--- title: Do I Control, Advise or Guide? description: Do I control, advise or guide? The answer changes everything about how we build community. --- [Tim McCarthy & BGF | Blog ](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org) # [Do I Control, Advise or Guide?](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/do-i-control-advise-or-guide) Written by [Tim McCarthy](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/author/tim-mccarthy) | Jul 1, 2025 2:57:59 PM   This month's book recommendation, by Brad Feld, is a guide for building community. Brad tracks decades of work that led Boulder, Colorado to become a "Silicon Valley" community in a relatively unknown town. The book reads to me as much more than a primer for a start-up community, though that's of great interest to our foundation work. It reads as a primer for life. Feld points out the crucial difference between advice and guidance, and the book often cautions against the dangers of any individual leader trying to control community building. This distinction got me thinking about my own leadership style and how I interact with others. I asked Claude, my AI assistant, to define control, advice, and guidance: *"Control" implies a desire to dictate behavior, while "guide" suggests leading or directing someone with their best interests in mind. Guidance focuses on empowering individuals to make their own informed decisions, whereas control seeks to impose a specific outcome. "Advice," when given constructively, can be a part of guidance, but when delivered with a controlling tone, it can be perceived negatively.* When we are being helpful, whose interests come first? Hint: Brad's soon-to-be-published new book is titled: ***"Give First."*** The controlling approach might have worked in previous generations, but times have changed. Working with loved ones, friends, employees, and peers today requires recognizing that strength is in community.  I now ask myself: - Am I supporting someone to advance my interest or theirs?  - Do I really know what their interests are? - Do they know what their interests are? Today, we each have far more control over our own situation than ever before. Passive resistance has become an art form.  So, you will rarely notice when someone in the organization disagrees with your (command and control) approach…until it’s too late. In a scene from the mindless comedy, "Old School”, Will Ferrell announces to the party "we're going streaking through the quad!" and keeps yelling and laughing as he runs naked out of the building and down the street, never noticing that no one is following him. The humor is based on truth. Had it not been a comedy, Ferrell's character would have asked his friends first, then everyone at the party, where they would like to go—if they wanted to go anywhere at all. True leadership means being sure people want to join in before you start running naked. The lesson from both Brad Feld's community building work and Will Ferrell's fictional streaking adventure is the same: Effective leaders gather and guide rather than control, and they always put the community’s interest first. Peace. Tim McCarthy   [tim@thebusinessofgood.org ](mailto:tim@thebusinessofgood.org) [www.thebusinessofgood.org](http://www.thebusinessofgood.org)        ##### Quote of the Month: Leonard Cohen “The birds they sang At the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what has passed away Or what is yet to be Ah, the wars they will be fought again The holy dove, she will be caught again Bought and sold, and bought again The dove is never free Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in” ---Leonard Cohen     ##### Song of the Month:  “Drive”, by Caamp Editor’s Note: Imagine a summer night on the river in Chicago, a venue called the Salt Shed with a view of the city in the background on a moonlit night.  Your arm around your daughter and wife, her husband and friends nearby.  That was the scene when I first heard this song. Favorite lyric:  *“No one knows how long this lasts* *Try and make it sweet* *All or lives and futures past* *We may never meet**”*   [Listen to the full song here](https://youtu.be/3mAa7wbhYfc?feature=shared)       ##### Book of The Month: “Startup Communities”, by Brad Feld Editor’s Note: Feld’s writing is thorough and accessible.  It reflects the foundation’s experience in economic gardening in our own hometown “to a t”.   Favorite excerpt – if you read nothing else, read Chapter 5 which reads more like “how to build a happy life” than how to build a community. *“Be Inclusive* *Play a non-zero-sum or positive sum game* *Be mentorship driven* *Have porous boundaries* *Give people assignments* *Experiment and fail fast”*   [Read it for yourself here](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7687074446)       ##### Truly Funny: The Ninth of Ten Children I came of age from 1955 (age 3) to 1968 (16) as the ninth of ten children and two parents living in a 2,500 sq ft, five-bedroom, two-bathroom house.  The characteristics of these twelve Irish Catholics ranged from extreme introvert to extreme extrovert, all of whom aspired to bend the chaos in their favor.  Reflecting on my experiences, a good comedian could create humor from the following truths. - We never had a station wagon, mini-van or SUV.  Do the visual on (usually) eight or nine humans in 1963 Buick.  Yep, four in the front, five in the back, arranged by size and weight and maneuverability.  Doors exploded as soon as the car stopped. - Bathing at young ages was an experience; imagine being the youngest in water used for more than one child.  And some summer Saturday nights being sent to Lake Erie (over the bank) with a bar of soap and a towel. - We had a milkman who delivered one or two crates of dairy products at least three times a week - Note: Disposable diapers had not been invented. - Do the visual on my 4’ 11” former professional journalist mom having her first of seven children at 36 while managing 4-, 6- and 7-year-old boys. - She was saved by a cleaning woman (Portuguese immigrant named Mrs. Kelly) who came three days a week to (also) keep 12 people in clean clothes using one washing machine and a commercial ironing machine (called a mangle). - The only restaurants I remember going to were for family events or after funerals, but a summer after dinner treat was Morrissey’s ice cream shop. - All but three of us had at least one broken bone in our childhood – lucky Dad was a doctor.  And every one of us had at least ten stitches, mostly sewn into our skin while we sat atop the kitchen freezer, the same spot also used for our haircuts.  - In the morning and evenings, pounding on the bathroom doors and yelling was so constant that, like living near train tracks, you longer heard it. - Mom used a referee’s whistle to call us home from the neighborhood. - Someone was always telling someone else what to do - Until our big brothers got into business and took us out, I don’t remember having things like real steak or real shrimp.  My Mom was a great baker but cooked (by necessity) like a school lunch lady. - Each one of us can remember the day, time and place we looked around and found out our family had already gone home.  Note: Mom was great with head counts, Dad…not so much.         [View full post](https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/do-i-control-advise-or-guide) ```json { "@context" : "http://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Tim McCarthy" }, "dateModified" : "2025-07-01T14:57:59.841Z", "datePublished" : "2025-07-01T14:57:59Z", "headline" : "Do I Control, Advise or Guide?", "image" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 400, "url" : "https://6374779.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6374779/07-2025%20Do%20I%20Control%2c%20Advise%20or%20Guide%20%281%29.png", "width" : 700 }, "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://blog.thebusinessofgood.org/do-i-control-advise-or-guide", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "height" : 60.0, "url" : "https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/6374779/Logo%20Symbol%20square-2.png", "width" : 60.0 }, "name" : "| Blog" } } ```