17th May 2021

Don’t offer your advice unless you’re specifically asked for it…
Unfortunately, how often does someone tell us about a problem that they are having, or we find ourselves discussing something that has caught our attention in the news, do we start to offer our perspective or advice, without being asked for it.
This often makes a difficult situation much worse than it has to be; for example, because the other person was just wanting to get something off their chest and confide in us, or because the difficult situation that we have identified is actually a very complicated one and our simplistic and often ill-thought out answer is way off the mark, as it only sees things from one perspective. Things are not always what they seem, or just because you haven’t seen something, doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened.
Or you can be interpreted as taking sides if there is an argument, which might well curry favour with the person you seem to be siding with, but may then lose you all credibility with the person on the other side of the argument, or other people who are watching from the sidelines. There will be a perception of ‘bias’. I see this all the time I’m afraid, from my position as a lawyer, as there is often not just one ‘right’ and one ‘wrong’ in a given situation, but many people on opposite asides of an issue can be both right and wrong on many things (and sometimes even the same thing) at the same time!
But, what I really want to highlight for you today, is the need for you not to feel that you have to offer your advice in every situation, unless you are specifically asked for it. Even then, you need to still first look at things from as many different perspectives as you can, before saying anything. In fact, the less you say sometimes, the better, as the more you say, the more it can be interpreted differently to how you meant it, especially if what you say is taken out of context, or another meaning projected onto it.
So, as I say, be careful and only offer your advice if you are specifically asked for it




