I’ve sat across the table from people who wanted to fix my business before they understood it. People who’d never built a company, never met a payroll, or never lost a night’s sleep wondering if they could make the next one, and yet somehow, they had a three-point plan for what I was doing wrong.
“Here’s what I’d do.”
“Have you thought about doing it this way?”
No one asked if I wanted the advice. No one asked what I’d already tried, what had already failed, or what I actually needed. The fix showed up before the understanding did, and it showed up whether I asked for it or not.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that more times than I can count. And if I’m honest with myself, I’ve been the one handing it out too. There was a season of my life where I couldn’t sit in someone else’s problem without trying to solve it. I thought that was love. I thought that was leadership. It took me a long time to realize it was something closer to discomfort, my own discomfort with not having an answer, dressed up as concern for someone else.
That’s the itch behind this post. Because underneath the fixing, the unsolicited advice, and the “well, if it were me,” there’s a real question worth sitting with:
Have we lost the ability to have a conversation that doesn’t try to fix anything but still adds something to a man’s life?
I think we have. And I think most people, especially the ones reading this, know exactly what I’m talking about, because they’ve lived on both sides of it.
The Missing Ingredient
Here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of coaching, mentoring, and leading men: the missing ingredient in most conversations is permission.
Not permission in some formal, awkward, “may I offer you some feedback” sense. I mean the deeper kind, the humility to recognize that your insight, however well-intentioned, is not owed to the other person just because you had it.
Proverbs puts it plainly: “To answer before listening, that is folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13). That verse isn’t about etiquette. It’s about the arrogance baked into an unsolicited answer. When you offer a fix before you’ve earned the right to speak into someone’s life, you’re not really talking to them. You’re talking past them, using their problem as a stage for your opinion.
And here’s the part that stings a little: most of the people doing the fixing haven’t earned the credibility to fix. I’ve watched people with fractured marriages give marriage advice. People who haven’t built anything lasting hand out business strategy like they wrote the book on it. That’s not a knock on their character; it’s just proof that advice-giving has become a reflex, not a relationship. We reach for answers because answers make us feel useful. Presence doesn’t feel like anything. It just requires us to stay.
So, the missing ingredient isn’t a better answer. It’s a better question, asked with permission, from a place of humility instead of a need to be needed.
Why We Default to Fixing
I don’t think most people fix things out of arrogance. I think they fix it because we’ve built a culture and, honestly, a version of masculinity that equates being helpful with having the answer. A person who says, “I don’t know, tell me more,” can feel, in the moment, like they’re failing to lead. A person who says, “Here’s what you should do,” feels like they stepped up.
That’s a lie worth naming. Because real strength isn’t found in having every answer. It’s found in the discipline to sit in someone else’s uncertainty without rushing to end it. James told the early church to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” (James 1:19) and that order matters. Listening comes first. Not because speaking is bad, but because most of us skip straight past the listening and go right to the fixing, and something essential gets lost in the shortcut.
If you’ve ever been the one on the receiving end of unsolicited advice, you already know what gets lost: you feel managed instead of loved. You feel like a project instead of a person. Even good advice, delivered without invitation, can leave a person feeling smaller instead of stronger, because what they needed wasn’t a solution. They needed to be seen.
The Discipline of the Better Question
Part of my role as a coach and a mentor, and honestly, one of the parts I enjoy most, is asking the kind of question that lands between the eyes. Not a question designed to lead a person to my conclusion, but one designed to make them stop and actually think.
What is this really costing you?
What are you avoiding by staying busy with everything else?
If nothing changes here, where are you in five years, and are you okay with that?
Those questions don’t fix anything. That’s the point. They create space. They hand a person their own problem back, along with the dignity of working through it themselves, instead of handing them a solution they never asked for and probably won’t own.
This is a very different posture than fixing. Fixing says, “I know what you should do.” A good question says, “I trust you to find what’s true here, and I’m going to walk with you while you look for it.” One ends the conversation. The other deepens it.
If you want to build better relationships with your wife, your kids, your friends, and the people in your circle, start by trading your answers for better questions. Not questions that interrogate. Questions that invite reflection. That shift alone will change more relationships than any piece of advice you’ve ever given.
