Leadership Development Advice

“Don’t trust all my advice.” — Unknown

Summary: To foster leadership development, it’s better to encourage reflection than to give advice.

We may have a tendency to cling to advice about what might be thought, said, or done to address problems, make the best decisions, or manage situations.

Some of us are convinced that there is a specific solution to every human problem, and are keen to offer good advice and share the true answers that they feel blessed to possess.

Some of us are inclined to think differently and tend to believe, with the American journalist, essayist, satirist and cultural critic Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956), that: “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”

Desiring to help

Facing the dilemmas that our interlocutors experience and that they bring up before us, we wish to help, and when we genuinely offer them clear and assertive answers (three bullets points are usually considered pleasant for the mind) or turnkey solutions (ours or Peter Drucker’s for example), our advice may sound like a statement, and be understood as such. We often notice that inquirers (and ourselves as well) feel better (whether they trust our expertise or Drucker’s). Certainty soothes. Heart rates decrease and a pleasant sense of calm and control is restored. Feeling relieved, the questioning that animated our conversational partners is no longer of interest to them, curiosity has dried up, the quest has stopped. They have come to a standstill: no more thinking for oneself is required.

When feeling stuck in front of a problem, the fantasy to find and adopt quick-fixes to ease our restlessness appears to be rather common; sometimes it expresses itself as longing for reassuring best-practices. We are eager for advice maybe as much as for sugar, and it could easily be mistaken for something else than just an opinion.

Not all our interlocutors absorb and act on the tips we give them though, and some of them even seem to ignore them persistently. They feel that they could have received better advice, that it wasn’t exactly the solution that they were looking for. It’s not what they had in mind. It is indeed not uncommon that advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t, as suggested by the novelist and poet Erica Jong. They are back at the starting point, looking for better advice, an advisor who will be willing to comply and tell them what they secretly wish to hear.

Opening up perspectives

When it comes to leadership development, let’s consider another path, and more specifically the advice of not to give too much advice.

Let us be inspired by Socrates and Dr. Watson: instead of providing more answers, let’s ask more questions to help others find their own answers, for which they can feel truly responsible.

Let’s listen carefully, without judgment and with kindness, to what others are uncovering in front of us, humbly and courageously sharing with us their struggles, trying to translate them into meaningful words, whether facing a problem, aspiring to get better at what they love doing or simply vaguely languishing.

If we have ever tried not to interrupt others and resist the urge to give advice when listening to someone’s issues, we know that this is not an easy task. It is indeed challenging to listen and to create a space of sufficient trust where others can feel empowered to openly explore their options, draw their own conclusions and make their own choices. We all enjoy giving advice, it easily boosts our ego, makes us feel important, knowledgeable, and maybe even wise. When we give advice, we feel that we do something.

In advising others, we also sometimes merely try to convince ourselves of something unconfessed, and that we’re currently struggling with ourselves.

Embracing negative capability

If we stop pitching our embellished personal success stories to others as if they were management toolkits (filled with prescriptions and cute motivational quotes from business school professors and Hollywood celebrities), but instead become better at courageously supporting others to welcome and tolerate mysteries, to learn at being in uncertainties and stressful situations without providing a ‘fight or flight’ routine reaction, to think through their own doubts, ambivalence (“Please provide me with the answer, but also let me be autonomous!”) and sometimes confusion, then we will truly help them find their own personal words and pragmatic solutions.
Embracing the dialectical tension between a sense of the unknown and one’s personal convictions without letting one inhibit the depth of the other, learning to respond rather than reacting to every “stimulus” one encounters, that’s what the poet John Keats may have meant when he first coined the term “negative capability” in a letter he wrote to his brothers in 1817. This idea, which centers on suspending judgment about something in order to learn more about it, remains as essential today as it was back then.

“I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think.”– Attributed to Socrates (circa 470 BC)

Asking questions

Through our questions, we gently guide our interlocutors towards a solution that neither them, nor us know about yet. Questions that begin with “Why?”, “What?” and “How?” are often valuable; they encourage others to think and express themselves, to look for a solution that could be meaningful and useful for them here and now.

“I believe that we cannot live better than in seeking to become better, nor more agreeably than having a clear conscience.” ― Attributed to Socrates (circa 470 BC)

We investigate together the situation as partners, private investigators working on the same case. Good ideas often come from conversations. As we share viewpoints, we learn from each other. We also allow some space for controversial conversations and constructive conflict: “I’ll tell you what I think, and you’ll tell me what you disagree with.”

“I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me, I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance.” ―Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

Looking at the big picture

In many circumstances, the theories, tools, factsheets and prescriptions that help to answer instrumental questions may suffice, but if we aspire to truly develop our leadership and become less entrapped in unquestioned and partially conscious theories, let’s dare to go beyond addressing and solving solely practical problems.

At work, whether we are aware of it or not, underlying management ideologies guide our behavior on a day-to-day basis. The most enduring one often appears to still be scientific management, which presupposes that a manager’s job is to increase efficiency in a production system, sifting through data to counter the most common source of error: people (to quote from memory the Professor Gianpiero Petriglieri in a recent HBR article).

Are our theories and operating models still relevant for the current times and for the evolution of work? Shouldn’t we also evolve in the way we lead?

