The Toxic Side of Advice

How do you feel when you give someone advice? Recent studies would suggest we feel great — powerful, even.

But what about the person who’s listening? Now more than ever, we’re learning that when someone receives advice, they may feel less confident, judged, or even stressed.

As I read this research, I could picture it — the confident senior manager “helping” a new employee by giving them unsolicited advice. How the senior manager feels like a leader, being able to “pass on” their expertise. They may even think that the new employee is lucky to be receiving such important information.

But the new employee doesn’t feel lucky. They feel judged, like the advice is proof they were doing something wrong. They worry that others are observing them, too, and their stress level increases. Their confidence and motivation are slashed.

I’ve seen this happen dozens of times in my career, from people who don’t recognize that “giving” advice at work isn’t a “gift” after all — it may be a toxic culture killer.

Advice: A Power Play

Offering advice makes us perceive influence over others and power within ourselves — regardless of whether or not our advice is taken.

Literally, just that act of giving advice can make you feel influential and powerful — even if your advice is totally ignored.

And recent research has shown that more is better — the more advice you share, the more powerful you feel — and that those with a desire for power are likely to give advice in pursuit of power.

“[Our] research establishes advice giving as a subtle route to a sense of power, shows that the desire to feel powerful motivates advice giving, and highlights the dynamic interplay between power and advice.”

From Advice Giving: A Subtle Pathway to Power, a study published in a 2018 issue of The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Unsolicited Advice at Work

Let’s think about how this can affect our workplaces. Have you ever given someone unsolicited advice at work?

If you’re like me, you may think, “Wait! I am just trying to help!”

But research suggests that it almost doesn’t matter whether your advice is helpful or not — if it’s unsolicited.

If you give someone unsolicited advice at work, they’re more likely to ignore your advice or perceive your advice as manipulative.

“Our results clarify the specific motives that link advice solicitation to work-related advice outcomes — unsolicited advice was likely to be perceived as self-serving (flaunting knowledge), which reduced perceived usefulness, learning, and performance, whereas solicited advice was likely to be perceived as prosocial (benefiting the recipient), which enhanced perceived usefulness, learning, and performance.

From How Employees React to Unsolicited and Solicited Advice in the Workplace: Implications for Using Advice, Learning, and Performance, a study published in a 2021 issue of The Journal of Applied Psychology

Other studies have shown that receiving unsolicited advice can make us feel threatened or judged and that unsolicited advice can be so unwanted that it causes psychophysical stress.

These studies focus specifically on advice, and they show pretty clearly that advice isn’t an effective tool for helping others at work.

What Can We Do?

If we care about employees showing up confidently at work, and if we care about performance and learning in our workplaces, then toxic advice is something we need to address.

We can’t ban advice completely — certainly, advice can be helpful. (Hey, even arsenic has its uses. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful with it.)

Before you offer advice, you can try other tools, like:

• Ask open-ended questions — the “How have you tried tackling this problem so far?” kind, not the “Have you tried xyz?” kind. Explore the topic as if you were the journalist, not the expert — seek to understand, not solve.
• Honor the person’s previous experience — for example, ask the person how they have tackled previous challenges, or ask about their strengths. Try and see how the person’s history, experience, or skillset is connected with their latest challenge.
• Check to see if the person wants advice — you can ask, “Are you looking for advice or are you still in brainstorming mode?” to see if someone even wants advice (and if they are soliciting advice — still lean on being supportive rather than prescriptive, since some research has shown that when a person asks for advice, it lowers their confidence).
• Recognize intuition — encourage the person to share what their gut is telling them.

I have been lucky to work with some great people in my career. What I remember most are the conversations — the brainstorming, the collaboration, the back-and-forth. Mentors who seemed to want to understand my perspective before they offered any advice, or bosses who would ask questions rather than try to fix my problems for me.

How does this show up for you?

Think about the people you’ve worked with — who was a good listener? Or seemed to want to understand your perspective? Or made you feel more confident?

Advice is just one tool in our communication toolkit (one that, I would argue, we should use sparingly). Knowing what we now know about the toxic side of advice, we should treat advice less like a gift and more like a hazardous material — used only when necessary, and even then, used with caution.

This article was adapted from the talk, “Stop Giving Women Advice” — learn more at sarahglova.com.

This article was also published on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/toxic-side-advice-sarah-glova