Your Advice Buffet — How to Partake Without Making Yourself (or Your Company) Sick
Every day we are bombarded with others’ opinions and commentary in various forms: social media; conventional wisdom; blog posts; on-the-job feedback; formal or informal consultants or advisors; your or another team’s recommendations — the list is endless. Some of this advice is potentially game-changing for my career or my company. I am ever grateful. Some is well-intentioned but misses the mark in a specific instance for various reasons. For this I am also grateful. Some of it is conflicting and chock-full of unconscious — and potentially harmful — bias. Disappointed. Irritated. But still grateful.
Deciding what advice to ingest and digest is enough to make anyone ill. I’m trying a different approach that seems to be working well for me. Feel free to use it if you find it helpful — but I’m not advising you to do so….
Eating From Your Advice Buffet
Think of all the advice you get like different foods spread out on a buffet. Some foods look delicious. Then they taste like sh*t. Other foods look delicious and taste just as good, but they’re actually pretty bad for you. Still there’s other food you know is good for you but unappetizing or hard to swallow. And yes, there are foods you like that are actually good for you.
Eating too much from the buffet will make you bloated and unable to move. Eating too little will leave you hungry. How do you eat the right foods from the buffet to keep you healthy? With that analogy on the table — pun intended! — here are three things to keep in mind:
What to eat is your choice. Over the course of your life and your career you’ll get a lot of people giving you feedback and advice. Who prepared it? What are their specialities or perspectives? It’s up to you whether or not to believe any or all of it, or if and how to incorporate it into your life or company’s operations in a way that feels authentic to you.
Pick the good stuff out from the rest — don’t throw it out with the bad. You may not like how it tastes, but some food can be good for you in some cases. That said, if you don’t see anything of value on the buffet staring you in the face, find another one. There are lots of buffets out there.
The menu is only the starting point. My foodie friends will kill me for saying this. Of course some bits of advice seemingly go better together. Others simply conflict and don’t make sense to combine. But your advice buffet is a starting point, just one group of suggestions — not the only options on the menu. Combine unorthodox foods, season things how you like, get that sauce on the side. Again, it’s your choice.
Everything in moderation. Is it fine to indulge in the sweetness of flattery occasionally? Of course it is. It’s also a good idea to incorporate things periodically that are less appetizing but you know will make you and your company stronger. Establish a healthy diet, whatever combination or balance works best for you.
And with that, bon appetit!
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Originally published at karenroterdavis.com on October 15, 2015.
