Both as a high school English teacher and as a dissertation coach, I have lot of experience giving people advice on their writing. As student, a collaborator and researcher (and occasional blogger) I have a decent amount of experience receiving advice on my writing. I have observed that there are two basic approaches. Both aim to help the writer produce a better piece, but they come from very directions and have quite different goals.
(Side note: Unless someone specifically asks for it, proofreading is really not nearly as valuable as so many people seem to think. Proofreading a piece that is not yet otherwise in its final form can be a little bit useful, but the fact is that many words and sentences and even paragraphs are going to change, creating numerous opportunities for little mistakes to be (re-)introduced later, anyway. This kind of feedback is not advice, as it doesn’t actually help the writer to know whether the piece works and/or give them any ideas for how to improve it.)
The approach that I aim for tries to build on what is there in the piece, to help the author do a better job of meeting their goals, of communicating what they want to say. This approach requires reading the piece for the author’s perspective and asking questions about it to give advice that is centered on them and their hopes for the piece. Sure, this sort of advice might result in wholesale reworking on the piece, but only to make it more clear what they are trying to get it, and to improve the piece’s ability to convince others or to convey their idea to others. This approach is centered on them and their thinking, helping them to write the best version of their piece that they can be most proud of. This approach is all about supporting them. I learned to do this from my own best teachers—because they were focused on helping my grow as thinker, rather than just tearing apart where I was at the time.
The alternative approach is centered on the concerns and interests of the advisor, instead of the writer. The advisor thinks about what they would most like to read, or other ideas that the draft remind them of. They offer suggestions for making the piece more like something that they would write, perhaps stylistically or even in the ideas and/or perspective in the piece. This kind of advice is actually less about improving the piece than is about making it feel more intuitive to the advisor.
Of course, there are a couple of circumstances in which the second approach is actually quite appropriate. If the advisor is actually a gatekeeper who gets to decide what is published on their platform, they may be concerned about the voice or content that their platform consciously tries to cultivate. They may make exceptions sometimes, but they know that they will not do anything like that in his case. Such advisors are in a position to put their own preferences ahead of the writer’s own concerns, as the writer likely seeks the piece to be included there. In such cases, the writer can decide whether it is worth it to them to give in on what they wanted to say or on their voice in order to be included on that platform. Though that advisor is trying to exercise a lot of power, it remains up to the writer to accept that deal, or not.
The other circumstance is much much more rare. There are occasional advisers who are really good at having a feel for the target audience of readers—as opposed to just a sense of their own personal preferences. Such advisors would not actually be pushing their own voice and/or ideas, but rather channeling what the that desired audience might respond to best. That might call for some serious shifting of the piece, even if it shift somewhat from the author’s original intentions.
This dynamic is not limited to advise on a piece of writing. I first noticed this dynamic when I was a teacher and paid close attention to the advice that principals and assistant principals give teachers. I cannot tell you how many times I had directed at me or heard directed at others advise along the lines of, “Well, when I was teaching, I would…” What I never heard from them was, “This never worked for me, but I think something that would work for you is…” On the other hand, I did hear senior teachers say, “You should watch how [other teacher] handles that. I think that they do something that would work for you.”
As a teacher, I want to help my students to better express what they want to say. If it is not working or I do not think that it can work, I might engage in a conversation to find something related from their own perspective and values that they might want to say instead. But I always always try to find the kernel of what is really important to them to help them express that in a way that is true to themselves. Obviously, as a dissertation coach, the goal is a form of writing that does not feel natural or authentic to anyone, but that only makes it more important that the ideas and perspective are deeply grounded in their own experiences and views.
There is something deeply frustrating about advice to writers (or others) that marginalizes their views and goals. Sure, it might yield a better piece, though that is questionable. It is simply more likely to yield a piece that is more agreeable to the advisor, but that is not the same thing.