#515 How To Find The Right Advice: Evidence-Based Leadership Decisions – Niels Brabandt
How To Find The Right Advice: Evidence-Based Leadership Decisions
Article by Niels Brabandt
In an era of unlimited access to information, the defining capability of leadership is no longer access to knowledge, but the ability to select the right advice. In his latest podcast and videocast, Niels Brabandt addresses one of the most critical leadership challenges: how decision-makers can identify credible expertise in a market saturated with opinion, noise and unverified claims.
The Illusion of Expertise in Modern Business
The digital landscape has fundamentally changed how advice is produced and consumed. Today, anyone can position themselves as an expert within minutes. This creates a dangerous dynamic: organisations are no longer constrained by lack of advice, but by an overabundance of poor-quality guidance.
Niels Brabandt highlights a crucial reality: confidence is often mistaken for competence. Leaders who fail to differentiate between the two risk making decisions based on persuasion rather than evidence.
Defining the Need Before Selecting the Expert
The first and most overlooked step is clarity. Before selecting any advisor, organisations must define:
- the exact nature of the requirement
- the time horizon of the engagement
- the expected outcome
Training, coaching, consulting and interim management are fundamentally different services. Selecting the wrong format guarantees suboptimal results, regardless of the individual’s capability.
The Three Non-Negotiable Criteria
1. Experience
There is no substitute for real-world experience. Leadership decisions require insights that have been tested under pressure, not theoretical assumptions.
2. Qualification
Structured knowledge matters. Qualification demonstrates that an individual understands not only what works, but why it works. It reflects the ability to analyse, adapt and transfer knowledge across contexts.
3. Scientific Foundation
Opinion is not evidence. Sustainable leadership decisions must be grounded in scientifically sound principles. Without this foundation, advice remains anecdotal and unreliable.
The Critical Capability: Attention and Delivery
Even the most experienced and qualified expert fails if they cannot communicate effectively. Decision-makers must ask a simple but powerful question: can we listen to this person for the duration required?
Effective knowledge transfer is a professional skill, not a by-product of expertise.
The Most Dangerous Trap: Confirmation Bias Disguised as Fit
One of the most prevalent leadership failures is the misuse of “personal fit”. In reality, many leaders are not seeking expertise but validation.
Niels Brabandt makes a clear distinction: if you select advisors who merely confirm your existing beliefs, you are not investing in advice, you are investing in justification.
This leads to systemic issues such as nepotism, cronyism and ineffective decision-making structures that undermine organisational performance.
Transparency as a Leadership Standard
High-performing organisations apply transparency in their selection processes:
- clear criteria
- documented decision-making
- communicated outcomes
This approach not only improves decision quality but also strengthens trust within the organisation.
Conclusion: Selection as a Strategic Leadership Skill
How to find the right advice is not a tactical question, it is a strategic leadership capability. Niels Brabandt demonstrates that the difference between average and exceptional leadership lies in disciplined, evidence-based selection.
Leaders who master this capability do not merely consume advice. They transform it into measurable outcomes.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
There's a German idiom which says "Good advice is expensive," and that simply does not only mean you have to take money in your hands and spend it, it means it's pretty hard to find the right piece of advice. And that's what we're going to talk about today. After receiving a huge amount of emails in due course over the last 2 years where people often ask different aspects, some people said, "How do I find the right trainer?" Some people ask, "How do I find the right speaker for the event?" Some people said, "How do I find the right consultant, or the right interim manager, or the next employee, the next CEO? How do I find the right person with the right piece of knowledge, experience, whatever they have to contribute? How do I find that right person?" And that's what we're going to talk about today. How do I find the right advice?
Niels Brabandt
Because let's face it, outside today, when you look on the Internet, anyone today is entitled to talk about absolutely anything. When any kind of political crisis happens, within 5 minutes someone on Facebook is a global expert on exactly that matter and puts their opinion out there, sometimes even offering professional service in advisory how to deal with that, which is borderline ridiculous. And that is why we need to know how to find the right advice.
