Is there such a thing as a stupid question?

November 13, 2019 1:55 PM

I've recently been promoted to a position that has me supervising new people in three knowledge areas. I'm very familiar with one of the areas, less so with the other two. I've worked at my company for 13 years and been at the manager level for 6, so I'm not new around here. I know all the of these people well from working closely with them before the promotion.

My question is, in the two areas in which I'm not as familiar, is it a good idea to ask my new reports very basic, possibly actually stupid, questions about their work? Think like the level of "how do I make a new folder in Windows explorer" or "how do I combine files in Acrobat" except specific to their software - super basic stuff but not immediately obvious to me because I haven't worked with this software before. I can definitely ask IT these questions, or look up every single one in the manuals, but it's easier and faster to ask the person I'm already working with while we're in the moment. I certainly want to foster an environment where no one feels bad for asking questions, however, I don't want to undermine myself by seeming unqualified. Is this a real risk or is my impostor syndrome getting the better of me? How should I be navigating this? Just for demographics, I'm between 5 and 20 years younger than about 2/3 of the people and the same age or a bit older than the rest and I'm a woman.

posted by CheeseLouise to Work & Money (20 answers total)

As a fellow young woman who works with finicky tech stuff and management, I would absolutely NOT ask basic level questions of your reports. It would be annoying in an older man and I think fatal for a young woman. Look things up and drill yourself on your own time til the easy stuff is second nature. Those kinds of questions are a fast and avoidable way to make a bad and persistent first impression. It’s HARD to recover from a bad start and regain people’s buy-in after you’ve lost their confidence.

You can still foster an environment of asking questions by responding respectfully to questions, which sounds like your modus already.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 2:00 PM on November 13, 2019 [15 favorites]

No one expects the boss to know everything, but it can be irritating to have to stop and explain basics all the time. So frontload it.

I’d suggest picking one of the more experienced members of each group and asking for a tutorial in the very basics. Alternatively shadow a new hire. Once you have the dead simple stuff under your belt then asking questions in the moment should be a lot less onerous process for everyone involved.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:09 PM on November 13, 2019 [13 favorites]

Presumably folks know that you are new to this software, and that wasn't a disqualification for you in being in this position. So is it possible to schedule a meeting with one of them that's like a software training? Or could you ask IT to do it? If they're using it regularly they will undoubtedly have tips and tricks. I think faking at knowing something (which I don't think you're doing) is worse that acknowledging you don't know it. Why would you know it? It hasn't been part of your job.

Rather than asking lots of little questions, I'd suggest having someone teach it to you, and then you can make a list of a few questions at a time to ask.

These aren't stupid questions.
posted by bluedaisy at 2:09 PM on November 13, 2019 [7 favorites]

(And for the love of everything, if you don't ask a question, please don't call it a stupid question! You'd undermine yourself that way. Don't apologize for not knowing something that hasn't been part of your job to know.)
posted by bluedaisy at 2:10 PM on November 13, 2019 [7 favorites]

Asking your team questions, even basic ones, about the software they are building is not stupid questions. Asking them if maybe they can work harder or take less vacations, or if they are sure the application is designed in the appropriate way or if cool thing that Google does is the way what they are doing should be done - those are stupid questions coming from new management.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:13 PM on November 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

Find a tutorial and do it. There are a lot of them on YouTube. If your software is in-house or too specialized, then read some basic documentation. Going the extra mile in this way makes you a good manager.
posted by amtho at 2:31 PM on November 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

I would recommend working through any materials that may be available. I think that show of effort would go a long way toward boosting your own confidence, as well as showing others that you have done something toward improving your knowledge on your own.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 2:54 PM on November 13, 2019 [3 favorites]

I personally respect people who ask any question, but it may create resentment. Instead, spend significant time cross-training with these staff members, and ask them to work with you to create documentation for the work they do. I helped a weak staff member create documentation, and I learned a lot. I ended up writing most of it, but it was useful.
posted by theora55 at 3:06 PM on November 13, 2019

Since they know you're not very familiar with the software, maybe pick one of them who seems reasonably good at teaching, or with whom you have some measure of rapport, and say, "I'd like to get more familiar with this. Can you walk me through how you normally do [procedure], from when you first get assigned the task until you can mark it complete?"

