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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Worst Advice: Rethinking Rigid Rules in Life and Leadership with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 6-23-25
00:13:02
This episode features Amber Walsh, Partner at McGuireWoods LLP, in a candid conversation about the dangers of overly rigid advice. She shares insights on how self-awareness, confidence, and humility shape the way we give and receive guidance in both ca...
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- [00:00]
Scott Becker
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by all world leader Amber Walsh. Amber lives at the intersection of health care and private equity. She also serves on the executive committee of McGuire woods, one of the great large law firms in the country with a fantastic healthcare practice as well as private equity practice and so many other areas. Amber, the topic today is the worst advice you've ever received. And people always talk about, oh my God, this was great advice. Somebody gave me that great advice. What I'd like to hear today is the opposite. What's some of the worst advice you've ever received yourself or heard given to people? Tell us about that, if you don't mind.
- [00:46]
Amber Walsh
Well, absolutely, Scott. First of all, that was my favorite introduction. Thanks for that. There is a lot of bad advice out there. I've been given a lot of bad advice. Probably most of it has been on the tennis court surrounding my serve, which is typically a disaster and then gets fixed and then it's a disaster again. But really the worst type of advice in my view is not one particular thing. It is a category of advice. And I hear this so frequently in all, all walks of life. And what I think is a bad type of advice is advice that is given with such rigor and rigidity and definitiveness behind it. It is the type of advice that typically begins never do X or always do Y or you should do this and you are guaranteed to receive that. All of those types of advice are just, I think can be so damaging and they assume that and they're always made in such, I think, with good intention from the person giving the advice. But what I hate is that the listener, if you're not confident enough, the person receiving that advice can come away with this skewed perspective that you have to do a, a certain parenting activity a particular way if you want your child to be successful. You have to take certain steps in your career at certain junctures if you want to achieve your particular goal. And I just really hate that type of advice, particularly when I hear it given to someone who I fear doesn't yet have the confidence in his or her parenting ability, her relationships, her place in her own family firm to take that advice and then you know, make of it what works for her totally.
- [03:04]
Scott Becker
And talk about this because as we evolve and man, as managers, as leaders, as feel that manage others, I think earlier on in giving advice we've seen something done successfully one way and we're often prone to, to give advice to say this is the way you do it. And I think sometimes as we age and grow or see more things, we become less rigid about it. Talk about that in the evolution of a manager or leader, the concept that you're talking about. Because I couldn't agree with you more. Like people say like, well, that's the only way to serve that serve. And you're like, well, I don't have the physical gifts that you do who played in the US Open, I just don't. So I better find a way somewhere in between that in this to make it work for me. But talk about that, the evolution in the manager or leader and how they give advice, because I think your point is so well taken.
- [03:59]
Amber Walsh
Yeah, I think that's a really good point about evolution as well, is the older we get, the more experience we have, the more different dimensions and layers that we can see. That's usually the way it works. Yes. Do you occasionally have someone who grows more rigid and less flexible over time? Yes, that happens sometimes and that's really unfortunate. But most good leaders see more dimensions and so they're able to give advice and help their teams and their family members, all the people that we care about. You're able to give it in a multi dimensional way because you've seen different things work and you've seen different things work for sometimes the same person just at a different time in their life. So the same choice that you're going to make, the same way you tackle a particular career goal. You talk about a young lawyer who has a goal of making partner, for example. That's a classic in a large law firm. You realize that there's so many ways to do it. Yes. Are there some universal truths that you can't engage in certain types of behavior and you must of course be an excellent lawyer? Absolutely. Those things are almost a given. But it's when you get down into the precise and more detailed elements of the advice that I think we as leaders, after we've seen years of different young lawyers become partners, to use this example, in different ways, with different approaches and with different strengths, I think that can help us to give advice that recognizes some flexibility in there, which can be a real comfort for the person receiving the advice.
- [05:53]
Scott Becker
And I think that's so right. I mean, like for example, if you found 30, 40 years ago in a law firm and it's so long ago, it's so embarrassing to think that the only way to get ahead was to be a rainmaker. And then you see as you grow a little bit and you learn. No, no, no. You could be a great leader in the firm, be a great manager of clients. You, you could be the best lawyer ever. And that's a way to be successful as well. Multiple different ways to skin the cat. And even though one did, it worked for you. It doesn't mean it has to work for somebody else. It doesn't have to be their path. And for me it was eye opening over the years to, to see the evolution in success of different people and how they did it. Even if I was like a rainmaker at one point, watching that and then having enough discussions with other people about how they did it and learning, oh, I did it one way that was successful for me, but these other people did this way and it was just as successful or more successful for them. And it's sort of understanding that you sort of have to. There's some humility that comes with being less rigid in your advice as you learn. There's lots of different ways to do things.
