The Art of Giving Advice: Meeting People Where They Are

Almost everyone over the age of two on this planet right now has been given some level of advice. It is often unsolicited and accompanied by the words, should, must, need to, and have to.

As my friend Nancy likes to say, “Thou should not should on thyself.” I would add that we shouldn’t should on others either. While I wish we could eliminate those words from the collective consciousness, the words that send a shiver down my spine are, “If I were you…”, or “When I was your age…”

Here’s the rub, we’re not them.

No matter how good our intentions are, we are not that person. We haven’t lived their lives or dealt with their challenges, in much the same way that they haven’t dealt with ours. No one knows what lies beneath the tip of the iceberg of someone’s psyche. Unless they allow us in, all we can see is what’s bobbing on the surface of the water.

None of us know how close another individual is to giving up and statements like “If I were you,” or “When I was your age,” might be what tips them over the edge or down Alice’s proverbial rabbit hole.

People are far more open to advice if they feel understood.

This ideology has become my mantra in more ways than one. It is well-documented that people trust and listen far more when they feel heard and understood.

Meeting people where they are is a gift that comes straight from the soul. When that gift is given freely and without judgement, the visible relief in the recipient is palpable. Where we think they should be or what decisions we think they should be making are totally irrelevant. We are not them and they are not us.

All of us find ourselves in different circumstances at different phases of our lives. All of us have different personality traits and different desires. And thank the Lord we do, life would be insanely boring if we were all the same.

Situational versus Dispositional Thinking

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to actively listening to another is the pitfall of Attribution Theory.

A formal definition is provided by Fiske and Taylor (1991, p. 23):

“Attribution theory deals with how the social perceiver uses information to arrive at causal explanations for events. It examines what information is gathered and how it is combined to form a causal judgment”.

In other words, how we justify others’ behaviours. Is someone rude because they are impolite and bitter, or because something recently happened to cause them a moment of unhappiness?

Let’s dive further into the theory.

Dispositional Attribution

Behaviour, usually negative, is more often than not, attributed to an individual’s character, personality traits, or beliefs.

If a store clerk snaps at a customer or is less than enthused to help, we often assume that they are a mean or nasty person, not that their current circumstances could have elicited that response.

Imagine being reactive in that moment and then finding out that their parent was just diagnosed with an illness, that they have recently been evicted, or that they ended an important relationship.

Would that change the way we respond to them? Would kindness show in our eyes and words in that moment?

Situational Attribution

On the flip side, behaviour, usually negative, is assigned to a situation, circumstance, or event outside of a person’s control.

The kicker with these theories is that we often assign dispositional factors to others while assigning situational factors to ourselves. For example, that person is rude simply because they’re mean and bitter, whereas, I’m being rude because I’m tired or hungry or they were rude to me first.

Attribution Theory and Giving Advice

While being more willing to accept situational over dispositional factors when advising others is more beneficial, there are still pitfalls on both sides of assigning attribution. Age differences often cause the biggest judgments and errors in advice.

Situational

I had a friend once, a woman in her late sixties who was recently retired and had bought a small apartment furnished with her lovely things. She decided that stuff meant nothing in the grand scheme of happiness, and while in many ways that is true, people still need the basics to survive. Individual circumstances and desires also dictate the level of stuff we hold on to.

Motivated by her desire to shed everything from her life - bar the nice apartment with her lovely things - she began advising others to do the same. The problem was that many of her friends were in completely different circumstances. For example, one was twenty years her junior and trying to begin again and the other was quite a few years older with a few health issues and no desire to go gadding around the world.

While her mindset had shifted in line with the life she was choosing to live, she completely ignored the fact that it was not in line with the lives of her two friends. Additionally, there was no acknowledgement that she had built a soft place to land between adventures which made a huge difference to her new-found lust for freedom.

Dispositional

A lot of people on this planet are in survival mode at present. Global financial greed brought on by extreme capitalism and governments more interested in helping the rich than their citizens is crushing humanity. This circumstance is an everyday experience for the majority of the world and individuals have to work harder to meet their basic needs. Living life and having fun is not an option for many people.

While some dispositions are introverted and others extroverted, very few choose excessive work over enjoyment. Disparaging someone’s character because they’re not out having fun and living it up, instead they’re doing everything they can to survive is not helpful advice. Age is irrelevant when survival is in play. Juggling stressors and lack of healthcare or social security can age a body far quicker than chronological time.

It’s worth remembering that people do the best they can with the resources they have available. Some have more resources than others, and as such, appear to be doing better. I teach students from all over the world trying to better themselves in order to find a way out of the stark economic environments they were born into.

Some know they will never be able to buy a home, a car, or stop working ten or twelve-hour days until they retire and that can change a person. When someone says they’re too tired to do something, listen, it’s probably the truth.

Back to the art of giving advice

Whether keeping situational or dispositional factors in the back of one’s mind when giving advice, the most important thing to do is listen with kindness.

People will tell you what they need if you listen. If someone mentions a particular issue they’re having, it’s important to them. They’re struggling with it for a reason and telling them what we would do or negating the importance of the difficulty for them will not elicit the best advice, nor will it build trust.

Words hold more power than most of us realize and people hold onto feelings of shame or unworthiness that emanate from judgemental advice, especially when it comes from someone we value. If the people we care about show that they aren’t prepared to listen and meet us where we are, it hurts and can sting for quite some time.

Never assume that someone is physically, emotionally, mentally, or financially capable of making the same choices we would because chances are, they’re not, which is why they’re struggling to make those choices. All of us are constrained by circumstances or ideologies in one way or another. Some find it easier to accept where they are until they can change their thought patterns or remove obstacles, and others find themselves slaves to them.

Both are okay, but we would get further in helping others if we understood that. Working within their parameters, not our own is far more beneficial, and doing so with kindness is the key to great advice.

There are two people I confide in, one my own age and the other fifteen years my senior. They are completely different people from two completely different worlds having had completely different life experiences, but the thing they have in common is the reason I confide in them - they are both kind. There is never any judgment as they listen and respond. Any advice is given with consideration of where I am in my life currently, and if I don’t take it, there is understanding.

I have learned a lot during the last seven years as I listened to students from all over the world. I have learned how to meet them where they are based on their individual circumstances. No matter the culture, religion, or gender, they are all looking for the same validation and understanding.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned is the art of asking questions to truly understand where someone is, the way they think, and how they process information. More often than not, they will find their own solutions to kind and careful questioning, but even if they don’t, they walk away feeling heard and that is one gift that costs nothing to give.

We make a lot of mistakes in our lives but we also make a lot of incredible choices. We struggle through some things and fly easily through others. We find solutions that work well for us but maybe not for another. Through it all, we meet each crossroad where we are, not where others have been.

Advising others based on our stories doesn’t work. Advising others based on their stories is where souls collide and it is these moments that we remember for a lifetime. Expecting others to take our advice is also a pitfall. When advice is given, let it go and trust that if it hits the mark, it will be taken. If not, it was not right for that soul at that point in their journey.

Thinking before we speak enables us to meet people where they are, not where we believe they should be. This is how miracles happen.

References

Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

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