Quotes to Reflect On: “Don’t listen to advice from someone who isn’t where you want to go.” (Unknown)

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It’s not uncommon for us to ask someone in our circle for advice. There’s nothing wrong with that in principle. But can I really orient myself by it and make a decision based on that advice? How useful is that, really?

A third party’s advice doesn’t necessarily always represent the right solution for you, because often there’s no right or wrong, but rather a need for individual decisions that meaningfully support you, your strategic direction, and your plans. But quite apart from that, we often fall into a much more relevant trap: we ask people for advice on a context or topic that they simply can’t judge. For example, when we ask an employee what they would do in our position as an entrepreneur in a certain situation. The result is often an opinion that isn’t grounded in valuable experiential knowledge (in this case: that of an experienced and successful entrepreneur).

Or we ask in a mastermind, among like-minded peers, how we can grow our revenue, well aware that the others don’t earn any more than we do ourselves. Even if the advice is well-meant: how is this circle supposed to give you an answer that you can actually assume will lead to success when implemented?

Feel free to gather different opinions in order to generate new perspectives and develop new viewpoints you hadn’t thought of before. But keep asking yourself whether you’ve really already involved the people who can genuinely help you in this specific context. Sometimes you’ll find these people already in your circle. Often, though, it will be necessary to bring in someone with specific expertise, or to look out for networking opportunities on the next level.

Marc Schinschetzki, a loyal member of our Deep Talk Club community on Clubhouse, recently said, echoing a line (“Try never to be the smartest person in the room”) from Michael Dell’s speech at the University of Texas in Austin in 2003: “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

Think about it…

Be there live when we reflect on topics like this every day on Clubhouse, and feel free to jump in actively too. Here’s the link to the Deep Talk Club on Clubhouse.

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