On Guidance

Not everyone who asks for your input wants to change.

This is something you learn slowly, usually after you have already spent yourself trying to help someone who was never actually asking for help. They were asking for something else. They wanted to feel understood. They wanted permission. They wanted you to arrive at the same conclusion they had already reached, so they could feel less alone in it.

That is not guidance. That is validation dressed up as a conversation.

The distinction matters because the two look almost identical from the outside. Someone sits across from you, shares a problem, asks what you think. The body language is open. The question sounds genuine. And so you engage. You offer perspective. You push a little. You introduce a different frame.

And then you notice something.

They are not responding to what you said. They are waiting for you to finish so they can bring the conversation back to what they already believe. Every counterpoint lands and dissolves. Nothing sticks. Not because they are unintelligent, but because they are not actually in a state of inquiry. They arrived with a conclusion already in hand, and what they need from you is not challenge. It is confirmation.

The hardest skill in this work is learning to tell the difference.

Someone who wants to be challenged will show you. They will sit with discomfort. They will ask a follow-up question that moves the conversation forward instead of circling it back. They will leave with something they did not arrive with. Not necessarily a solution. Sometimes just a crack in a wall they had sealed off.

Someone seeking validation will also sit with discomfort, but differently. It is the discomfort of not yet being agreed with. They are patient, but they are not open. They are waiting.

The tell is usually in what they do with friction.

Push gently and watch what moves. Someone in genuine inquiry will lean toward the pressure. Someone seeking confirmation will redirect away from it. They will agree in principle and then re-anchor to their original position. They will say “yes, but” in a dozen different ways.

None of this makes them wrong or broken. People seek validation for real reasons. The belief they are holding may be protecting something important. That is worth understanding. But you cannot guide someone who is not open to being guided in this moment, and confusing the two is how you exhaust yourself trying.

The conversation is different. And sometimes you have to dig underneath the surface to know which one you are actually in.

This essay connects to my work in executive coaching and advisory services.