Tips on being a mentor but not sounding bossy

[Vandril]

I don't know who Vandril is

Hello. I believe they were referring to my past post in this thread. In case you're curious, let me go quote myself so you can click for the source instead of searching for it...

As for how to approach people as a source of help, I agree with this thread's general sentiment of being polite. And there are some general tricks in wording that can help avoid triggering people:

I disagree that wording is the problem.

That's exactly it.

You're completely correct on this: the problem isn't wording, it's that people tend to add their own meaning to received messages. Rather, wording is the viable solution. You can't make people take what is said literally or without adding tone to the message. That's what people do; it's how people work. It's part of human psychology. This will not change on a large scale anytime soon. The next best thing - the viable solution - is to reduce ambiguity of given statements as much as possible to minimize the number of negative ways it can be interpreted. And you do this with wording.

I don't believe anyone is trying to say that the problem is that we all need to word our advice perfectly. It seems like a given that the problem is how people take those words. I can't imagine we'd be talking about how to solve a problem that we didn't know existed because we didn't know what the problem was and, instead, confused the solution we came up with to solve the problem we didn't know about before we came up with its solution with the problem itself. o.O

(Yes, that last sentence is very confusing. But that's the twisted logic one would have to follow to be arguing that the solution of wording things in a certain way is the problem.)

Another way to frame this entire situation is in a Problem, Cause, Solution format.

Problem: Players tend to take advice given with good intention as aggressive criticism.
Cause: These players incorrectly interpreted the intention of the advice.
Solution: Careful wording to reduce the ambiguity of the advice's intention.

I think we can all agree with the Problem, Cause, Solution above. As the giver of advice, the only way we effect the situation is by giving our advice, and so the only part of the situation we have control over and can change is our advice itself. Of course, the ideal would be to not have the problem to begin with, but that's simply not the case - we do have the problem and it's cause. All we can do is attempt a solution.

From what I'm seeing in this article much of the discussion has been centered on "how to word it". But I will say that it is not the priority at all.

I respectfully disagree.