SECTION 7. Advising Others

Once you get a job, and probably long before, your status in the community will quietly shift: you'll no longer be the disoriented student at the bottom of the totem pole, and others will be coming to you for advice. That's particularly true if you've been building a network, organizing professional activities, and projecting a sense of purpose in your career. Perhaps you are not yet anyone's official dissertation advisor, but you are an advisor in an informal sense, with a chance to do good and a risk of doing harm. You need to see the situation coming, because being in a position to give advice can evoke strange reactions. If you have any latent tendencies to be an empire-builder, power freak, meddler, or know-it-all, now is when they will come out. It will take a little time before you get comfortable with the role, so in the meantime here are some concepts and rules.
* Figure out whether you are being asked for advice at all. Often people who have troubling situations just want to talk about them, either to sort out the situation emotionally or just to rant. Maybe you're just supposed to sit there and say nothing, which if you're like me will be good for you. It is very common to hallucinate that you are being asked for advice when you are not. Giving unwanted advice is a serious and widespread character defect. It is a good practice, therefore, to ask "do you want advice?" or "are you asking for advice?". Don't make it sound like you are bursting with advice that you can't wait to spill out. If the answer is "no", shrug and say "okay" and be done with it. Regardless of the answer, the situation will be clarified in both of your minds.
* Decide in advance whether you are qualified to give people advice about personal matters, or just about professional matters. Most people are terrible at the former. In either case, be clear in your own mind whether the matter is personal, professional, or a combination of both. People's situations usually have both aspects, especially early in their careers before they have themselves all established and compartmentalized, so you may have to say things like, "well, that's a personal aspect of the situation that I can't really help with".
* Understand the different structural situations that might cause the person to need advice. The hardest and most important case is when the person is just entering into a new institutional setting (such as the early years of graduate school) or else making the transition to a very different location within the institution (such as when starting their first faculty job). In that case, what's really needed is a general orientation to an unfamiliar landscape. You're inside and they're outside, and they're still clueless. Your major obstacle is that you've forgotten what that clueless feeling is like. Try to remember, though, because your job is to provide the person with a way of looking at things. Try to explain, concisely and in plain language, the logic of the world they're entering, so they can see what's going on around them. Provide a sense of proportion. "Is this situation normal?" "Can this be done?" Another possibility, very different and much easier, is that the person understands the unwritten rules of the institution just fine, and needs advice simply because you know particular facts. Perhaps you are acquainted with particular individuals and can provide advice about dealing with them. Explain what those individuals care about, what concerns they are likely to have, what misperceptions are liable to set them off, what agendas they have going on, and so forth. Yet another possibility is that you're being asked for guidance, either step-by-step instructions or an intuitive sense of proportion, on a specific process that you have been through, such as organizing a workshop. Figure out what kind of advice you are being asked for, confirm your understanding with the person, and then advise accordingly.
* Realize the limits of your expertise. Learn to say "I don't know" without feeling insecure. Practice phrases like "I'm at the edge of my expertise here, and you might want to talk to X or Y who has done more of this than I have". Learn to detect the feeling inside yourself when you cease knowing what you're talking about and start making things up instead. Notice how good it feels to know what you're talking about, and how good it feels to refrain from making things up.
* Clarify the situation. Make sure you've got the facts before you start issuing directions. The person you're advising may not even be clear as to the nature of the situation, and you may well find yourself turning up important facts that completely change the picture. This is particularly true when you're being asked to help impose order on chaos, as for example when the question is "What should I do with my life?". Understand whether the crucial facts are about the person asking for help, about some public situation such as a bureaucratic process, about third parties, about technical machinery, or whatever. Some situations are clearer than others, and when the situation is unclear you should settle down to extended elicitation of facts. Decide whether you should be asking directive questions (that is, questions that presuppose that you know what the real issue is) or semi-directive questions (that is, questions that are fairly vague and are really aimed at getting the person talking so that you can listen to their language and the way they're talking). An example of a directive question is, "have you registered for the course?"; an example of a semi-directive question is, "how did you decide to take the course?". Sometimes it's useful for the person to wander around exploring different aspects of the situation, and sometimes it's not. It's up to you to discern the difference.
* Find out what's behind the question. People often don't know how to ask their question, or because they don't understand their situation they are asking the wrong question. If a graduate student asks you how to start a journal, for example, you can probably guess that the question is wrong. Even when the question is right, you usually want to know what motivated it. So unless the question is really clear-cut, don't launch into an answer until you have elicited the broader background that motivated it. Maybe your advice will be to ask other questions.
