Carole Robin: preference

Transcript context

…But just give me the answer. Does this apply to friendships also? I know often people come to you as a friend, I need some advice on this. Does this apply as well? Often try not to give advice, or is it a different dynamic there? Well, some of the same power differential can happen. I think chapter four in the book is about two guys who were good friends and one of them is always trying to give advice to the other one. First of all, it can be annoying if you didn't ask for it. So I certainly wouldn't give advice unless somebody asked for it, and I might not immediately jump to the advice, I might want to explore. What have you already thought about? How have you already approached it? Where are you stuck? I might ask more questions before I immediately go into advice because by the way, nine times out of 10, you end up giving advice on something that's not really what the person was worried about or wondering about. So first go to inquiry. You can always come back to advice. I find that every time I try to resist or I make myself resist giving advice and instead ask more questions, every single time, I realized, okay, I had no idea what they were actually looking for or what was going on, but it's hard to do. I'm just like, here, I just want to tell you, here's the thing.…

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