“When Receiving Coaching: Clarify Advice In any given case, you might or might not choose to follow someone’s advice. But we can test whether advice is clear by asking this: If you do want to follow the advice, would you know how to do so? Too often the answer is no, because the advice is simply too vague. “If you win a Tony award, be sure your speech sparkles.” “Children need love, but they also need predictability and limits.” “If you want to shine at work, make yourself indispensable.” There are two problems with these: (1) We don’t know what they actually mean, and (2) even if we did, we wouldn’t know what to do to follow the advice. What does “sparkles” mean, and how would our speech acquire this magical glow?”