If you don't like what you are. Amy Morin is the author of the bestselling book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do. Other people's advice can save us a lot of time, trouble and energy. Classifying advice between “good” and “bad” is an art, and we can learn to improve at this art. Seeking and giving advice is critical to effective leadership and decision-making, and requires emotional intelligence, self-awareness, moderation, diplomacy and patience on both sides.
However, managers tend to see these competencies as “gifts you have or lack.” The authors argue, instead, that they are practical skills that can be learned and applied with great effectiveness. They rely on a large amount of research to identify the most common obstacles to seeking and giving advice effectively, such as thinking that you already have the answers, misdefining the problem and exceeding limits, and offer practical guidelines for overcoming them. Seeking and giving advice is critical to effective leadership and decision-making. However, managers rarely see them as practical skills that they can learn and improve. Receiving guidance is often seen as a passive consumption of wisdom.
And counseling is generally treated as a matter of “good judgment”, or you have it or not, rather than as a competence to master. When they are not in a position to do so, they don't maliciously give advice, they just don't know what the appropriate advice is to give because they have never done so. Therefore, it's important to distinguish which tips are worthwhile and which tips you should ignore.
