Before You Take Their Advice, Look at Their Hammer

What people’s answers reveal about the way they see the world

Ever ask someone for advice and realize they started answering before they really understood the question?

You explain a problem in your marriage, and they tell you to leave. You mention feeling overwhelmed, and they tell you to get disciplined. You describe a disagreement, and suddenly someone you’ve never met has been diagnosed as a narcissist. They barely know what happened, but they’re certain they know what you should do.

Sometimes people are helping you understand your life. Sometimes they’re telling you about their own without realizing it. Learning to recognize the difference can save you considerable pain.

I learned to read the room early

I grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father. Learning to read the room started early for me. I had to pay attention to what someone was presenting and what that might mean. Long before I became a psychologist or a coach, I was learning that the words someone said were only part of what I needed to understand.

I would never call the abuse a gift. But I could take responsibility for what I did with what I learned. Over time, I began developing that ability with greater intention, learning to distinguish what I was actually observing from what I was expecting or assuming.

That distinction matters. When you learn to anticipate trouble, you can get very good at noticing it. You can also begin anticipating it where it doesn’t exist. A response pattern that helped you get through one environment can become an incorrect response pattern in another. Becoming more accurate requires examining the filter you bring into the room.

Throughout my life as a coach, I have continued developing this skill. Today, I teach the coaches I train to pay attention to what people emphasize, the advice they give, the conclusions they repeatedly reach, and especially the hills they choose to die on. Those things can tell you a great deal about how a person sees the world.

Everybody has a hammer

There is a name for one part of this problem: the law of the instrument. Abraham Kaplan discussed it in The Conduct of Inquiry, and Abraham Maslow later captured the idea this way:

“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” quoteinvestigator.com

We tend to reach for the tools we know how to use. A surgeon recognizes what surgery might correct. An attorney sees the legal implications. A trainer notices how you move. Their expertise helps them see things you might miss, which is why you sought their help.

The problem begins when their preferred solution arrives before they understand your situation.

This happens with life advice, too. Ask someone whose entire identity is built around discipline why your life isn’t working, and you can probably guess the answer. Ask someone who rebuilt their life by establishing boundaries, and boundaries may become the answer to almost everything. What worked for them becomes what they prescribe for you.

The law of the instrument specifically concerns overreliance on familiar tools. I believe it also gives us a useful way to examine our dependence on familiar explanations. Our training influences what we see, and so do our successes, fears, beliefs, and wounds.

Before you take someone’s advice, pay attention to what their advice reveals about them.

Listen to the advice beneath the advice

Relationship advice makes this especially easy to see. Someone who has been cheated on may recognize warning signs you have overlooked. They may also see betrayal in something that requires a different explanation. Someone who regrets staying too long may urge you to leave before they understand what is happening. Someone who fears being alone may encourage you to tolerate what needs to change.

Their experience may contain hard-earned wisdom. It may also contain unfinished pain. Sometimes it contains both.

Having been hurt doesn’t make someone wrong. Being sincere doesn’t make someone accurate. You still have to examine whether their advice fits the facts of your situation.

Pay attention to what people keep coming back to. Perhaps every disagreement becomes a matter of disrespect. Every disappointment becomes evidence that people cannot be trusted. Every challenge becomes proof that somebody is trying to control them. You may be hearing a recurring concern that deserves to be understood.

This is where I encourage coaches to get curious. “What makes that especially important to you?” can open a useful session. So can, “What would it mean to you if that were true?” The answers help us understand the meaning someone attaches to events and how that meaning influences their response.

The hills people choose to die on can reveal their deepest convictions, their most important responsibilities, or something they are afraid of experiencing again. You have to ask enough questions to learn which.

Use the observation to understand people

People interested in reading behavior often encounter the work of Chase Hughes, Joe Navarro, and Chris Voss. Hughes’s background includes service in the U.S. Navy; Navarro and Voss bring backgrounds in the FBI. Their different approaches to behavioral observation and negotiation offer material worth examining. The application I want coaches to make is to observe carefully, listen longer, and ask questions that test their first interpretation. www.missourimilitaryacademy.org

Recognizing someone’s filter gives you an advantage because you can communicate with greater understanding. If respect is central to how someone interprets events, you can explore what respect means to them. If they continually anticipate betrayal, you can ask what they are noticing and what evidence supports their concern. You can address what matters to them while helping them examine whether their interpretation is accurate.

You can also stop taking every reaction personally. A strong reaction may involve something about you, something about the situation, and something the other person brought into it. Sorting that out helps you respond more accurately instead of simply reacting to their reaction.

But you have to remain teachable. Noticing a shift in someone’s tone gives you something to ask about. It doesn’t give you permission to announce that you know their motives. The moment you become certain you have everybody figured out, you have picked up another hammer.

Three questions before you act

When someone offers you advice, slow down and ask:

1. What is this person seeing clearly?
2. What might their filter cause them to miss?
3. What evidence would help me decide?

Those questions allow you to benefit from someone’s perspective while taking responsibility for your decision. You can learn from a person without assuming their experience explains every part of your life.

Then ask those same three questions about your own advice. This applies when you’re talking with your spouse, correcting your child, leading your team, or coaching a client. What are you seeing clearly? What are you overlooking? Have you asked enough questions to know whether your favorite explanation fits?

It also applies to the advice you seek. If you only ask people who will agree with you, your filter is influencing the answer before the session even begins. Sometimes we say we want guidance when we are actually looking for permission to do what we have already decided.

Coaches have hammers, too

I teach discipline, responsibility, adaptability, and correct response patterns because I have seen their value. I also have a responsibility to keep examining how I apply them. If I make every client’s struggle fit the framework I happen to be teaching, I can miss what that person actually needs.

A lack of follow-through may involve discipline. It may also involve an unclear mission, missing resources, conflicting commitments, or a strategy that doesn’t work. Understanding what is breaking the workflow helps us choose a response that can actually improve it.

One of the leadership standards I teach is:

“A leader must always see things as they are, never make things worse than they are, and always seek to make things better than they are.”

Living that standard requires the humility to ask, “What am I missing?” It requires enough courage to change your interpretation when the evidence calls for it, even when you have already expressed your opinion with great confidence.

Proverbs 18:13 warns against answering before listening. That is good counsel for anyone who wants to help another human being. Our responsibility begins with understanding what we have been entrusted to address.

The next time someone asks for your help, slow down long enough to understand what they are actually facing. Ask another question. Consider another explanation. Be willing to discover that your favorite answer doesn’t fit.

And when you’re the one asking for advice, choose people who care enough to understand you and are willing to challenge you. Good counsel should help you see more clearly, take responsibility, and respond more accurately. That is the standard we should seek from others and require of ourselves.

Recommended reading and listening

• Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: The law of the instrument and the limits of familiar methods.
• Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science: The source of his familiar hammer analogy.
• Joe Navarro with Marvin Karlins, What Every BODY Is Saying: An introduction to nonverbal observation.
• Chris Voss with Tahl Raz, Never Split the Difference: Listening and negotiation practices.
• Chase Hughes’s behavioral observation material: Explore alongside other perspectives, applying the same discernment discussed here.
• Proverbs 18:13, 18:17, and 20:5: Listening before answering, examining an account, and drawing out understanding.