Who We Trust and How We Receive Advice: A Leadership Living Lab
Nola's previous Living Lab episode was about giving advice. This one is about the other side: how we receive it. She separates advice you seek out from advice that shows up uninvited, and personal mentorship from thought leadership, where someone shares their expertise through books, talks or videos without ever knowing you. That second kind is a parasocial relationship, and it raises its own questions: how you decide who gets your attention, and what happens when that person changes. Nola draws on her experience of a coach who moved from career advice into meditation and then leadership development, the way fans resist musicians who change direction, a post about why people struggle to support friends who leave corporate work, and a creator whose positioning got her back up. Her conclusion: power and influence matter in how you let others shape your choices, and that's the part of receiving advice we don't talk about enough.
- →Advice comes in different forms: what you seek out versus what arrives unsolicited, and personal mentorship versus thought leadership from people who don't know you.
- →Following a thought leader is a parasocial relationship, so it's worth asking how you decide who gets your attention.
- →When someone you learn from changes direction, your reaction can show you how their change threatens the story you've built about how they're useful to you.
- →People who resist your career change may care about you and still struggle to adapt; Nola suggests neuroplasticity as a gentler way to understand that.
- →Build a board of directors rather than relying on one person. Nola looks for broad backgrounds across industries and roles, and balances older voices with younger ones.
- →Pay attention to people who make you uncomfortable, and work out whether the problem is their content, their delivery, or your own bias.
- →Influence runs both ways: how you practise it, and how you let others influence your choices and decisions.
What's different about advice from thought leaders?1:46
Mentorship usually comes from someone who knows you: parents, coworkers, industry experts, even a loose connection. It's personal, interactive and curated to you. Thought leadership comes from someone who doesn't know you at all, through TED Talks, books or videos. Nola calls that a parasocial relationship and asks how you decide who receives your attention, and how you adapt when they change.
What happened with her coach?2:28
When Nola first hired her, the coach focused on career advice, resumes and a book about storytelling. She then shifted significantly into meditation, and later went back to work full-time in leadership development, away from the coaching Nola originally hired her for. Adapting as her coach adapted was a real shift, and Nola says it turned out to be a gift because it made her look at what that story meant to her.
Why do people struggle to support someone who leaves corporate work?5:43
Nola responds to a post asking why people who know you fall back on "go get a real job." She thinks it comes down to identity: when your work and identity shift, it affects theirs too. She suggested thinking of it as neuroplasticity. Some people don't have the mental flexibility to build new connections, and that's an easier thing to hear than "they don't care."
What did she learn from a creator who alienated her?9:29
A creator Nola follows positions herself around working with "really cool millennial managers." Nola isn't a millennial, and the positioning got her back up. She came to see it as an intentional marketing method: the creator knows her audience and draws in the people she wants. Nola's reaction wasn't about either of them, and learning to filter that feeling is a useful way to understand how you let people influence you.
“Power and influence is a really important critical skill, both in how you practice it yourself, but also how you allow others to influence your choices and decisions.”
Nola Simon, in this episodeFull transcript (click to collapse)
Hi, I'm Nola. I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast, and I wanted to talk a bit about receiving advice. My last episode was about giving advice, but it's equally important to think about how we receive. And first of all it's the type of advice. So what do you do with unsolicited advice versus advice you seek out? And who do you actually trust? And if you are receiving either type of advice, how do you filter what's really useful and where do you look for the advice?
And it does not actually have to be personal advice. So when I'm talking about mentorship, generally the idea is that you're receiving it from somebody that you know personally. So like whether that's parents or, other adults in your life or, coworkers or colleagues or industry experts or somebody that you have a tenuous connection to at, at any point. That's a certain type of advice because it tends to be more personal, it tends to be more interactive, it tends to be curated to yourself.
But there's another type of advice that honestly I find useful, and that is the thought leadership aspect of it. So this is somebody who doesn't know you at all and is producing content of some sort. So whether that's TED Talks, whether that's books, whether that's videos. However you consume their thought leadership type content, whether you wanna call it thought leadership or not, it's some type of expertise that they're sharing in a way that you're consuming without knowing them personally.
It's a parasocial relationship essentially. And how do you decide who to follow? How do you decide which people really receive your attention, and how does that change? And also, how do you adapt as they change? So for example I mentioned that I had a coach. Initially when I first hired her, she was very focused on career advice and preparing resumes and writing a book about storytelling and, she had some theater practices involved too.
But then she really significantly shifted into meditation. She said herself that she has a habit of once she actually gets passionate about something, it becomes her whole personality, and so she pivoted her brand really to embrace that. And then she ended up going back to work full-time for a company and got into leadership development and really got away from the type of coaching that I originally hired her for.
