One of the initial reasons for starting this blog was to share the advice that I received during my various coffee meetings on the road to becoming a non-exec director. Having moved to Singapore only in the last six months, I am still very much in the mode of learning about the way things work here, who’s who, who’s doing what work and how to go about things.

Everyone I have had coffee with has been exceptionally friendly and giving (thank you again, if you are reading this). I suspect that in part, this comes from the fact that for many people, Singapore is not their original home, and they may remember what it was like to arrive here and start from scratch. Notably, there have also been a number of people who have been especially helpful with introductions and suggestions and very direct feedback. This is significant in a society where speaking directly is not always an acceptable way of communicating!

In the process of these coffee meetings, as the new person I am often effectively “pitching” myself and my skills as well as asking questions about whom to speak with, what to join and where I can try to be of value. In some cases, I have been honoured to be able to also provide advice to others who are at different stages of their careers. A recent range of responses to a particular question I posed made me reflect on both my reaction to the answers I was given and the way in which I ask questions and provide advice.

Often the discussion I have with my coffee partner develops organically and there isn’t necessarily a defined set of questions. But recently, I  put the same direct question to three different coffee partners – all of whom have lived here for more than a decade. The answers I received were “yes, definitely”, “no, don’t bother” and “probably, there’s no harm”. Now it’s fair to say I am not seeking medical advice from specialists, so there are no life and death consequences from having such conflicting advice. But it does make it a little bit more difficult to work out what line of action to take when one has such a range of responses.

As I reflected on this divergence of opinions, I realised that each person was giving me their view, no doubt, informed by their own past experiences and current context. The trick for me was to try not to take their response at face value, but to colour it with my knowledge of their experience and context to find its applicability to me.

This led me to the notion of ‘gut instinct’. Prior to asking the particular question, I had my own view, also informed by my past experience and current circumstances. The point of seeking others’ advice was to learn what I didn’t know about my new environment to better inform my own view. The reality is that each person has a unique combination of experience, history and context. The key was to listen to the advice, try to ascertain what influenced or gave rise to that advice and then disseminate it with my own circumstances. This is where the process of rationalisation should result in you establishing what will work best for you; what makes sense in your situation. This will generally lead you to a view that fits with your ‘gut instinct’, your intuition about yourself.

Given the conflicting advice, depending on which action I take, it will go against the advice provided by at least one of my coffee partners. The key to realise is that it doesn’t mean that everything they suggested is not applicable, nor that their advice was any less helpful. In fact, having someone suggest something that goes counter to your own leanings is incredibly useful to force you to think about why you may have wanted to take a particular action. It is the same as the different perspective that comes from having a diverse team at board or executive level that helps ensure that groupthink doesn’t result in taking a course of action because everyone thinks the same way.

Similarly, those who impart advice or who have the privilege to mentor others, need to remember that such advice needs to be provided with context and experience. Mentors often will ask questions rather than offer direct advice, and those questions also need to be posed in a way that makes the other person assess their own circumstances with an insight into others’ experiences and the applicability or not of those experiences to their own position. This, in turn, should allow the mentee the ability to consider different actions and their implications and what ultimately may work for them, based on their own understanding of themselves, their gut instinct.

Coffee count: 424