- [07:05]
Amber Walsh
I think there's also a couple of important characteristics that the receiver of the advice ideally will have to be able to use that type of advice to their best advantage. And one of them is real self awareness. And the second is confidence. True, well founded self confident. You have to understand yourself well to take in advice that has some flexibility, that acknowledges that different pathways work for different people, different techniques for a particular problem can all solve that problem. You have to have a real self awareness to be able to assess what you personally are going to be able to do. And you also have to have the confidence to, to weed out the bad advice and to weed out the advice that is too rigid or that you know isn't going to work for you. And I would add a third characteristic which is some humility. You just spoke about humility from the advice giver. But the advice receiver also has to have enough humility to recognize that there is a nugget of helpfulness in there. The advice that is given genuinely and with good intentions for the giver. If the receiver can pull out the good and valuable pieces of that, have the confidence and then the self awareness to mold it to what works for them, that's really powerful because then you can take in advice from all sorts of people that you respect on a particular topic and then synthesize it and make your own choices.
- [08:59]
Scott Becker
No, a hundred percent. And it takes an open mindedness and not being too defensive to be able to do that. Right. And it also takes the giver being able to do it in a decent way too.
- [09:09]
Amber Walsh
Yeah, absolutely.
- [09:11]
Scott Becker
Let me ask you this question because I've seen myself over the years better or worse at taking advice. Often the more relaxed I am, the more I'm in a good frame of mind, the easier it is for me to take in learning and advice. Any advice for how to take in advice, good and bad and how to dispose of bad advice without getting bad.
- [09:33]
Amber Walsh
I think you just hit on it is really important, which is to recognize the frame of mind that you are currently in when you receive the advice. It is if you are in the middle of a knockdown drag out fight with someone and you are given some advice or particularly by that person or someone on the side who's trying to mediate, your tempers may just be too high for you to really hear it. I think that is one really important thing is to be again self aware enough to know that you can't act on advice when you're not in the right frame of mind to really think about it. And I think that's probably as important as finding the people you trust to give you the advice as well. You've got to have the right people that you trust and you've got to be in the right frame of mind to hear it.
- [10:34]
Scott Becker
I think that's exactly right. Amber, anything else you wanted to add to this discussion on the worst advice you've ever given? I've heard it different ways. Like somebody being so certain this is the way you're going to fix your serve. My serve has been a proverbial thorn in my side for my entire life, so I empathize with that so much. I'm very passionate about people that have serving challenges. You are speaking my language. Anything else besides that and people giving too rigid advice that you'd like to add to the conversation?
- [11:03]
Amber Walsh
No, other than we probably should compare notes and see if maybe between the two of us we can help each other out because I'm currently in a in a disaster state right now with my serve and it's so depressing I'm going to have to change sports.
- [11:18]
Scott Becker
So my my what works for me and I'll tell you I have struggled this so much and it goes to my personality because we're going to talk serves for one second where I am struggling in my serve. It goes with so many of my bad qualities is when I'm over anxious or over caffeinated and I almost have to think of my serve as I have to keep my head up and my body back for so much longer than I think is humanly right to hit my serve consistently. Well, as soon As I find myself moving my body around, moving my head around, I find that the racket doesn't contact the ball at the right spot. Whereas if I could breathe deeply, keep my head up and my whole body up for as long as possible, almost inhumanly longer than seems normal, then I serve in the adequate way to find and could explore and really work my serve. Everything else I've tried over the years, breathing, counting, trying to spin everything, nothing else has been consistently as good for me as the one concept of keeping my head up for as long as possible. Now that's advice from a novice tennis player, but who did coach tennis, so it is what it is. That's my single piece of advice that's worked for me, who has plenty of serving anxiety. Again, I know you've get we've got our audience more than they expected. I will not be rigid in advice because I'm constantly exploring how to improve and find ways not to mess up my serve so I cannot be rigid in it. But that is the single thing that has made a difference in my serving over the years. In any event, Amber Walsh, one of the greats of all time and we're hoping she'll get back to the French Open. Thank you for joining us on the Becker Private Equity Podcast.