Niels Brabandt
So when we talk about this, first, of course, we have to talk about in which situation actually are we. And the situation is when you need advice, whatever it is, you need to define that more than simply saying, "I need advice." And the first aspect you have to look into is what time frame is it that you actually are dealing with? When you, for example, say, "Hey, we need people how to tell us how to do cold calls properly," and then we do cold calls. That's a typical training situation.
Niels Brabandt
So when you, for example, say, "Well, we don't want someone who only shows up for 2 days, and when we then implement it, they are not there anymore. We need some sort of ongoing weekly exchange program." That's more of a coaching approach. When you say, "No, someone should be sitting here daily," maybe you need to hire someone for that.
Niels Brabandt
Very important is always you need to know the direction. When now someone shows up, and that's a discussion we recently had in the industry where some people said, "Well, you know, coaching can be lifelong coaching." no. Absolutely not. Coaching, by definition, is always time-bound. You cannot mix it up with therapy, which some people do, and do unlicensed counseling, which, by the way, is illegal and extremely dangerous and also ethically absolutely unacceptable and immoral, by the way, but mainly dangerous for the person you put it on. So you need to know in which direction are you going?
Niels Brabandt
And I give you a very simple piece of advice here. You need to ask the person, "Is your service the right one that we are looking for?" I give you an idea. So when someone asks me for advice, I offer a very specific set of services. I offer training, speaking, coaching, consulting, mentoring, project, and interim management. That's it. And often project and interim management are fractional. That means I'm there for one day a week or 2 days, sometimes even only biweekly, sometimes twice per month, or whatever we agree. But when someone says, "Look, we are looking for someone to implement this AI software in my organization," which I could do for them. And then they say, "But we need someone who's here for the next 7 months straight." That's nothing I offer. I do not offer these interim mandates. I offer fractional interim mandates. Very rarely do I do these full-time mandates, and I never do something with a recruiting agency where they, "Oh, we're going to employ you on a temporary contract." That's not what I do. I'm self-employed. I work on a self-employed basis. I get paid for daily fees, and that's what I do.
Niels Brabandt
So sometimes you have the right piece of advice available, but the service is not a fit. Sometimes you have someone who pretends to have a great service. However, what they actually offer, the advice is just not worth the money. And when you look at it today, especially today, you have people who really claim that they can give you expertise on something where they, by definition, cannot have the expertise because they are lacking the experience.
Niels Brabandt
When I left university, so I studied teaching. My teaching degree, English and History, was my first qualification. Then I went to the pharmaceutical industry where I worked internationally from pharmaceuticals. I went to an American company, worked for the largest Microsoft partner. And then I worked in tech for quite a while, almost for a decade. And then I started my own business in the knowledge industry, which I built up and successfully sold, working freelance ever since with quite a high number of countries I worked in. So I bring some experience to the table, but that was built up by years and years and years of work.
Niels Brabandt
When people today say, "Look, I have done successful sales for 8 months, and now I'm going to become a sales advisor," that is, in most cases, not enough experience to advise companies on a global scale. Some people mix up experience with simply having a big ego or a loud mouth, or they simply have no self-doubt or no filters. And unfortunately, sometimes you meet leaders on the other side of the table who work exactly the same way, who simply say, "When you have the confidence, you can figure out everything else." No, you can't.
Niels Brabandt
So very important is the experience is sometimes something you need to have, and that is something which you cannot do with a fast forward button. There is no fast forward for experience. Experience is something you have or you do not have. By the way, experience is extremely valuable. Don't fall for the trap and saying, "Oh, due to that age, the person is unsuitable to lead young people." Look, you cannot take age and then simply say they are suitable for young people or not.
Niels Brabandt
I know some people who are in their mid-20s and are basically unsuitable for their own generation because they have such a different lifestyle than most of them that they have no connection to the real world. Often, these people grow up rich and then stay in a certain bubble, never have contact with the real working world. I stood in a factory hall for the first time when I was 14 years old, and I did this until I moved out of my parents' house to get money together to buy my first personal computer. I know how it is to work with your own hands: physical work, weekend work, holiday work, 3-shift system, physical hard labor, and that for years and years in a 3-shift system. I know all that before I ended academia and then went into different jobs.
