The Advice Club (Giving Advice to Get Ahead)
Coaching someone else who's struggling with your goal boosts your own confidence and follow-through.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Lauren Eskreis-Winkler found that people who are struggling — C-students, underperforming salespeople — often already know what's going wrong but lack the confidence to act. When you flip the script and put them in the advice-giver role, three benefits follow: confidence rises because they're treated as capable, they introspect more deeply about what actually works, and they feel hypocritical not taking their own advice. Milkman operationalizes this as an 'advice club': a group of peers with shared goals who only give each other solicited advice. Giving advice from arm's length sharpens judgment, builds confidence, and pre-solves problems you'll later face yourself.
Origin
The finding comes from Lauren Eskreis-Winkler's doctoral work with Angela Duckworth; Milkman then discovered she was unwittingly using it via her own 'advice club' of women at a similar career stage.
Core principles
- 01People who are struggling often already hold the wisdom they need but lack the confidence to act on it.
- 02Being put in the advice-giver role boosts confidence, forces deeper introspection, and creates hypocrisy-avoidance pressure.
- 03Giving advice from an outsider's arm's-length view produces better judgment than solving your own problem.
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose the real barrier
Confirm the struggle is about confidence and motivation, not a genuine gap in skill or knowledge.
Watch out If the person truly lacks the knowledge, giving advice won't supply it.
- 2
Flip the struggler into a coach
Instead of piling on advice, put the struggling person in the position of advising someone further behind.
Pro tip Even a one-off written survey answered 'for a younger student' can lift outcomes.
- 3
Form an advice club
Gather peers with similar ambitions and obstacles who agree to reach out when stuck.
Pro tip Only solicited advice — agree that members ask before receiving input.
- 4
Give and reap
Advising others sharpens your judgment, builds confidence, and pre-solves problems you'll face months later.
In the wild
Struggling students filled out an online survey advising younger students on how to study more effectively, with no real interaction.
→ The act of giving advice significantly improved the advice-givers' own grades.
Milkman joined a group of women at a similar career stage who ping each other for outside perspective when stuck on career decisions.
→ Advising others from arm's length built her confidence and pre-solved problems she later faced herself, beyond the friendships and free consulting she expected.
Common mistakes
Piling on unsolicited advice
Constantly telling a struggling person how to fix their life is demotivating; asking them for their wisdom is what helps.
Treating it as a knowledge fix
The mechanism works when confidence and motivation are the barrier, not when the person genuinely lacks the required knowledge.
Is it for you?
Best for
Goals blocked by low confidence and motivation rather than a genuine lack of skill or knowledge.
Not ideal for
Problems that are truly caused by missing knowledge or skill the person doesn't possess.
From the transcript
“once you coach someone else you're gonna feel like a hypocrite if you don't take your own advice”
“form an advice club form a group of people with whom you share ambitions and goals and say you're going to reach out to each…”
From the episode
Katy Milkman: The Science of Change
Katy Milkman