Leadership and the Soft Skill of Giving Advice

Be humble enough to know whether you're the right person. Understand the limitations of your knowledge and don't overstep.
While many leaders are story tellers, giving advice isn't an opportunity to talk about you. You are not the subject. Your focus is your advisee's question.
Make sure you understand the nature of the question. Is the advice seeker testing an idea, seeking help with process or trying to make a decision?
Summarize at the end of the discussion so your colleague has a sense of closure and direction.
Be prepared to be available for a follow-up discussion. For Advice Seekers:
Make sure your leader has time to answer your question.
Make sure she is the right person to talk to about this particular issue.
Make sure you know what you're asking and why. Sometimes advice seeking is a procrastination technique. Don't waste your boss's time if you don't have a real question.
Be prepared to listen. Be prepared to be challenged. Be prepared to look at your question in a different way.
Say thank you and follow up. Let your advisor know how you fared and what happened. The advisor/advisee relationship is the microcosm of the leader/staff relationship. If it's working well, it's not one sided; everybody benefits. If you have a leader whose door is open, who listens, who helps frame questions individually, you probably have a leader who does that collectively. And you're lucky. It's not just the museum staff who benefits, but the organization as well. And by the way, after listening carefully, our lunchtime conversation seemed to be mostly about process, how to synch the various tasks necessary in a job search. Ideas were offered, summarized, and suggestions followed up. Now we wait to see what worked. Joan Baldwin