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From Contributor to Advisor

Setting the Stage for Advice

• Reiterate the request for advice and explain what it entails.

• Define the different kinds of advice you can give.
• Give the other person permission to disregard your advice.

• Remind the person of his or her own responsibility.

Obviously, you may choose different wording than what appears
in these examples. Just be sure to address all four areas as you set the
stage for discussion: You are the advisor, and the other person is the
decider and the doer. By appropriately allocating these responsibili-
ties, you will be better positioned to give pertinent, useful advice and
less likely to be misinterpreted, misunderstood, or misquoted later.

Giving Your Advice
After your preparation and stage-setting, you are ready to start giving
advice. So what, exactly, are you going to talk about?
One of the challenges of giving situational advice is that to a large
extent, you can’t prepare in advance. Requests often come up unex-
pectedly and spontaneously. Even with a model like the one in the last
section, it’s diffi cult to prepare for a conversation that may or may not
be a request for advice about a topic that may or may not have ever
come up before. In many ways, advising is an improvisational art.
Can improvisation be avoided? You could try to predict the other
person’s request, but you run the risk of being blinded by your expec-
tations and misunderstanding the real need. You might also ask
for time to think about things after you’ve heard the story and the
request, an approach that has some merit—especially in highly com-
plex, involved, or perilous situations. But things change. As you pon-
der, your advisee’s situation develops further, and your understanding
decreases. Besides, the phrase “Yes, I’m asking for your advice” is the

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