Summary: A Better Way to Ask for Advice by Adam Grant

• Briefly, seeking quality advice requires asking questions that prompt serious reflection.
• Learn Adam Grant’s tested techniques for soliciting far more beneficial guidance.

Recommendation

Albert Einstein was a genius, but he was an appalling teacher. When learning a new discipline, you might be tempted to seek out the advice of the most respected and accomplished experts in your field. But according to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, who draws from the latest behavioral science research into learning and career development, you shouldn’t ask an expert to teach you the fundamentals. Learn why studying under maestros might in fact hinder your learning, and discover how to optimize mentor-mentee relationships while exploring the career pathway that’s best for you.

Take-Aways

• Virtuosos tend to be worse at teaching beginners than less-specialized instructors.
• Seek advice from multiple mentors, as opposed to a single guide, on your career journey.
• Your mentors can reveal potential pathways, but you must chart your own course.

Summary

Virtuosos tend to be worse at teaching beginners than less-specialized instructors.

If you want to learn the basics of a new discipline, studying under the tutelage of an expert in the field might seem like the best approach. But research suggests that you’re likely better off learning the foundations of a subject from a less-specialized teacher: A study of more than 15,000 Northwestern University students from 2001 to 2008 found that, across all years and disciplines, students received poorer grades in subsequent classes if they took an introductory module with a tenured professor than if a lecturer with less-specialized knowledge taught the foundational course. As it turns out, mavens often fail to fully prepare students academically, because they themselves have progressed so far in their disciplines that they can hardly remember what it was like to be a beginner.

“It’s often said that those who can’t do, teach. It would be more accurate to say that those who can do, can’t teach the basics.”

Albert Einstein was a dreadful teacher. He was afflicted with “the curse of knowledge”; that is, the more one knows, the harder it is to relate to those who don’t know. He struggled to properly organize his thermodynamics lectures, because he had so many different ideas in his mind simultaneously that he found it difficult to stick to the basics. Experts often struggle to teach beginners, because when they achieve mastery, their knowledge becomes implicit, or tacit, not explicit. This means that experts have an intuitive understanding of their subject areas, often performing basic actions or thought processes automatically. Research shows that skilled golfers, for example, can’t explain their approach to golfing step-by-step, as they’re not consciously thinking about what they’re doing when they golf.

Seek advice from multiple mentors, as opposed to a single guide, on your career journey.

Don’t put all your faith in a single mentor or guide when learning something new. A study of lawyers hoping to make partner found that those who received guidance from a single supportive mentor reported feeling more dedicated and content than peers who lacked mentorship. However, when it came to climbing to the ranks of partner, lawyers with a single mentor didn’t fare as well as those with multiple mentors. Lawyers with two or three mentors were most successful in making partner.

“No one else knows your exact journey. But if you collect directions from multiple guides, they can sometimes combine to reveal routes you didn’t see.”

When you have access to the advice of a few different guides, each presents you with different possible pathways and perspectives to explore. Ask your mentors to retrace the steps they took to achieve mastery in their field. Compare the career pathways each took, drawing from their discrete experiences to map out a route that works best for you, rather than unquestioningly following any single mentor’s advice.

Your mentors can reveal potential pathways, but you must chart your own course.

You don’t need to know the exact career pathway you’ll take step-by-step. Your mentor can’t tell you the exact route to follow, either. Instead, think of the stories your mentors share about navigating their own career challenges as “pins” on your world map. Each pin reveals possible options to explore. These pins could be skills your mentors cultivated, advice they wish they had taken, or moments when they embraced change.

“The point of engaging guides isn’t to blindly follow their leads. It’s to chart possible paths to explore together. To do that, you have to make their implicit knowledge explicit. Instead of asking to pick their brain, you ask them to retrace their route.”

Remember, not everything that served your mentors on their career pathways will serve you on yours. Some of their pins may reveal only “a road that’s closed,” in that their experience is simply not applicable to you and your current situation. Your guides may have limitations, too, as the world has likely changed since they embarked on their career journey, and they may not be aware of “bridges that have only recently been built.” Don’t wait until you have an exact map to start taking action toward your goal, as you’ll never fully know where the path ahead will lead. Trust that even though you don’t know precisely where you’re going, you’re developing an inner compass that will help you gauge whether you’re headed down the right path.

About the Author

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist who focuses on how people lead more creative and generous lives and find meaning and motivation. He is the author of Originals, Give and Take and Think Again, as well as the host of the podcasts Re:Thinking and WorkLife.

Genres

self-help, psychology, business, communication, advice, leadership, relationships, education, personal development, skills

Review

When seeking advice, asking open-ended questions tends to yield more helpful responses than just asking whether we should do something. Adam Grant provides research and examples showing how broader questions elicit deeper thinking from advisors.

In the article, Grant demonstrates how closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no often fail to provide meaningful direction. Conversely, open-ended questions like “What are the pros and cons?” stimulate advisors to consider multiple angles. Grant shares psychological research revealing that open questions make people more likely and willing to put effort into producing nuanced, thoughtful suggestions.

Through various anecdotes and expert perspectives, Grant advocates inquiring “Wise Advisor, what should I do?” rather than the unrevealing “Should I do this?” He argues we should pose questions that invite advisors to think critically about our situations, rather than cornering them into a binary choice. Grant shows how slight tweaks in phrasing can dramatically improve the utility of counsel we receive.