If we aspire to improve our abilities to see more deeply and accurately into ourselves and our world, let’s look at the premises and assumptions that underlie our behavior, and not solely through them (suggested by Kegan, 2016, p. 77).

Life moves pretty fast. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile for organizations’ sustainability to stop and look around once in a while (as advised by Ferris Bueller in 1986) and, at least from time to time, to stir things up and trouble the waters a bit?

“Man muss invertiren, immer invertiren” (“One must invert, always invert”), as goes the expression credited by The Internet to the 19th century German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, which means opening up to new perspectives by reversing our assumptions, turning them upside down, and asking “What if the opposite were true?”

When reality leads us to ask questions because of its unusual, unexpected and difficult to explain nature, we may experience the ancient Greeks Thauma, which is a sense of wonder and enchantment, mixed with anguish; we start to look at the world through different eyes, and thus changing the way we relate to one another. Hopefully, we will even contribute to build a better human community.

Let’s dare to ask: “Does what you choose to believe serve you? If yes, then how? If no, then why? In doing so, we may also help our interlocutors gain a bigger perspective on what’s going on in their organization and tame the impact of groupthink (when the desire for harmony or conformity in the organization produces a tendency among its members to agree at all costs, and may result in a dysfunctional decision-making outcome).

Would it be too audacious and bold, for example, to consider replacing the age-old watchword of efficiency with something else (development?) in our approach to organizational design? Wouldn’t this free up organizations from standardized “small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate” (to quote the words of Tocqueville, 1840) and encourage more personal initiative?

What about questioning what might be the benefit of becoming less obsessed with individual performance and to embrace in a more systemic way team effort and interdependence? Even Arnold Schwarzenegger said it: “There is no such thing as a self-made man.” (“Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” ABC’s late-night talk show, April 26th, 2021)

As leaders, shouldn’t we focus less on being “conductors on the podium” and more on fostering leadership within teams themselves?

“What kind of questions do you usually ask yourself during the week? What do they tell you about yourself?”

Let’s have the courage to explore questions that have no absolute answers: “Does your leadership matter?”, “What impact do you wish to have?”, “What are you doing to have impact?”

“What is worth fighting for?”… Or maybe better: “What is worth living for?”

“How do you balance your desire for results with your values”, knowing that the cost of your choices can be high?

At the present time, how can we care for one another in remote and flexible environments? How do we deal with our stressors and help others build resilience in an unpredictable and unstable world, as individuals and as teams? How will we support creativity and innovation in the years ahead, beyond the Steam Power Revolution and the “Age of Television Addiction” (Huxley, 1959, p. 112), and through the Information Age?

Are we even asking the right questions?…

Being bold

“What are the important questions you would like us to address together?”

Sometimes, understanding our own questions is half the answer.

Of course, each of us could take that path alone, but we guess that even introverted mountaineers and individualistic climbers in cycling know that it can be helpful not to travel by themselves if they wish to reach a summit. Even a small team of two is energizing and offers support.

When we truly care for others, when we are present for and with others, we accompany them in their exploration of new landscapes, where curiosity is embraced, contradictions surfaced and complexity recognized. We help them reveal their character and become freer.

It is not a matter of simply asking questions without personal interaction. It is an “exchange of proximity”, which occurs in an empathetic relationship and which is built progressively in search of meaning.

In the end, perhaps more important than getting definitive answers, it is the quality of the human relationship that is created that matters. It allows our interlocutors to experience authenticity as something dynamic, to accept more realistically who they are, and to develop and cultivate sincerity with respect and care in the way they relate to others in life in general. Their relationships become more rewarding and they feel more in harmony with their environment and the world. Hopefully, they expand beyond selfishness, paying more attention to how they present themselves to others, and strive to be the persons they claim to be. Eventually, they will embody their own unique leadership more consciously and courageously.

“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.” ― Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

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References and inspirations (we learn from and with others)
Conan Doyle, A. (1902). The Hound of the Baskervilles. London: George Newnes Ltd.
Grant, A. (June 4th, 2016). Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice. Retrieved from: https://www-nytimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/unless-youre-oprah-be-yourself-is-terrible-advice.amp.html
Huxley, A. (1959). Brave New World Revisited. London: Chatto & Windus Ltd.
Jong, E. (1977; 2006). How to Save Your Own Life. New York: Penguin.
Keats, J. (1899). The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
Kegan, R., Lahey, l. L. (2016). An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization.Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.
Mencken, H. L. (1920). Prejudices: Second Series (Chapter 4: The Divine Afflatus, page 155). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Petriglieri, G. (June 18th, 2020). Are Our Management Theories Outdated? Retrieved from: https://hbr-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/hbr.org/amp/2020/06/are-our-management-theories-outdated
Sen, N. B. (1967). Wit and wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; being a treasury of thousands of glorious, inspiring and imperishable thoughts, views and observations of the three great Greek philosophers, classified under about four hundred subjects for comparative study. New Delhi: New Book Society of India. NB: Print item unavailable.
Tocqueville, A. de (1840; 2000). Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tonelli, G. (April 28th, 2021). Our Most Effective Weapon Is Imagination. Retrieved from: https://nautil.us/issue/99/universality/our-most-effective-weapon-is-imagination