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This article is about seriously considering the responsibility one adopts by giving others advice.
The experience of receiving advice from someone who’s a little bit too invested in proving themselves right raises some questions. Why do such individuals hold a high level of interest in us adopting their advice? What are they attempting to gain in enticing us to follow their words of advice?
Those too invested in others following their advice raise doubts in their followers’ minds. Should you be the one who is invested in giving others advice, you’ll come across barriers to the acceptance of your words.
People will consider you to be operating with self-interest fueling your words when they see the desperation with which you present advice. You’d be considered as someone who puts themselves first and feigns attempts to help others.
The Responsibility of Giving Advice
Giving advice involves asking someone to spend time exploring a plan of action which you deem to be right. You’d not only ask them to spend their effort and time in following the steps you lay out for them, but you may even introduce risk to the equation pending the context in which advice is given.
Giving someone advice on how they should act is thereby an exercise which is not only serious, but it is poignant. There is real risk involved in anyone infusing your word into the actions they take. You are trusted to manage risk and time in the advice that you give out.
Being too lax and uninvested in the outcomes of those who take your advice will show that you simply want your word to be taken as truth. Those who are too invested in others taking their advice don’t seem to spend enough time considering the circumstance of their advice not panning out how they intend. They don’t express enough concern, and risk mitigation strategies are far from one’s mind when they’re prideful in the adoption of their advice.
The only appropriate state that can be achieved is one of cautious confidence when all the variables are considered in someone taking your advice. Premature celebration, contentment, or pride in your advice being adopted will signal a detachment from the real possibilities of your advice not panning out.
Will the Prideful Advice-Giver Be There if Things Don’t Pan Out?
Those operating with pride when presenting others advice on what they should do or say do not exhibit signs of being dependable. The time to be prideful in such situations would be when it is certain that the advice they’ve given has panned out. If there are no objective or subjective measures to someone’s advice panning out, there is absolutely no reason to show any pride or contentment.
It is thereby a red flag when someone exhibits any positive emotion in you simply agreeing to adopt their advice going forward. From their perspective, your simple agreement and adoption would be a milestone. That milestone however, should not be. The act of accepting someone’s advice is not progress in any measurable form, as that advice can always be the wrong advice in the long term.
Someone who operates with pride in giving you advice will be unlikely to operate dependably should their advice not pan out. They’ll be likely to blame you for their advice going south, and they’ll continue to find reasons for why they were right all along. By the time results come in, they’d already have infused a sense of being on the side of truth without any real evidence.
The Self-Centered Advisor
The self-centered advisor is thereby one whose task is complete when their advice is adopted. They possess no interest in being by your side should things go wrong because it would mean their advice did not pan out. They’d need to make a choice in such events. Either they label themselves wrong or label you an inadequate follower of their advice.
The likelihood is that prideful advisors will veer away from adopting responsibility in any outcome other than success.
Prideful advisors will tend to act as leaders rather than supporters. They’re likely to see you as a pupil rather than an actor they are supporting and propping up.
Be wary of those who exhibit a self-centered pride when dishing out advice. Do not succumb to being treated as a subordinate when looking for advice to guide you toward success. A prideful advisor will seek to take all credit in success and will cower under evidence of their advice being incorrect.