* If the person is having trouble with a decision, find out if they know what they want to do with their life. I've mentioned that "what should I do with my life?" involves imposing order on chaos, and you can hardly believe how true this is until you start talking to people about it. Some people tolerate the chaos perfectly well, and they are happy pursuing what interests them from day to day or year to year. Other people, however, live in a constant state of distress because of it, and those people need help. When people can't decide what to write their term papers about, for example, I find that they are actually uncertain what their life is about. Just ask them: "what do you want to do with your life?". They will probably shrug and giggle. They have no idea. I believe that someone who is living in that kind of chaos is incapable of learning, and so I regularly turn conversations about term paper topics into conversations about career plans. I don't require anyone to make any irreversible commitments, but I do urge them to come up with a tentative plan that they can explore through their term paper. The same principle applies to many other decisions. Now, some people don't want a plan for their lives, and insist on living in state of permanent chaos. That's their right, but it's also my right to tell those people nicely that I don't know how to help them.
* Cultivate your powers of finding things interesting. If you are like most of us, you will need to learn how to distinguish your own interests from other people's. If someone is looking for direction, the worst thing you can do is to foist your own direction on them. Most such foisting is unconscious: you may not intend to manipulate anyone into following your own path rather than theirs, but if you have sewn yourself into the narrow world of your dissertation then you may not even recognize that other paths exists. Get used to the fact that some people want to make money, and that other people are interested in research methodologies that are quite different from your own, and that still other people are much more interested in theory than you are, or much less. Most people couldn't care less about the research literatures that fascinate you, and that's okay. In advising others, you have an opportunity to expand yourself by searching out and articulating a vision of greatness for someone else's life. You have to start by believing that everyone, including the person you are advising, is capable of making a tremendous contribution to the world. That tremendous contribution is inside them somewhere, it's trying to get out, and if you are advising someone who is looking for direction then your job is to identify that tremendous contribution and get excited about it. Figure out what the person is interested in. Elicit bits and pieces of their interests, then offer various alternative directions that they could pursue, and ask them which alternatives strike a chord. The process is like tuning a radio: you are going to fiddle with the dial until the person's tremendous-contribution-in-the-making comes through loud and clear. Share that person's excitement, and enthusiastically preach the importance of their vision. Their path won't always be easy, and your articulate and persuasive confidence will help keep them on track. In particular, you can help them by acting as a translator between their world and the professional world that they want to join, explaining their vision to them in professional-sounding language. Sell them their own lives. And whatever you do, don't go around discouraging people, or telling them that they can't cut it. Your question should be "what does this person down-deep care about?", because that is where their greatest contribution will lie. It's not your job to go around trashing people's dreams, because you're not that smart.
* Don't try to tell people what to work on. If someone is looking for help identifying a research topic, your advice should remain on the level of process, not substance. Research topics are extremely personal, and a topic that interests you is not likely to interest anyone else. You can mirror back someone's topic in an interesting way, but you can't devise a topic from scratch. What you can do, however, is to offer a few potential topics as probes into the person's interests. You can say, "okay, just to help me get a sense of your interests, let me just make up a few topics off the top of my head, and you can tell me which ones are more and less interesting, and why". Note that you are deliberately downplaying your own investment in the topics you suggest.
* Try not to offer evaluations. Only rarely will anyone ever ask you, "how good is my writing" or "how good is my research". If you think you are being asked for an objective evaluation like this, stop and think. Either you are really being asked, "should I change careers?", in which case you should explore that question in the thorough way that it deserves, or you are being asked, "what are some specific ways in which I can improve my writing/research?", in which case you can treat the question very narrowly and positively without offering any kind of overall assessment.
* It's not about you. In offering advice to someone else, you may be tempted to use your own experiences as examples. Don't. Stories about your life will not communicate anything useful. If you have learned any lessons from your experiences, then that's great; you can explore how (and whether) those lessons apply to the particulars of the other person's life. But leave your life out of it. This rule has only one exception. Often someone will be distressed because they're going through a crisis that lots of people go through. You can help them feel better by saying, "yeah, I know, I went through that; lots of people do", and leaving it at that -- just a few words.
* Don't be a jerk. Many people use "frank advice" as an excuse to be obnoxious. Have a caring purpose. This means saying things because they are going to help someone get a clear understanding and their own direction, not just because they are true.
