Episode 175: Effectively Helping Others

Getting to Good Enough

If you offer advice when a person isn't ready to receive it, you may not be helping them. In this episode, Shannon and Janine discuss how to offer effective advice (or other types of help) by making sure the help is welcome. Discussion topics include: • The tendency many people have to offer unwelcome advice • Fashioning advice in ways that feel good to the recipient • Venting vs wanting advice • How some people (especially those with Y chromosomes) seem to have trouble differentiating between the need to vent and the desire for advice • Even well intended advice isn't helpful if the recipient isn't open to advice in the moment • How to make sure your advice is effective • Opening phrases to avoid: "You should..." or "You just need to..." • A question to embrace: "Would you like to know what I would do in that situation?" • How sometimes you just want to be heard (or have your outrage matched) • A powerful way to help: Giving a person the space to be heard and process their problem out loud • How to offer physical help to people without implying you think they're helpless • The value of telling the other person how you want to be helped