The main thing people fail to consider when giving advice is that advice isn’t what’s wanted.
I fully agree, this post was trying to get at what happens when people do want advice and thus may take bad advice.
Advice comes with no warranty. If some twit injures themselves doing what I told them to (wrongly) then that’s 100% on them.
I think in some cases this is generally a fair stance (though I think I would still like to prevent people from misapplying my advice if possible), but if you are in a position of power or influence over someone I’m not sure it applies (e.g. sports coaches telling all their players to work harder and not taking the time to make sure that some of them aren’t being pushed to overtraining by this advice).
Failing all of that, say “What choice would you make if I wasn’t here?” and then barring them saying something outlandish you just say “Then do that”. One way or another they’ll get better at thinking for themselves.
I fully agree, this post was trying to get at what happens when people do want advice and thus may take bad advice.
I think in some cases this is generally a fair stance (though I think I would still like to prevent people from misapplying my advice if possible), but if you are in a position of power or influence over someone I’m not sure it applies (e.g. sports coaches telling all their players to work harder and not taking the time to make sure that some of them aren’t being pushed to overtraining by this advice).
That sounds like a very reasonable approach.
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