* Understand which words belong to you and which belong to the person you're advising. For example, if you are serving as a bureaucratic authority (e.g., an instructor in a course) then it is your job to understand and adjudicate the meanings of the relevant bureaucratic words. On the other hand, if the person is telling you about their life, or about a world that you are not a part of, they will often introduce words that you do not control, and whose full meaning you can probably never know. I'm not just talking about five-syllable jargon words, but ordinary simple words that might or might not carry special connotations for particular people. Don't try to take control of such words. Don't presuppose that you know what they mean, and do not try to impose your own meaning upon them. Nothing kills communication faster. Instead, incorporate those words into questions aimed at eliciting a fuller picture of the situation. For example, if the person says, "I want a meaningful job", you have no idea what "meaningful" means to them. But you can ask a question like, "what would a meaningful job be like?", or "who comes to mind that has a job that's meaningful in the way you'd like?". This can get condescending if you do it wrong, but once you have the concept of not legislating what "meaningful" means you'll figure it out.
* Be a mirror. Make clear what you know and don't know. Check your understanding by saying, "let me check my understanding by trying to explain that back to you in my own words", doing so, and saying, "is that right?". This is called active listening, and it accomplishes many things, such as preventing you from saying dumb things, eliciting any further information you might need, and tactfully showing the person how well they are expressing themselves. Own your perceptions and feelings by saying things like, "my sense is ..." and "I perceive you as being unclear on ...". Emphasize the evidentiary basis of your comments by saying things like, "I hardly know you, so what I'm saying is based only on what you've told me and on the impressions I'm getting here". It may sound like a platitude, but it's not. It makes clear that you do not have a magical ability to read anybody's mind, and that you understand your limitations.
* Know your feelings. Let's say that you're listening to someone's problems and you start feeling angry (or sad, or confused, or itching to get out of there). Although I don't want you to engage in psychoanalysis or start talking about your feelings in a way that would take the focus off the person you're advising, it will be useful if you can notice the feeling and start to identify it. The first step, which is harder than it sounds, is actually becoming aware of the feeling. If you're feeling angry and you start yelling, then that's a good sign that you're acting on the feeling rather than consciously observing it. Once you become consciously aware of the feeling, try to locate where in your body you are feeling it. Is it in your stomach? Your jaw? Take a moment to feel the feeling, and ask yourself whether the feeling is familiar. Is this something you commonly feel? Once you get a fix on the feeling, you can ask yourself some questions about it:
(1) Whose feeling is it? When giving someone advice, it's common to feel that person's feelings instead of your own. Either you are feeling a natural empathy, or else the person is unconsciously trying to shift their own feelings onto you. This is especially common with feelings of confusion, and if you become confused while giving someone advice then you should definitely stop and consider whether it's your own confusion or theirs.
(2) Is the feeling rational? That is, are you angry (sad, frightened, confused, etc) about the actual, real situation that's happening there in the room, or has something about that situation poked an emotional wound that you're carrying around from an unrelated situation? For example, if you are advising someone who is being oppressed, you might start to get angry (or whatever) because you're unconsciously calling up memories of your own unresolved experiences of being oppressed. Feelings from unrelated situations are rarely useful, and you should try to file them and return to the business at hand. Deal with them later on your own time.
(3) Who is the feeling directed toward? You might be angry (or sad, frightened, confused, etc) toward the person you are advising, for example because the person's actual agenda is not to get advice but to manipulate you. If so then you'll have to decide whether to proceed, and how. Or you might be angry (etc) toward some third party that the person is telling you about. In that case you need to file that feeling for later and proceed in a rational, analytical way, since your job is to be useful, not angry.
Once you have identified the feeling in these ways, you will have to decide what to do about it. The point, again, is not to launch into extended psychological discussions. You probably don't have the training for that. You could simply explain that you're having the feeling and what you think is causing it. You can even say that you're mentioning this precisely because you want to stick to rational analysis of the situation. Or you can simply use the feeling as a source of data as you decide how to proceed with the conversation. In any case, the simple act of identifying the feeling will make you less likely to act irrationally on it.
* Take a different approach when advising someone who is distraught. A person who is acutely emotionally upset (failed an exam, might get thrown out of school, whatever) is temporarily incapable of rational thought. That's not their fault, and you shouldn't blame them for it. To the contrary, you should accommodate their situation by not doing or saying anything that demands rational thought from them. Don't try to explain things or solve problems. Don't say "I know how you feel". Just listen for a while. See if you can make yourself into a container where they can put all the junk until they are in a position to process it. When the time comes to put the pieces back together, have them walk through the facts of the situation. Simply saying the facts, without any attempt to evaluate or change them, is the first step to reestablishing rational thought. Concreteness is important. Watch for any tendencies to blur the facts with hazy language, or to speak in abstractions. Watch for attempts to conflate logically unrelated situations into a big ball of distressing emotions. These are defenses against dealing with the reality. Also watch for attempts to conflate simple statements of the facts with extra, additional judgements about what those facts imply -- such conflations are a very important sign that the person is not dealing with reality yet. Of course, maybe it's not time to deal with reality yet, and that's not for you to decide. But if it's time to reason about the situation, then you can do a service by keeping things on a rational track. Prioritize. Ask questions that will let you distinguish between issues that really need to be decided right now and issues that can wait. Don't get sidetracked worrying about facts that have no bearing on the issues that need to be decided first. Once you've reestablished the rhythms of rational discussion, you can resume applying the rest of the strategies I've presented here.
