Why Advice-Giving Often Fails

Years ago, when someone brings me a difficult situation, my first instinct used to be to say what I would do. I had to train myself out of it.

My view wasn't worthless. But I noticed something: the advice rarely moved anything. The person would nod, often thank me, then go away and do exactly what they were already doing.

It took me a while to understand why.

By the time most people ask for advice, they already know what they need to do. The information is there. What's keeping them stuck is underneath it. A fear they haven't named. A belief that's been running quietly for years. An old story about what they're allowed to want. Advice adds more information to a system that already has enough. It doesn't reach the thing that's actually holding them in place.

And when the opinions start coming from multiple directions, which they usually do, something else happens. More noise and the decision gets harder. Conflicting perspectives from people who all mean well don't cancel each other out. They compound. More input into a system that's already overloaded doesn't create clarity, it only adds weight.

There's a simpler reason too. The person giving advice always speaks through their own lens. However close you are to someone, you're seeing fragments. They're living the whole. Your advice, however well-intentioned, is built on an incomplete picture of their situation, their constraints, their history, their values. It may be good advice in general, but may not be right for them in that particular moment.

I meet so many business owners who has gathered input from consultants, investors, and peers and still can't move. They're not short on intelligence. The advice itself wasn't bad. No amount of external input resolves an internal block. The decision stays stuck until something shifts from the inside, until the fear or the belief or the resistance gets seen clearly and worked through.

Coaching works differently.

In a coaching conversation, the insight belongs to the person I'm working with. I'm not telling them what I'd do. I'm asking questions that help them see their own situation more clearly, what they actually want, what's actually in the way, what they already know but haven't let themselves say out loud.

When you arrive at an insight yourself, you act on it. Because you own it.

If you're surrounded by good advice and still not moving, it's worth asking: what is the advice not reaching?

If that question landed, book a discovery call or send a message.