During a recent lunch conversation with my colleagues we discussed the idea that you often cannot easily see the world from another person’s perspective because you cannot unlearn what you know or remove your biases completely. In engineering this sometimes manifests with senior team members (including me, to my shame) sometimes saying, “Oh, this is will be quick and easy” without necessarily explaining why because the answer seems so obvious.
But it isn’t obvious. Not to everyone. And if you quickly chime in that a problem is trivial then you’ve potentially set off spurious thoughts in other team members that are unhelpful. Wait, why is that easy? It doesn’t seem easy. I must be missing something. Or maybe I just suck.
Obviously this is not the intent of the comment. In fact, we think we’re helping! We assume in a perfect world people will always ask questions and feel safe in doing so, but the senior team members have transferred the onus to the junior team members in this scenario. Worse still, they have potentially robbed them of a learning opportunity based on their personality and gumption.
The lesson here is a simple one, but it is still hard for me. That is why I have it on a sticky note on my monitor during video calls.
Listen more and speak less.
Provide intent, not instruction.
Don’t chart the course, but course correct.
Cash Flow 