* Be clear whether the situation calls for you to offer specific instructions. Usually it does not. Everyone has their own path, and you probably can't have enough information to know what course is actually best, given the full context of their life. It is important to understand this, because otherwise you are likely to get yourself too committed to the solution that happens to occur to you. Some people just want reactions, perspectives, options, issues, and reassurance that they're not crazy. They can figure the rest out for themselves. Other people want detailed instructions. You'll have to figure out who wants what.
* If you start to suspect a hidden agenda, stop, and don't continue until you have clarified the situation. Some people want advice so they can blame you if your advice, which they plan on following in only the most narrow way, doesn't work. Some people pretend to want advice so they can resist it. Some people are really there to get you to say that they are right and someone else is wrong. Most people with agendas will never admit them, and it probably won't do any good for you to accuse them of anything. But if you determine that your time is not being used in good faith, simply say that you don't know how to help them. And let it go.
* If you find yourself pressuring, manipulating, or arguing, then something has gone wrong. You can state your views, but let go of your desire to control anyone. Other people are responsible for their actions and have to make their own decisions. You can give them factual information and state your own opinions (e.g., by saying "my opinion is ..."), but trying to control them won't help and will probably cloud their thinking. If their decision affects you then you are not giving advice but negotiating, which is extremely different. If you are actually negotiating then this must be made clear all around. Recruiting someone to join your research group or department, for example, is a kind of negotiation. Likewise, you should realize if you have any conflicts of interest, for example when the topic is whether the student ought to be working for you. Sometimes the conflicts are not obvious, and in that case you should obviously disclose them. But if your interests really aren't affected, then realize that and let go of needing to fix the outcome.
* Giving advice is often iterative. You'll offer advice, but your advice will cause other facts and issues to surface, such as the reasons why your advice won't work. That's fine. Just start another round of clarifying the situation. And once you understand that advice is iterative, you'll be more likely to frame your advice in a conditional way, like "okay, how about if you ..., would that work?".
* Talk in usefully medium-sized units. Don't give long speeches. If your advisee is filling up with comments or resistance as you talk then your talking isn't doing any good anyway. If they seem to want to talk, stop talking, because they aren't listening. By the same token, if your head fills up with things to say while the person is talking, make notes. Then just say the one that's most important. It's okay to say "hang on, I need to keep notes to keep track of this". If you can't get around to saying everything that you want to say, you can always follow up with an e-mail letter if necessary. Or you can just forget it. You don't need to present a complete, seamless picture. Just say enough to get the person thinking on their own again, then stop. You can check understanding with something like "is this making any sense?". This is better than "do you understand?", since it puts the blame on you and doesn't presuppose that you are making sense. An even better question is, "do I understand?", since that's a more common problem anyway.
* Get to the point. Don't start into a philosophical speech whose connection to the issue at hand is not going to be revealed until it's almost done. If you do have to explain an abstract concept, say so first: "I guess to explain this I have to introduce an abstract concept, okay?". The person you're advising is focused on their problem, and they don't have the attention span for anything whose relation to the problem has not been made clear. Concisely explain your thought processes.
* Don't ask questions unless you want to know the answers. Don't ask "quiz questions" whose answers you already know. Making someone read your mind teaches all the wrong lessons.
* Practice explaining things. When you see someone pursuing their career in an admirably effective way, stop and figure out what they are doing. The concepts in "Networking on the Network" should help. Then pretend that you are explaining the admirably effective strategies you are seeing. Rehearse the actual words that you would use to make these strategies comprehensible to someone who still feels clueless. If you do this consistently then your rehearsals will come back to you automatically some day when it's your turn to give advice. You will also start to notice analogies and patterns among the various admirable strategies you observe, and this will help you to develop your own concepts.
* If you find yourself giving the same advice over and over, write it down. This happens a lot when you're dealing with lots of people who are all in basically the same situation, such as students in your class. Most of them will never ask you for advice, even though most of them need it. By writing your advice down, you save everyone's time and spread the benefits of your wisdom to more people. Then keep adding to your emerging how-to every time a new issue comes up. That's where this article came from. Not only that: every time I see a student feeling bad or getting into trouble, I ask myself whether the necessary advice is in this article, and if it isn't I add another sentence, paragraph, or section.

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