Niels Brabandt
Many people don't have that. Some people do. Some people do not. However, besides the experience, you also need to have the qualification. And I know that immediately someone will kick off at that. However, simply saying, "I did it this way," does not entitle or qualify you to tell other people to say it in the exact same way, and then it works for them. Because when it worked for you, N equals one, as Frankus Peters says, is no evidence. When it worked for you, it does not mean that it works the same way for anyone else.
Niels Brabandt
When you made money with investing in Bitcoin or Apple or Google, and I don't give any financial advice here. When you say, "I invested in that piece, and I made money," it does not mean that anyone else on the planet will ever make money by doing exactly the same. It might be something where you simply had a lucky punch, or you were the right person in the right situation. So the qualification is something which tells you you have an understanding on a structural level. You took it apart. You took all the parts out. You understood every single part of it and how they work together. And then you can teach others when you're fully qualified.
Niels Brabandt
When you want to be a trainer, you need a trainer qualification. When you want to be a coach, you need coaching qualification. When you want to be a consultant, and so on and so forth, because qualification is crucially important. It tells people, "Are you able to do something?" When someone only once more tells me, "Mr. Babant, you know we have a training session, and I am fully pedagogically qualified to teach this staff. They are all in their 20s. I have 10 years of experience, and I have full pedagogical qualification." I love that. So first, great to have the experience.
Niels Brabandt
However, when you teach adults, it's not pedagogy. As the name said, PAD, Latin for the child, you are an andragogy. That's teaching adults, and you should know that when you're qualified. Oops for some people here. And when they say, "Oh, yeah, I'm fully methodologically and didactically qualified," then ask them what's the difference between methodology and didactics. And usually, death silence follows. Methodology is basically, how do you want to transport the knowledge from your brain to someone else's brain? And didactically means you choose the right items in the right order, in the right way, in the right place. So what will you teach in which order, in which situation? So that means didactical, methodological, and didactic qualifications are absolutely necessary.
Niels Brabandt
And that brings one bit in. You need to have scientific qualifications. And stop giving me excuses. Stop giving me excuses, because the usual excuses are "I can't afford that." Scientific qualifications, when you go on platforms such as edX or Coursera, are available from $49. When you say you do not have $49 and you live in an industrialized country, then you are not financially sound enough to be booked as any external person because you're obviously in a financially dangerous situation. So it's very important. You need the experience. You need the qualification, but you need the science bit, because when you simply tell people your opinion, "That I have to tell you is not worth much."
Niels Brabandt
Simply saying, "I did it this way. You do it the same way, and it works." That's called ego or birthright privileges. And a huge amount of consultancy and coaching out there is simply based on, "Oh, look, I did it this way, and you do it the same way. It works." Look, I sat down when I started working. I sat down, and my my first experience in sales was really, "Here are the yellow pages, and now call these doctors." Ice cold cold calling. I worked in a call center back in the days. It was called Energy Call, and that time was was very unpleasant, selling anything off the line from TV subscriptions to Premier to to today. It's called Sky to to to phone contact and whatnot else. I've been there, done that, making hundreds.
Niels Brabandt
I had one project where we sell jewelry to people, where we had to make appointments for jewelry sellers, and you're cold calling people in retail who work there. They have anything else to do than listening to you. So it's extremely important. The scientific bit tells you if you really understood the structure of what's behind, or if you simply say, "Look, I have done it this way. I'm just a chatty person," so I teach you how to be a chatty person. And then you realize, "Oh, other people's personality is not fitting." Yeah, well, then they are unsuitable. No, they are not. So you need to have the experience. You need to have the qualification, and that means you need to have scientific qualification, at least at some point in time.
