Guidance and advice..... - an advisory!?

In my position as a colleague, as a friend, an old classmate, an important member of a senior team at office, a member of a family, as Head of a business entity with several reportees, both direct and indirect, am asked to and expected rightly to provide guidance, advice and even mentor and coach people. For me this is both a challenge and an opportunity but something I have always enjoyed doing. The reasons are simple : there is a need to build trust, there is a need to speak with confidence and conviction, there is a need on my part to walk the talk, there is need for me to prepare and also articulate in a way the other person sees merit in it, and it takes a lot of influencing, and most importantly it takes a lot of courage to offer advice and guidance. Here, the rule of 3X15 applies……….. it is my sense that each one of us have at least between 10 to 15 people seeking our active guidance and another 10 to 15 people seeking our advice at various times but not continually. These are colleagues, subordinates, relatives, close friends etc etc. Similarly we may seek active advice and guidance from 5 to 6 people regularly and another 8 to 10 people at various intervals for specific issues. So you have the first 15, the second 15 and the third 15…… Am sure many of you have had similar experiences as above. I have found in my experience that among the many who seek your advice, about a third of them follow it in toto ; another third generally follow it in spirit but by adding their own insights and improving it further and sometimes very impressively and then there is the last third of the people who will simply ignore it. Of this last group half of them ignore the advice only sometimes and follow it at other times when it is good or well sold. The bottom line from all the above is that there are about 5 to 6 people in anyone’s life who seek your advice several times or receive it during discussions and no matter how good the advice, will always choose to ignore it (can see the image of your spouse flashing in front of your eyes for many of you :-) ). These 5 or 6 are ones to watch out for… they leave you feeling wondering why they even came to you in the first place and why they would waste your time and take away precious time you could have spent with the others who value your advice much more. But here’s the catch…… many of these people end up getting into trouble as a result of not following good advice and put you in difficulty or in embarrassing situations and leave you to handle the crisis or even ask you to suggest or “advise” them to come of out it or bear the burden in some way. This is what frustrates you deeply and leaves you both angry and resentful. But that’s life I guess for a guide and an advisor. Face it………….. and try and stay out of such people or at least recognize them quickly and be wary. At some point, you may simply choose to offer no advice to such people and let them do things their own way. Nothing wrong in that, in my view. Your time is better spent and there are people out there waiting to be helped. And think of the 25-30 people who value your advice and make you feel valuable…….. live for them…. Forget and forgive the remainder…….