Self-Referential Advice

I continue to explore the overlapping space of leadership, education, and consulting. In the past, I’ve examined leadership responsibility beyond logistical management, focusing instead on shaping culture and modeling desired behaviors.

One area I’m exploring right now is knowledge sharing. I recently came across writing about how advice is often autobiographical. My takeaway was that many leaders and experts shape advice around their own experiences and the lessons they drew from them. Given the importance of experiential learning, this makes sense: what we learn is informed by what we’ve lived.

Over time, these experiences get codified and passed on. Part of that involves abstraction, as an attempt to make lessons applicable in broader contexts. But doing so requires awareness of the many factors that contributed to success or failure in the original situation. Naturally, there will always be blind spots.

Then comes a second phase of adaptation in the opposite direction: reintroducing specificity so the advice fits the context where it’s being applied. This, too, requires a high level of awareness of the circumstances that support or undermine an endeavor.

Key takeaways for me:

Advice moves through multiple phases of translation and adaptation from an original context, to generalized applicability, to renewed specificity in a new context. Each translation can introduce imprecision, because we’re prone to overlook factors.

Sharing advice as a leader, educator, consultant, or trusted partner requires humility and an awareness of those potential gaps. A common shorthand is “your mileage may vary.” This feels especially important when advice comes from a place of privilege and is offered to people who may not share the same advantages — though I’m not well positioned to fully explore all the implications myself.

All advice must be living. As circumstances change, so do requirements, and with it the landscape of influencing variables. Interpreting and integrating new information to make and keep advice relevant is part of the practice.

We can’t know where the critical information that makes advice suitable and applicable will come from. That’s why we conduct research and seek input beyond the boardroom. Maintaining that openness is vital. And we cannot be dismissive of such feedback.

This feels like a good place to end, especially as I recognize my own dismissal of parenting advice. It’s a reminder that this is, obviously, a never-ending learning process.