Niels Brabandt
And when it comes to the implementation, and now there is a critical bit here. Please do not mix this up with going to the theater or to a comedy show, but I called it entertainment. It does not mean that someone has to be awfully funny. However, it needs to be someone. Let's say you want to have a training session for 2 days, 2 days from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. You need to be someone where people are able to listen to for some time, because just because you have the experience, the qualification, the science bit done does still not mean that you are someone where people actually like to listen to. And entertaining simply means, can you keep people's attention?
Niels Brabandt
That's why you usually do calls where you get to meet each other. And in these calls, you have to say, "Is this someone I can listen to?" And by the way, do not fall for the trap, and you need to be professionally qualified for that as well. Do not fall for the trap of unconscious biases where you simply say, "Yeah, I don't like them. They are so critical. I just like someone who's more positive." I mean, they have to agree with what I say. And I mean, this trainer just says, you know it's just—and usually people misuse one term. It's the term personal fit. They say it's not a personal fit. And what really happens is that leaders say, "Look, I think I'm pretty authoritarian as a leader, and it must be acceptable to be loud sometimes." I sometimes yell at people, and there's a good reason why I do that. And this trainer said, "I have to do what did he call it? Employee participation. One of this woke nonsense." You know, no, that's not a personal fit. He must be someone who says that authoritarian leadership is always okay. And yelling at people is, of course, a means of leadership. Sometimes you need to be loud sometimes. And when the person says, "You can't yell at people and humiliate them publicly," then it's not a personal fit. And no, no, you're basically not looking for a trainer, consultant, or advice. You're looking for rent-a-mouth. You're looking for someone who simply confirms your opinion. And unfortunately, that became a huge industry.
Niels Brabandt
The amount of consultancy out there where people sit down and say, "Oh, you talk about location opening. So what's the board level's opinion?" And then they say, "Well, the board level thinks we should open in location X, Y, Z, but we need to know if this is correct." And wonder or wonder, miracle, the consultancy company agrees that the board's idea is just totally correct. And by coincidence, they need a consultancy company to open that location. No way they pick the same one.
Niels Brabandt
So personal fit, when you are not professionally trained on unconscious biases, one aspect might happen. And I give you a real-world example here. People in a company said, "We need sales training because we have lots of people getting into sales from different qualifications." Perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with that. And then what happens is they said, "Oh, so the sales trainer is one of the best mates of our CEO." Okay. That's weird.
Niels Brabandt
Well, and then the training begins, and they realize on day one the person has no clue, no experience, no proof, just someone who has a loud mouth and a couple of bland ideas and a big, big ego, basically just likes to hear themselves talking. And after 12 days of awful training, they say, "It was a day. It was a waste of time from day one. We told you so, and you didn't do anything." And then the reaction of the CEO was—the CEO's reaction was, "Well, we're not going to do any training in the future. First, you are unthankful. And second, training is obviously not a fit for us. When you didn't like that blow, no one can help you." And that is a huge issue.
Niels Brabandt
Personal fit cannot be brought down to, "We are simply taking people who are at-living us all the time, who only say what we already believe, who do not challenge anything we say here, and who only come from our circle of friends, mates." It's basically nepotism, cronyism, and insider deals that you put forward there, pretending that this is anything of value. There's nothing wrong with a network when it's a quality-based network, and you can prove why you picked that person. As soon as people say, "Yeah, you know who's going to be. I have two amazing people here. The trainer is my former university mate, and the coach is my son who just got his coaching certificate." So here we go. We walk with—we work with these people. That's the reason why we now got compliance departments, because that kind of bribery happened way too often with corporate money.
Niels Brabandt
So you need to be able to serve the factor of transparency. When people simply say, "Everything that is done here is a pseudo-measure, a pseudo-activity only to at-lib the board and the leaders," then people will say, "That is no experience, no qualification, science bit not ticked. It's horrible to listen to, and it's only a personal fit for the people who made the decision here. Transparency zero, and we are all fully demotivated."
