What does it feel like to receive
advice? Have you heard the words “I think you should…” and felt
yourself turn off or become defensive? Likewise perhaps you've noticed negative
reactions when you give advice to others. Do people look away, sigh, roll their
eyes or even start arguing with you when you give them advice? Do people
actually heed your advice or do they just agree with you and then carry on
doing things their own way? 

Sharing your knowledge
effectively is a very valuable skill that can be learned and used to increase
your ability to influence others. It also has some important side-benefits
including: 

• Providing overall support
  rather than just informational advice 
• Building
  strong trusting relationships 
• Empowering others
  to think for themselves 
• Providing solutions that
  are more relevant and specific to the needs 
• Discovering
  new solutions that you hadn't thought of before 

Here are 4 ways coaches make sure their knowledge, experience and
wisdom are heard, appreciated and used. 

1)
Let go of the need to give your solution 

Do you enjoy problem-solving? Offering solutions to
problems can be very satisfying. As well as potentially getting rid of
problems, it lets us feel smart. It seems to prove our value as consultants and
managers. Giving advice even gives us a little feeling of superiority over the
recipients of our wise words. 

The same things that
make giving advice enjoyable sometimes make receiving it irritating. The
over-enthusiastic giver of advice often jumps to conclusions about what is
really needed and what has been tried already. Advice that comes too quickly
can feel quite insulting. Those feelings may lead a person to resist advice,
even though it may actually be quite helpful. 

So
what I'm saying is that if your sense of self-worth (your ego) is gaining from
your advice-giving (you may need to look very closely to notice this), then
there will be two negative impacts: 

1. The way you give the advice will cause resistance in the
   recipient.

2. The advice may not be the best, most
   integrated solution to the actual problem that the other person is
   facing. 

A lot of
advice is given for the sake of making the adviser feel smart and valuable
rather than with the purpose of finding the best possible answer to the
problem. 

So the first and fundamental step in
improving your ability to share your expertise is to drop your attachment to 1)
your solutions and 2) your need to feel smart or valuable. Instead, focus on
what is needed by the recipient of the information while humbly offering
yourself as a resource. Paradoxically, you'll find that being humble and open
actually proves your value much more readily than sharing too urgently your solutions. 

2) Listen first and listen
thoroughly 

Once
you've dropped the need to give your solution, you'll find it much easier to
sit back and listen to the full story of the problem case. I find it helpful to
have a rule that I give advice only as a last resort. You may need to extend
the length of your conversations to allow for a full exploration of the
problem, potential solutions and objections. But the resulting conversation
will be have much more value in terms of finding the best possible solution
while empowering and honouring the advice-seeker. 

If
you are in the habit of giving lots of advice to juniors who are eager to learn
from you, you might consider listening more to them to encourage them to think
for themselves rather than relying on you. You may need to explain to them what
you're doing so that they don't wonder why you've stopped giving them answers
so easily. 

3) Ask
open questions that include your answer 

My favourite way to share my knowledge is to ask a
question that points the recipient to discover the solution for himself. As we
know, people are more committed to solutions that they think of themselves. And
those solutions are more likely to thoroughly address their unique concerns,
limitations and priorities about the problem. 

Here
are some examples of handy questions that can elicit all kinds of
solutions. 

• “What have you tried so
  far?” 
• “What have you thought of doing
  about it?” 
• “What else?” 
• “Have
  you thought of anything related to X (the broad area of your potential
  solution)? 

Please note that these
questions are all very open and can lead the conversation in a wide range of
directions. You may quickly discover that the solution you had in mind was
completely inappropriate! 

Very often people will
continue to explain the intricacies of their thinking about the problem and
you'll gain much more insight into where they are really stuck and what they
can do about it. 

4)
Use diplomatic phrasing 

Apart from these more round-about ways of helping someone realize what
you want to tell them, it's possible to phrase a piece of advice in ways that
are more easily accepted. But please be warned that even the most elegant
phrasing will not work if you have not completely heard the essence of the
problem. Once you've listened thoroughly, you might try some of the following
phrases: 

• “Would you like me to
  share some of my ideas on this?” 
• “One
  way I've seen this done before…” 

Some
phrases to avoid include the dreaded “You should…” and also
“Have you tried… (your solution)?” because this phrasing can so
easily sound condescending. 

These
four ways to improve your ability to share your knowledge are also the essence
of effective coaching. Coaches drop their egos and use listening, questioning
and diplomatic phrasing to help people think better and in-the-end to influence
positive changes.

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