Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Spoon feeding vs encouraging self service

A team mate just pinged me with a problem statement. Instead of giving the answer right away, I led him through the process of understanding the problem itself. And he got it soon enough. But when I asked him to conclude or tell me what he understood and what his course of action would be, he clammed up. Or at least it seemed that way, because he didn't answer soon enough, and I was quite impatient to know whether it worked.

So then I said this... it's not a novel idea, but I've put it in my own words, and am quite happy with it, so here goes...

I apologize if that felt condescending. It is never my intention. Whenever someone comes to me with a question, I like to help by guiding them to understand the question/problem itself in the first place. If I give them the answer, they won't know the method of arriving at it. When we understand a problem, the solution feels very obvious. So wrapping our head around a problem is really the key to any solution. For me, the bonus in this way of helping is that, the questioner may then be able to arrive at their own method of solving the problem... alternative solutions! And that's how I get to learn too! So I'm being selfish, really.

Later, he pinged back saying he got what I was trying to do and he appreciated that style of knowledge sharing, and he felt comfortable approaching me with questions. That put me at ease.

I don't like to offend people, and I am quite non-confrontational, but I also love sharing knowledge in a way that truly helps people enable themselves to find their own answers rather than spoon-feeding. I am mostly scared of how others might perceive the way I say certain things, but I know my intentions are right. If i don't think the person on the other side is open to my style of response, I just shut up and walk away, or I do the least necessary bit and then walk away.