Page 169 - Make Work Great

From Contributor to Advisor

comfort with you. At the end of the telling, he or she may have come
to a better understanding of what’s happened. He or she will also have
developed more interest in your advice and more trust in you, because
you now understand the situation. When you wait until the end of the
story to ask if the person wants your advice, the answer is more likely
to be “yes,” and the person is more likely to be receptive of what you
have to say.
If, at the end of the story, the person says “no,” you’ve still built
trust and mutual understanding and demonstrated your unwilling-
ness to force your views on others. Simply say, “I’m glad I could be
here to listen,” and leave it at that. You may well fi nd that after a little
time, the person returns to ask for your advice.

Setting the Stage for Your Advice
What if the person does ask for your advice? Once you understand
the situation and have been asked for advice, your job is to give the
answer, right?
Perhaps not. Advice requests, often framed as complaints, represent
the frustrations of others in attempting to get their work done, reach
their goals, and/or experience some enjoyment in the process. When
these frustrated people look to you for help, you have the opportunity
to create or strengthen a mutually benefi cial relationship. In doing so,
you also further the reach of your new cultural patterns.
Use your patterns, and begin with overtness about purpose. Start
by defi ning what you have to offer. For the fi rst time since the interac-
tion started, it’s time for you to take a leadership role in the conversa-
tion and articulate the parameters of your interaction going forward.
Four areas in particular deserve special attention:

• Reiterate the advice request and explain what it entails. Say,
“You’ve asked me for my advice, so I’m going to try to put myself in
your situation. This means I’ll probably be asking you some specifi c
questions about what you’re facing. Please understand that this is
not a quiz. There are no wrong answers. I just want to understand.”

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