And the campaign flops.

The antidote is to analyze your experiences, to know why something worked. This means knowing the circumstances, the people involved, the aims, and what the times were. When you’re able to analyze the relevant factors and distinguish the transferable from the peculiar, you can apply experience correctly.

One key is to determine what can be repeated and what was merely a fluke. For example, you can win against the odds, but not often. When you beat the odds, if you’re smart, you’ll admit it and not advise others to try the same thing.

Playing golf one day, I hit a ball out of bounds to the left, but it hit an iron gate and bounced onto the green. I don’t tell many people to practice that shot. It was pure luck. I had a friend who hit a ball into a tree, and it bounced in for a hole in one. If he tells his partners to hit into the tree and the ball may bounce into the hole, he’s playing against the odds. That happened once. Experience isn’t a virtue unless you learn to keep the odds with you.

Offer advice only when asked. I try not to volunteer advice, because I’ve found people usually aren’t ready to act until they’re ready to ask.

If a person honestly asks you for advice, it’s usually because he has reason to believe you’ll give good advice. Such a person is much more likely to benefit from you than someone who didn’t ask.

Some people, of course, ask for “advice” when all they want is commendation. If you tell them what you really think, they’re liable to maim you!

Usually intuition will tell you which kind of person you’re dealing with, but if I’m in doubt, I may inquire, “How many people have you asked about this?” If it’s more than two or three, I begin to suspect the person is either afraid to make a decision or else wants only commendation.

Give only advice that can be used immediately. Ralph Cordiner, former president of General Electric, was once talking about communications, and he said, “Communications are like supplies. If you’ve got an employee putting nuts and bolts in an appliance, you never give him more nuts and bolts than he can use.” And you never give anybody more advice than he can use immediately. No matter how many ideas you have and how much you’d like to tell him, resist the temptation to tell it all. Chances are, you will only confuse the person.

How do you decide which piece of advice to give?

Think through the problem and find the key log. When loggers clear a logjam, the foolish ones start at the edge of the jam and start moving logs until things loosen up. The smart logger, however, climbs a tall tree and locates the key log, blows it, and lets the stream do the rest.

With advice, the key is to find the crucial issue, which if accomplished, will affect other things. For example, I have a friend who has some personality problems. The key, however, is weight. If she would lose ten pounds, she’d become a more positive person. But she won’t bring herself to that discipline. It does no good to give her advice on how to be positive. The key is to find a way to convince her to lose the ten pounds.

Avoid snap judgments. Even if you know you’re nght, sometimes it’s best to take some time before offering your advice. Why? Because the other person may be skeptical of advice given too quickly.

Getting a haircut one time, I said to the barber, “You’re a disciplined man. You’re the best barber I know. How fast could you cut my hair?”

“Six minutes,” he said.

“Why don’t you?”

“Because you wouldn’t think you had a good haircut unless I took fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Sometimes advice is similar, and it pays to ponder, even if your intuition has given you the appropriate words immediately.

Then again, when the person sees you as an authority, you can afford to speak more quickly. If you have a skin rash, go to a dermatologist, and he says, “Use this salve,” you’ll probably accept the advice. But let’s say you thought you had some unknown disease. You go to the doctor, and he shakes your hand and says, “I see by your eyes that you need an operation.” You’d think, This is a quack! You’d sense he needs more time and information to arrive at that conclusion.

Make sure the person understands what you’ve said. I’m amazed when I talk with somebody for thirty minutes and then say, “Now tell me what you’ve heard me saying to you.” The response often bears no resemblance to my intended advice. And the more emotional the issue, the less clearly people hear.

I once advised a young professional woman, “Never buy luxuries on the installment plan.” When I asked if she knew what I was saying, she said, “So it’s all right to buy a new car on installments?”

“No,” I replied, “I said it was all right to buy necessities like transportation.” She had interpreted transportation as new car, and I suspected she was thinking about a Mercedes or Jaguar. I meant something with wheels to get her to work. She missed the whole point.

When I have doubts if people heard me correctly, often I’ll write them a note: “Enjoyed the visit. Here’s my understanding of what we talked about.” I write the note longhand so they’ll know it’s still confidential. Just one or two points. (If you’ve made more than one or two points, you haven’t given advice, you’ve been counseling.) The note helps clarify and confirm your conclusions.

Restrain your curiosity. Good advice always leaves up to the person the option of taking the action. Advice says, “I’m convinced this is the best way, but it’s your decision.” I never say, “I’ll call you tomorrow to be sure you’ve done this.” That becomes a directive, not advice. You’ve made them feel obligated to follow your advice. I don’t want to violate another person’s freedom. I want to help people make the best decision they can. Whether or not they carry it out is their responsibility.

Advice giving is not some mystical art. Much of it is good common sense. The keys are clarity and conciseness. The last piece of advice I’d offer is to know when to quit. So I will.

I am a Christian because God says so, and I did what he told me to do, and I stand on God’s Word, and if the Book goes down, I’ll go with it.

To hear the voice of God in Holy Scripture oneself,

and to help others to hear it,

is a worthy cause to which to devote one’s resources.

-Billy Sunday

To be commissioned to devote them to this cause is a sacred trust,

not to be undertaken lightly, not to be refused irresponsibly,

but to be fulfilled thankfully.

-F. F. Bruce