Agree. The advice I’ve heard for avoiding this is, instead of saying “try X”, ask “what have you already tried” and then ideally ask some follow-up questions to further probe why exactly the things they’ve tried haven’t worked yet. You might then be able to offer advice that’s a better fit, and even if it turns out that they actually haven’t tried the thing, it’ll likely still be better received because you made an effort to actually understand their problem first. (I’ve sometimes used the heuristic, “don’t propose any solutions until you could explain to a third party why this person hasn’t been able to solve their problem yet”.)
It’s funny. I’ve had friends make confident statements that I was missing something quite stupid, with a smirk in their voice, and it felt good because they were right. A friend pointing out something I was missing felt good and safe, and necessary, because no one can catch everything and everyone has blind spots, especially when they’re upset.
So while “have you tried...?” or “what do you think about...?” are marginal improvements over “you should...”, they’re not getting at what I really want, which is highly skilled people who have my back.
Agree. The advice I’ve heard for avoiding this is, instead of saying “try X”, ask “what have you already tried” and then ideally ask some follow-up questions to further probe why exactly the things they’ve tried haven’t worked yet. You might then be able to offer advice that’s a better fit, and even if it turns out that they actually haven’t tried the thing, it’ll likely still be better received because you made an effort to actually understand their problem first. (I’ve sometimes used the heuristic, “don’t propose any solutions until you could explain to a third party why this person hasn’t been able to solve their problem yet”.)
It’s funny. I’ve had friends make confident statements that I was missing something quite stupid, with a smirk in their voice, and it felt good because they were right. A friend pointing out something I was missing felt good and safe, and necessary, because no one can catch everything and everyone has blind spots, especially when they’re upset.
So while “have you tried...?” or “what do you think about...?” are marginal improvements over “you should...”, they’re not getting at what I really want, which is highly skilled people who have my back.