How To Give Advice Your Friends Will Actually Take

You know how friends sometimes give the worst advice? Read this and you’ll never be that person.

- Catherine Ryan Gregory

There’s a reason why I text my friend R* daily. She is the queen of advice—like Kendall Jenner but without the model squad and stardom. A fight with my mom? A job I’m not sure I should take? Whether to insist my husband come to the three parties on the calendar? R* is guaranteed to tell me exactly what I need to hear. I save her wise texts to reread, I quote her to other friends, and I have actually copied her one liners onto Post-Its and stuck them on my computer, like she’s my personal meme generator. 

We all deserve a friend (or five) like R*—and because doling out and receiving honest advice separates true emotional friends from superficial acquaintances, we want to get good at giving it too, says psychology professor Andrea Bonior, author of The Friendship Fix. Problem is, most of us are not IRL agony aunts. Half the time when we’re asked for advice, we make it up as we go along; the other half, we play to our biases or spout off a prettied-up version of The Rules.

It’s not surprising, then, to see a rise in invite-only Facebook girls’ groups that crowd source dating and life advice for members who may not trust (or want) their friends’ suggestions. “Advice is inherently difficult, and we’re pretty terrible at giving and receiving it,” says Silvia Bonaccio, a US-based associate professor of organisational behaviour, who researches how people give their two cents. “Advice means taking someone else’s perspective, which can be challenging.”