The Best Advice, You Don't Want To Hear

"That is the absolute last thing I wanted to hear you say, Scott."

Sometimes I give advice that you don't want to hear, and that usually is the best advice I can give.

The easy advice is almost always more comfortable because it gives you permission to stay exactly where you are. It tells you to wait another quarter, give the company more time, trust that your boss will eventually notice, or believe that things will somehow improve if you are patient enough. That kind of advice feels good in the moment because it delays the decision and allows you to avoid the discomfort that comes with changing anything.

The harder advice usually sounds very different because it asks something of you. It tells you that it is probably time to leave, that you need to ask for more money, that you have to stop protecting a relationship that is no longer serving you, or that you need to have the conversation you have been avoiding for months. It tells you to apply for the role, make the move, or admit that the environment you are in is no longer the right one.

That is the advice people usually do not want to hear because it creates responsibility. Once someone says the thing out loud, especially when you already know deep down that it is true, it becomes much harder to pretend that the issue is still unclear. At that point, you have to decide whether you are going to act on what you know or continue creating new reasons to delay.

I have had coaching conversations where someone spends thirty minutes explaining every single reason they should probably leave their company, only to look at me afterward and hope I will somehow give them permission to stay. They are not really asking me what I think. They are asking me to find the loophole, to tell them that maybe six more months will change everything, or that perhaps the situation is not as bad as it sounds.

Sometimes there is no loophole, and sometimes the answer is sitting right there in the story they just told me. The same thing happens with compensation, where someone explains that they have been underpaid for years, taken on significantly more responsibility, outperformed expectations, and never directly asked for more money, but they are still more worried about making the conversation uncomfortable than they are about continuing to lose money.

At some point, the discomfort of the conversation has to become less important than the cost of avoiding it.

At some point, the discomfort of the conversation has to become less important than the cost of avoiding it. That is true with money, with bad managers, with stalled careers, with toxic environments, and with almost every other professional situation where you already know something needs to change.

Good advice does not always make you feel better when you hear it, and in many cases it does the exact opposite. It can frustrate you, scare you, or make you go quiet because someone finally said the thing you had been working very hard not to say to yourself. That reaction is often worth paying attention to because discomfort has a way of showing you where the real issue is.

You do not need a circle of people who constantly validate every decision you make and tell you that whatever you are doing is probably fine. You need people who care enough about you to tell you when you are playing small, avoiding something obvious, or accepting a situation that no longer deserves your loyalty.

The advice you least want to hear may be the advice that finally forces you to move, and the real question is whether you are willing to do something with it once you hear it.