Niels Brabandt
However, when you do it right and you say, "Hey, we have a situation. I need this bit of advice in that kind of time frame. Our direction goes this way," you get the person where you say, "Hey, has the experience been there, done that? Has the qualification got the science bit right? When we met, it was absolutely brilliant. We could listen for hours. Everything went well. Total personal fit." So we told people, "This is going to be great." They confirmed that all the evaluations were amazing. That is the transparency you need to have. And when you do it this way, then you will find the right piece of advice. And I wish you all the best doing this in your organization.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "I think I need to discuss that more with you," feel free to get in touch anytime. Very important here is when you now listen to this or you basically watch this on YouTube, feel free to leave a like here. Thank you very much for doing so. Also, feel free to subscribe to my channel. Thank you very much for doing so as well. Leave a comment if you like.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, if you now say, "Hey, I really liked this," when you listen to this on Apple Podcasts or video or when you listen to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, then please leave a review there, five stars. Thank you very much for doing so as well. And of course, recommend this channel anywhere you like, online, offline, circle of friends, colleagues, in the Internet, anywhere you like. Leave it everywhere you like, because we're constantly growing, and we put all—we put all of this out there every week without charging anything for it. It's a lot of effort, and we are very thankful that this was widely recommended to receive the ranking that we actually receive. Thank you very much for doing so.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, when you now say, "Is there something which I can receive a bit more often than just weekly?" Yes, I promise at the beginning of the year we're going to have leadership tips, at least one per day for the whole year, meaning 365 tips during the year, and we are fully on track. We have YouTube Shorts. When you do not only subscribe to the YouTube channel, but you put the little bell in there, then you receive an average of only one short notification, either on your smartphone or on your computer per day, because that means you're never going to miss out on any of our tips. It's either me or external experts. We put lots of effort into this also as well. Fully qualified the experts we talk to.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, when you say, "Hey, besides YouTube or other other options," yes, of course, you can also just listen to Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Feel free to follow me there as well. Or you go to my website, and then you can see what I do. I offer professional training, speaking, coaching, consulting, mentoring, project, or interim management. Many of project interim management is fractional, so you can have it in any kind of scale. Don't need to cost much money.
Niels Brabandt
And very important here is when you now say, "I have to contact you, but I really cannot put it in the comment section. It is too private. It's too personal," or it's simply corporate secrets. Then just contact me via email. Most people choose this way: nb@nb-networks.com. I'm looking forward to hearing from you so we can get in touch with that. Either you can ask for something very specific of my services, or you just have a chat with me. Both is totally possible.
Niels Brabandt
And when you now say, "Hey, do we have live sessions?" Actually, yes. When you go to expert.nb-networks.com, that's where you find the live sessions. Put the email address in there. When you subscribe to this, you only receive one email. No worries. Every Wednesday morning, one email. It's 100% content at figure and tea. You get full access to all the articles, full access to all the video cast, full access to all the podcasts, including the old ones, meaning in the English and German language, there are now almost 500 in the German language and over 500 in the English language already out there. So lots of content that you can use or listen to. Thank you very much for doing so. So I'm looking forward to seeing you there.
Niels Brabandt
And by the way, in every leadership letter, we always announce the date and the time when we're going to have the next live session. You don't even have to register. The access link is already in the email. However, we only announce our live sessions in this leadership letter. It's the only way to access it. So it's really worth—it's all value. It's no advertising. It's really worth signing up for that. And by the way, if you now say you'd like to have a live session but a private one, just drop me an email, and then we get a private in there as well. Only costs 15 minutes. Very easy for you.
Niels Brabandt
And of course, feel free to follow me on social media. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow me on Instagram. Leave a like on Facebook and subscribe to my channel. When you do all of that, by the way, no matter on which kind of media you contact me, I answer every single message within 24 hours or less. So I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Niels Brabandt
The most important part, however, is always the one I mentioned at the end: apply, apply, apply what you heard here, because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive outcome and the positive consequence, the positive result that you want to have in your personal life, your corporate life, your business life, anywhere you want. But apply, apply, apply what you heard. You only see the positive change if you apply what you heard.
Niels Brabandt
So at the end of this podcast as well, as at the end of the video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say: thank you very much for your time.