The Advise voice in its functional version:

“When I’ve faced that challenge in the past I’ve tended to do two things: Firstly to relook at the project plan and the original outcomes, and secondly to get together with the project team and see how we’re tracking against those outcomes, so you might like to consider that.”

“With all my research on this sort of topic what I would do here I guess is to push for a meeting.”

“My recommendation is perhaps to pause for a couple of days before responding to that email.”

“I wonder if it might be a good idea if you booked some time out to have a break.”

“Telling them you want to vet every single piece of work is probably going to drive them mad, so if it was me, I would probably either have a conversation with them and give them some guidelines, or maybe I’d pick out some examples of where you have a problem with this not meeting current standards.”

‘I’ve got a view on this, if you’re interested.”

“That’s a great idea. If I were you I’d start small and…build, making regular assessments of your progress.”

“Well 3 options that we could consider are: A, to cancel it, B, to reschedule it later in the month, or C to simply go ahead with the meeting without all the attendees there.”

“You may find that colleagues respond to you better if they feel that you’re treating them with respect.“

“So you might find it helpful to trial a two-day a week work from home pattern…”

“My recommendation is that we should wait for a while and see what happens.”

“Oh that is an interesting dilemma; now let me give you the benefit of my own experience on this…”

“Why don’t you just try working from home for a couple of days; it’s really not that complicated. Honestly, I think you’d find it much easier if you followed that simple step.”

“So we have to go down on the shop floor and really explain to people how to do things, so it’s a bit like, you know, when you’re teaching your kids how to tie their shoe laces…”

“Quite frankly I have more experience than the rest of you put together on this, so I really think you should listen to how I’ve done things.”

“Well what I’ve always found to work is, you know make sure I get my data together, present it in a way that other people can understand and then I really make sure that I dot the Is and cross the Ts.”

“Well that’s a nice idea, but this level of work might be a bit complex for someone at your level right now.”

“Oh come on, haven’t you learned how to do that yet?”

“Let me tell you what I think we should do here; come on, take some notes!”

“I’m surprised you didn’t think of this already, My view is you need to reframe this as a learning opportunity.”

“I used to think that way too but trust me, when you’ve been here as long as I have you’ll understand it’s an idea that just doesn’t work in practice.”