Employees regularly turn to managers and other higher-level co-workers to seek advice about job-related issues and next steps for their careers. Yet people don’t always take the advice they receive; they may accept some suggestions and ignore others.
Here’s a word of warning from Harvard Business School researchers: Disregarding advice from colleagues could invite harsh backlash that just might damage valued workplace relationships, according to the recent paper Seeker Beware: The Interpersonal Costs of Ignoring Advice, published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
The paper details the results of nine studies showing that advisors not only get offended when their guidance is disregarded, but they may punish those colleagues by denigrating them, distancing themselves—and in some cases, even severing the relationship.
These are people with egos and motives, and your relationship with them is important.
Hayley Blunden
That’s a problem, since rubbing powerful colleagues the wrong way could impact “every aspect of one’s career, from opportunities for promotion to abilities to develop one’s network to capabilities to garner resources,” according to the paper, co-written by HBS doctoral candidate Hayley Blunden, Harvard University post-doctoral fellow Jennifer M. Logg, and HBS professors Alison Wood Brooks, Leslie K. John, and Francesca Gino.
“In asking a co-worker for advice, you have this goal of making an accurate decision, but you also have the goal of maintaining a good relationship,” Blunden says. “So you should consider how ignoring someone’s advice might impact that relationship and be aware from a connection and career standpoint that these interactions could have a detrimental effect.”
Ignoring advice is common
People casually seek out—and disregard—advice all the time. A widely recommended strategy for figuring out the most accurate solution to a complex problem is to reach out to multiple people to leverage the wisdom of the crowds in weighing alternatives.
Prior research also shows that even when people receive on-target suggestions, they often brush them aside in favor of using their own intuition.
Sure enough, that pattern emerged in the research team’s survey of 119 full-time workers from a variety of industries: 59 percent said they had consulted with multiple advisors in the past month. And among the folks who sought advice, 53 percent reported they ignored the feedback they received.
Why are advisors so prickly about being disregarded? They can become dismayed after discovering they weren’t the only ones consulted for advice. And because these mentors believe they are offering sound, helpful guidance, having it rejected could be a knock to their egos.
Resentful feelings emerged in one study where participants were asked to imagine they gave career advice to a colleague. The participants whose advice was ignored in this scenario were significantly more offended by the advice seeker, felt less close with the person, and were less willing to continue providing them with counsel. These advisors also rated their advice seekers as less warm, less competent, and more careless.
Advisors not only reacted negatively toward the advice seeker, but their feelings of self-worth took a hit as well. Participants whose advice was rejected rated themselves as more inept and expressed more concern about their social worth than advisors whose recommendations were followed.
Discounting the advice of an “expert” can have even worse consequences. In one study, the research team learned that more than half of the financial planners they studied said they ended a relationship with a client after the client ignored their advice. Experts often gain status, power, and confidence from having a certain level of expertise, so when their advice is ignored, they may recoil even more, Blunden says.
“If you’re an entrepreneur seeking advice from a potential board member and your goal in that interaction is to establish a relationship, you should be aware of these effects so you’re not falling victim to the negative consequences that may come from not taking the board member’s advice,” she says.
Check your advice-seeking approach
While prior research has mostly taken the advice seeker’s perspective, this new paper provides a window into the advisor’s point of view. It also reveals that the two sides look at the purpose of these conversations in different ways.
Advisors are flattered when they are asked for advice; they often mistakenly believe the advice seeker views them as uniquely capable of providing guidance; and they typically look to give direction that helps narrow down the potential solutions to a problem.
Meanwhile, when advice seekers tap into a variety of sources, it’s because they are laser-focused on figuring out the best solution. So they are intent on expanding their options and gathering as much information from as many people as possible before acting.
Advice seekers should keep these clashing perspectives in mind as they consider how to approach the conversation. For one thing, they might want to be up front about the fact that they are asking several people for input in order. And they might also want to think through which colleagues to consult from the get-go.
“Before asking someone for advice, we might want to ask ourselves, ‘Am I likely to accept this person’s advice?’ If not, we might want to reconsider asking them in the first place—or think about how we can make the advisor feel validated even if we don’t take their advice,” John says.
Plus, Blunden notes, people should take away a broader lesson from the research findings—that how they interact with co-workers can have a big impact on interpersonal relationships in the workplace.
“These are people with egos and motives, and your relationship with them is important,” she says. “In workplace interactions, you should look beyond just the information you want to receive and think of people as more than mere repositories of advice.”
Dina Gerdeman is a senior writer at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.
Image: iStock
Related Reading:
Advice on Advice
Research Paper Do We Listen to Advice Just Because We Paid for It?
Manager or Mentor? Why You Must Be Both
What do you think of this research?
Have you suffered backlash after ignoring advice from an expert? How do you feel when your guidance is rejected by a colleague? Share your insights below.