The Real Reason We Can’t Sit Still
Here’s the piece that ties all of this together, and it’s the part I think deserves the most honesty: even if we wanted to have these deeper conversations, most of us have lost the capacity to sit still long enough to have them.
When you turn on the nightly news, it feeds you outrage. Open your phone, and you see comparison, controversy, and a hundred strangers’ opinions about things that have nothing to do with your actual life. None of it fixes anything. None of it makes you a better husband, father, wife, friend, or person. It just leaves you wound-tight and exhausted, and wound-tight, exhausted people don’t have the margin to ask anyone a good question. They’re too busy reacting to the last thing that made them angry or afraid.
“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) isn’t just a devotional verse to post on social media. It’s a command that runs directly against how most of us live. Stillness has become countercultural. Prayer, quiet reflection, and an honest walk with no phone in your pocket- these things have started to feel like luxuries instead of necessities. But they’re not luxuries. They’re the soil that caring conversations grow out of.
You cannot pour presence into someone else’s life if you have none stored up in your own. A person who never sits still with God, never examines their own heart, and never asks themselves the hard questions first will default to fixing everyone around them, because it’s easier to manage other people’s problems than to face their own.
So if you’re asking where to go to get more of this, more depth, more meaning, more caring conversation in your life, start here: get still before you get talking. Five minutes of silence and prayer before you walk into your next hard conversation will change more about how that conversation goes than anything you could say.
Building the Habit of the Caring Conversation
This isn’t about becoming passive or having nothing to offer. Men need other men, and women need other women who will speak truth into their lives; that’s a core part of building relationships, and I’ll never back away from that. But there’s a right order to it, and most of us have it backward. Here’s what I’ve learned to practice and what I’d challenge you to build into your relationships:
Ask before you advise. Something as simple as “Do you want my thoughts, or do you just need me to listen right now?” hands the other person their dignity back. It also makes whatever you say next land ten times harder, because now it’s wanted.
Ask a question before you offer a solution. Get curious about what the person has already tried, what they’re afraid of, and what they think the real problem is. You’ll usually find the real issue is one or two layers beneath the one they opened with.
Let silence do some of the work. Don’t rush to fill every pause. Some of the most important things a person will ever say come out after an uncomfortable five seconds of quiet that most of us are too impatient to sit through.
Follow up without an agenda. A caring conversation doesn’t end when the talking stops. Check back in a week, not to see if they did what you suggested, but to see how they are doing. That single act tells a person they mattered beyond the moment you were useful to them.
Get still before you show up. Whatever you’re walking into- a hard talk with your wife or husband, a struggling friend, a son or daughter who’s pulling away- take the five minutes first. Pray. Get quiet. Ask God to help you listen instead of lead with your mouth.
None of this is complicated. It doesn’t require a course or a certification. It requires a willingness to slow down, set aside your need to be useful, and actually be present with another person in whatever he’s carrying.
The Challenge
Here’s what I’d ask you to sit with this week: think of the last conversation where someone tried to fix you before they understood you. Remember how that felt. Then think of the last time you did the same thing to someone else.
Real strength doesn’t announce itself with answers. It shows up in the discipline to ask, to listen, to sit still, and to trust that the person in front of you—your son or daughter, your friend, your brother or sister- has more capacity to work through their own life than you’re giving them credit for. Your job isn’t always to fix them. Sometimes it’s just to stay and be present.
That’s a harder calling than handing out advice. But it’s the one that actually builds people, restores families, and rebuilds the kind of relationships this country desperately needs. Not fixing. Presence. Not answers. Better questions. Not noise. Stillness.
That’s where the caring conversation lives. And it’s available to every person willing to slow down long enough to find it.
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About the Author: Mike Van Pelt (MVP) is the Founder and CEO of True Man Life Coaching and Founder of American Family Renaissance, a faith-based movement built around God, Family, and Country. He works as a men’s mentor, speaker, author, and podcast host, helping men reclaim their identity, break isolation, and lead with authenticity through faith, character, and brotherhood.