Have you ever found yourself getting frustrated with a
subordinate's inability to understand your simple instructions?
Or, ever given a subordinate a task that seemed simple to you,
only to have the results mangled? How could such a thing
happen when your instructions were so straightforward?
Blame your brain. It's just trying to do things efficiently but, in
the process, your brain makes it all too easy for you to leave out
the details of an issue you know well. Because of how our
brains are designed to work, you now are suffering under the
dreaded "Curse of Expertise!"
The Curse of Expertise, which is not the way we usually think of
all our accumulated experience and knowledge, pulls a veil of
simplicity over a person's eyes. It means that tasks you have
learned to do almost automatically now seem basically simple
and straightforward. As a result, when you delegate them to a
subordinate for the first time, you tend to give the sort of
instructions that make sense to you rather than the sort that
would make sense to someone who doesn't have your
experience.
Wait A Minute! Expertise Is A Curse?
You don't do this on purpose, of course; you are simply trying to
be concise, to cut through the tangle of complexity and get right
to the heart of the matter. The problem is that this "simple"
explanation can sail right over the head of a less experienced
person. And this less experienced person might not feel
comfortable saying, "Wait a minute, I don't understand. Could
you go over that again?" Instead, he will often say something
like, "Yes sir," and head out to give it his best shot. Sometimes
he pulls it off and is successful, in spite of your less than
thorough instructions/explanations. But at other times he comes
back with less than satisfactory results.
How does your brain contribute to the "curse of expertise?" The
answer has to do with how your brain stores the memory of your
expertise. In the name of efficiency, the brain takes your
memories of what you have experienced and learned, separates
them, and stores them in two different areas. To one area you
have ready access, but the other area – you might call it "deep
storage" – is much less consciously accessible.
The area you have ready access to stores experiences that you
use to reason with; this is the area you use when you think
through new experiences or consciously call on past experiences
to understand something going on now. (Thank goodness it's
ready at hand!) The other area, however, stores procedures or
information that you have learned to do thoroughly, without
consciously thinking about it. It turns out that it is very useful,
in terms of efficient use of storage space, that you don't have to
bring these memories to the conscious level when you want to
use them. Let's look at some examples.
Think about learning to tie your shoes, or walk, or ride a bicycle.
In the case of learning to ride a bicycle, you have to learn how to
keep your balance, how to pedal, how pedaling affects your
balance, how to steer, how to stop, etc. All of these steps go into
that deep storage area in your brain and, once they are there, they
tend to stick around. That is why you can get on a bicycle after
not having ridden one for years and pedal happily away. This is
how the "curse of expertise" works for you!
Procedural Memory
Brain experts call the area of the brain that stores procedures and
experiences that are so thoroughly learned that they seem
automatic "procedural memory." That means that all of the
relevant information about riding a bike is available for you,
anytime you need it, without your having to take the time to
consciously think it through ("Get on the bike and make tiny
back and forth adjustments to tire position to maintain self in
upright position; propel self through time and space by turning
pedals with feet, all the while adjusting tire position" – and so
forth.)
This also means, however, that whereas all the bike riding
information is stored in your Procedural Memory and can be
used, it is not consciously available to you. This is both good
news and not so good news. The good news is that you don't
have a lot of details getting in the way of thinking about new
problems. The bad news is that not having to think about all the
details of a given procedure, every time you carry it out, can
result in making it seem overly simple. Have you ever tried to
write down, step by step, how to tie a shoe? It takes more steps
than you would think, and yet just about all of us who got out of
kindergarten can do it without thinking about it.
You have just run up against the fact that, although you know
how to tie a shoe, your procedural memory won't supply the
details readily. And remember: each of us has our own, unique
procedural memory. What's in mine may very well not be in
yours.
1T & 3Q: How To Make Procedural Memory Work For You
To keep procedural memory from getting in the way of
providing the detail that makes for good delegation of tasks and
coaching, use a technique that I call the "1T & 3Q" process: that
stands for "One Task and Three Questions."
The "One Task" part of the process is to define for the
subordinate, in clear behavioral terms, what "success" in the task
or project will look like. Then ask the person these three
questions:
1. What do you see as the challenges you will face in
accomplishing the goal of this task or project?
2. What is your estimate of the time that you will need?
3. What support do you feel you will need?
These questions, and the discussion they invite, will help you
open your procedural memory vault so that you will have
conscious access to the details that give your subordinate the
information he or she needs.
The Final Word
Don't assume that what you know is "common sense" that
everyone else can easily see. When you are assigning tasks to
subordinates, think carefully about how to describe the outcome
you would like to see and then describe it that way to the
assignee. And then ask those three magic questions. It may take
a bit longer, but it's the key to successful delegation, coaching,
and mentoring.
Remember, People are not your most important asset,
The RIGHT People are!
To Hire the Best, Test!
To Reveal Management Potential, Test!
To Diagnose Problem Behavior, Test!
Until next time, all the best,
