How many times in a week do you get asked for advice?
If you’re half-way good at your job, I’m going to guess that the answer is “frequently”. If you’re quick to offer your advice I’m going to be blunt: you’re not helping.
I’m going to argue that most people who ask for advice are really asking for clarity and for the confidence to make a decision.
And by clarity, I don’t mean clarity about knowing what you think or what you think should happen. I mean clarity in the asker’s own mind.
Advice doesn’t give clarity or the confidence to act
These things are not in our power to bestow on others – they come from within. Clarity and confidence come when new insights emerge, motivating the asker to act from their own conviction. read more…
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
It’s a bitterly cold day and it finally begins to snow. I’m due to take my four-year-old son to an assessment afternoon at what I hope will be his new school, which is ten miles away and in the middle of the countryside. I phone to see if the event is still on and an officious sounding school secretary declares it’s not snowing over there.
As far as the school is concerned it’s this day or no day
I strap my son into his car seat. Once off the main road and onto the twisting country lanes, snow covers the road and is getting thicker all the time. I try to balance the anxiety of getting there on time with the need to crawl along in second gear. I try to keep my mood calm and light for the sake of the little blonde boy in the back seat, whose trusting face I can see in the rear view mirror.
At every twist in the road the car wheels lose grip and it takes successively longer to regain control. Then there’s a corner where the road dips away sharply and I have no choice but to brake. That’s when the car starts sliding.
It’s true what they say about scary events happening in slow motion, as I’ve got plenty of time to register the steep bank on one side of the road and a row of trees on the other.
When we’re fearful and in a hostile environment our instinct is to control
Somehow I resist the urge to brake. Instead I let the engine stall and the car continues to glide, turning around and coming to a halt facing the way we had come. We’ve avoided hitting anything and I eventually get us to the school by over-riding any instinct to brake.
I was learning and adapting quickly.
Many times survival is about controlling our response to, rather than seeking to control, the environment
Neuroscience shows us that fear makes us irrational; our amygdala takes charge and short-circuits our capacity to reason and think clearly.
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
As a coach, clients ask me into their business to help them get better at what they do. Whether it’s an individual leader, a team or even a whole company, these clients are always interested in improvement.
At the beginning big nouns are bandied about: “leadership”, “engagement”, “collaboration.” I know that big consultancies make big money from trying to grapple with big nouns.
Perhaps foolishly, I start with a few small verbs. Because that literally is where the action is.
There are three verbs – three actions – that guarantee improvement
Moyra Mackie helps leaders and teams to work with courage, compassion and creativity. She is an executive coach and consultant and the founder of Mackie Consulting.
