Close

Communications.Management.Marketing

Truth Is Just Perception

The Secret To Being Well-liked By Your Peers, Employees And Bosses

Feed their ego.

The Harvard Business Review’s blog mentions several studies highlighting that there is no more powerful approach in the professional world than asking for advice.

I will elaborate on two positive effects among those pointed out by The Harvard Business Review:

  • Asking for advice will lead your advisors to like you more. Indeed, as written by British author Arthur Helps, “We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.” Asking for advice means implicitly endorsing the authority of your advisor. This is good for their ego and hence for their appreciation of you.
  • Asking for advice forces your advisor to see things from your perspective. They will thus develop a sense of empathy toward you, which will help build bridges between your respective views.

I will add a third benefit that is not mentioned by The Harvard Business Review: Asking for advice is one of the best ways to build trust between two individuals, one of whom is symbolically at the mercy of the other.

At the end of the day, as shown in the graph below, asking for advice makes you appear more warm, humble, and cooperative.

HBR

Obviously, one has to get their ego out of the way in order to ask for advice.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Go up

Logo created by HaGE via Crowdspring.com

Carousel pic credits : I Timmy, jbuhler, Jacynthroode, ktsimage, lastbeats, nu_andrei, United States Library of Congress.

Icon credits : Entypo