meetings as tutoring: bias toward action & practice

Last fall, I suggested that good meetings shouldn’t (just) answer questions but also should expand people’s capacity. In other words, it helps to think of meetings more like a high school tutoring session (i.e., building skills) rather than a professor’s office hours (i.e., knowledge-keeper dropping wisdom). 

I’d like to start getting more concrete about how to do this effectively. 

THE INSIGHT

When someone I’m leading asks me for advice, I almost always start by asking myself, “If I were in their situation, what would I do?” This, it turns out, is a really useful self-prompt for helping me unlock a lot of specific, actionable insight. How great would it be, though, if this person already knew what I would do in their situation and could thus solve the problem without my assistance — we could skip the meeting or tackle thornier issues! 

This is the key insight: Your team grows their capacity the more they can guess how you would act in a given situation. The purpose of meetings, then, is to teach them how you think.

PUTTING THIS TO WORK

Suppose a direct report, Jordan, comes to me asking for help with a tricky situation. Armed with this tutoring-as-office-hours mindset, I approach the conversation with Jordan as an opportunity to train Jordan to think like me (just as much as it is an opportunity to solve the situation per se). A bit more specifically, when Jordan raises the issue with me, my goal is to help Jordan get good at asking (and answering!) the question, “What would Ben do if he were in this situation?” To the extent that Jordan can approximate my thinking, Jordan’s capacity to solve problems without me balloons. 

How can you teach Jordan to think like you? Practice this skill! Starting today, develop the following habit: Every time your direct report asks you for help, first prompt them to guess what you’ll say.

They’ll often get it wrong — in which case you’ll need to correct them — but over time they’ll get better with more experience guessing correctly. 

There’s one additional benefit to this approach: Noticing gaps between their guess of your answer and your actual answer will make it more obvious to you what general skills your teammates need developing.

-Ben