38 Getting help and advice
In a previous blog I wrote about how inappropriate giving unsolicited life advice is.
I want to look at another aspect of advice in this blog. The times when we want and need advice. In particular, expert advice in an area we don’t know about, or a second opinion in our own area. Our greatest resource besides ourselves is other people. Getting help along the way in work and in life is part of being human and can be anything from useful to essential. Additionally, one of the greatest pleasures in life is finding out that other people are willing to, and can, help us.
People can only offer you effective help and advice if you are clear about what you want or need. That means the clearer you are about your vision/goals/plans, the more specific you can be in asking for help you want and the more relevant will be the help or advice offered.
The thing to remember is that no one person has all the answers. Look at medical consultants – they are supposed to be the supreme experts in their own area, yet they routinely consult with each other to check out their own ideas and conclusions. This is because most of the tricky decisions in every area of life boil down to judgement calls and having other perspectives balances your judgement. In business, in work, in our personal life, we all make judgement calls every day. And here’s the point about your life choices. They should be your judgement call, you should get as much input and other perspectives as you need to be comfortable making your own decisions.
I am good at finding experts and asking for help, in my first year of business I got fantastic time and advice from many experts. All of whom had relevant real world experience. Each expert was sure of themselves, they had proof in their own experience that what they were advising works. Some experts advised similar solutions and some very different, to the same problems. It is exactly the same in a job hunt, the advice you get from various experts and professionals will range widely and often be contradictory. There is nothing wrong with this, and all advice should be listened to and appreciated. What will actually work for you can’t be predicted, much less guaranteed so you need to make the judgement calls. Make the best choices for you, count a victory and move forward.