And that was a real shift to be able to adapt with her as she adapted herself. And honestly, in lots of ways it's been a gift because you get to analyze how you're reacting in terms of what that story means to you, right? I find this honestly with pop stars and people who act. They put forth a certain type of work, and then if they change, people are reluctant to let that go. And a lot of times, especially with musicians, if they shift the type of music that they're producing people can't adapt and they don't like the new stuff.
They want them to do more of the same because it's almost like they fulfill that need, again, going back to that parasocial relationship. And of course, nobody really has the ability to say whether somebody is going to produce that or not but I'm seeing that a lot with thought leadership is there's a reluctance to allow people to shift and change and adapt and move into different types of work because it changes the story of how that person is useful to you.
And just having that ability to step back and analyze why somebody's development can threaten your own personal story, that's actually a useful skill to work through in terms of your own identity and your own development, and that's something that I've never really heard anybody really talk about significantly. Although this week there was actually somebody posted about the fact of people who step away from corporate and get into freelancing or some other type of work that isn't necessarily a straightforward job.
And basically she was like, "Why is it so hard for people who know you to be supportive, to let that go, to have a real understanding of how you're changing and adapting?" And why do they often just resort to go get a real job? Like, why is that such a hard transition? And again, I think it comes down to that identity piece of it, if you're changing who you are and how you make money, and your identity is shifting because of the work that you do, how does that impact them and how does that shift their identity?
And if they're not able to adapt and they're not able to let that go, what does that say about their ability? And I ended up saying to this person, and in lots of ways it's easier to think about it as it's not that they don't care, it's about neuroplasticity and how their brain is forming new connections and learning and adapting in real time, right? People… Some people just don't have the type of brain that has the capacity to be able to build those new connections.
And it's not it's biological more than it's actually based in personality or ability, right? It's just fundamentally how they think. And it's related to their brain chemistry and the neuroscience of it rather than any type of instinct. And sometimes that's an easier thing to hear rather than, "I've explained it 400 times and they still don't get it. I don't understand why it's so difficult to pay attention," right?
And it's not necessarily about the fact that they're not paying attention. It's about the fact that they just don't have that mental flexibility to be able to build that new connection. And that is a reality of how we receive feedback and how we trust people to influence our decisions in real time, right? So it's useful if you are a person who's seeking out information and advice whether that's, something personally curated to you or something that you're paying attention to that's publicly available.
Who really forms your board of directors, right? Because it's probably not just one person, because everybody has a different background, everybody has a different type of skill set, everybody has a different understanding of how the world works. I tend to be drawn to people who have a broad background, who have worked through multiple different industries and skills and roles. A lot of times the people that I pay attention to are 20 years older than I am.
But also I do look for balance in that too. Like that coach I mentioned, she's a good eight years younger than I am. And sometimes I look at the people who actually make me uncomfortable, and I try to figure out what it is about their positioning, what it is about their advice and expertise. Is it that it's invalid the stuff that they're actually sharing, or is there something about their delivery that I need to assess to see if that's a bias that I need to let go of.
There's a creator that I follow, and she tends to position things of, she's working with these really cool millennial managers. And I recognize that as a marketing tactic. She's positioning herself as one of them, and if you are a really cool millennial manager, you want her to think that you're cool. You… She's positioning herself as one of them, and it's about belonging more than it is anything about that.
But that positioning really got my back up because for one, I'm not a millennial. So I'm like, "Why is she focusing on that type of positioning?" And it's really come down to she knows her audience, and she's positioning herself so that she's actually drawing in people who hear that and go, "Ooh, she's talking about me," rather than, someone like me, where she's actually actively trying to alienate because I'm not the type of personality that she values.
And so it's not anything to do with either one of us. It's just this is what her intention is. This is her method, and I'm reacting to that in real time because sometimes I think some of the things that she says are interesting, but at the same time, I'm alienated, and I wanted to understand why. And it's not because I have a bias. It's because she's actively facilitating that bias to draw people that she wants more of to her.
But to be able to filter through that, because you can feel it in your body is a really useful way of understanding how you allow people to influence you. And power and influence is a really important critical skill both in how you practice it yourself, but also how you allow others to influence your choices and decisions. And that's the aspect of receiving advice I think that we don't talk about enough.
So I'm gonna leave that there for thought. I'm gonna put in some resources in the show notes, so if you're looking for that, it'll be in the show notes. Again, I'm interested in your stories. If you have a specific story about how somebody influenced you or not these are great things to look at and analyze, and I'd really appreciate you sharing that kind of detail. It, it's an opportunity to be interactive, and it doesn't usually happen on the podcast, but I never stop trying, so thank you.