That should cover a lot of the very basics, and at least give you the vocabulary to ask for specific help if you need it.

Don't call them stupid questions. If you have to, call them beginner questions. And don't apologize for not knowing.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:24 PM on November 13, 2019

I would agree that asking for a training session is fine; asking for help in the moment with very basic stuff is not. It's not that you don't want them to know you aren't an expert, especially if they have no reason to expect you to be. It's about showing that their time is valuable.

I am definitely someone who would always rather ask for help than consult the manual, and there are a lot of times when that's a great trait--when you are trying to do something advanced, or recreate the experience of a beginning user, or get insight into a process. But if you just need to know how to Do A Thing, spending 2 minutes of your time looking it up is going to be a lot more respectful than interrupting your employee, explaining what you need, interrupting their workflow, and derailing them for probably 5 minutes so they can spend 30 seconds on what would have taken you 2 minutes.

tl;dr - if someone NEEDS me to explain something, I'm happy to do it. If they WANT me to explain because it's easier for them than looking it up, that means they consider their convenience more valuable than mine, and I don't love that. Training sidesteps that entirely, because by scheduling it, you are being respectful of their time.
posted by gideonfrog at 3:50 PM on November 13, 2019 [6 favorites]

I'm an engineering manager. When I start on a new team I say, upfront, "I'm going to ask a lot of basic questions because it's how I learn best, so please bear with me as I come up to speed."

Ask about documentation that they'd give a new hire. This is a good time to see what the team's onboarding process looks like -- if they don't have one, consider creating this as a part of taking over management. You don't have to write it all yourself -- ask your reports to help flesh out the areas that they're experts on -- but putting together a consistent process and documentation structure will help you when new folks join your team in addition to helping you understand what the team is doing.
posted by kdar at 4:01 PM on November 13, 2019 [4 favorites]

My former boss had a degree in SW engineering, and he regularly asked me questions about how to work Word, set up files, lists in emails, etc. He was management, and he knew a ton about how to manage people, as well as software development. That didn't mean he knew how to set up email systems. I managed the intranet files for his direct reports, etc. Things that only they could see, but not everyone (he had 1,200 people under him, so obviously not all of them could see those files).

Just because he had a degree in SW engineering, I didn't expect him to know how to do all of these things. It was my job to support him, because his job was managing an entire division of SW engineers. So what if he didn't know all of the intricacies of the email system or the intranet?

He was obviously very intelligent, or they wouldn't have made him head of SW Engineering.

BTW, I also worked for a guy who was head of the former Tymnet company, and he hand wrote his emails and I typed them out for him on a thermal printer and he marked them up and then I sent them. Being a leader doesn't mean you know everything. Both of these guys were very smart in their fields, and they were also good managers of people. FWIW, YMMV.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 4:10 PM on November 13, 2019

Voting for ask for training (or to sit in on training if they routinely do training for other people) and a pointer to the training materials - there may be several variations, and your folks will probably be able to recommend the best ones.

However you frame it, ask for their assistance in pre-scheduled appointments rather than stopping them in their planned work to come help you.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:21 PM on November 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

The only thing worse than a boss who has no idea what their workers do is a boss who has a mistaken idea of what their workers do. Ask questions.
posted by kevinbelt at 4:37 PM on November 13, 2019 [2 favorites]

No, only stupid answers.
posted by patnok at 4:40 PM on November 13, 2019

I am the Person Who Knows ADP at my company, and other people in my department ask me "stupid" questions all the time. About the most basic stuff.

I LOVE IT. Here is why:

If people are asking me questions about basic actions before they take them, I can be pretty sure they're not poking around in the system fucking my important shit up because of their incompetence or lack of knowledge.

I don't want my shit fucked up, they don't want that either, so they ask.

If someone seems to be asking a lot of basic questions every day, I will ask them to schedule an hour for us to sit down together for an in depth sesh to really go over stuff. I think it would be great if you proactively asked your new team to do this with whatever you're wanting to know more about.

Don'ts:
- don't string it out and interrupt them while they're working unless it's very important
-don't interrupt someone in the middle of an explanation, let them finish a thought then go back to your question
-don't come back with the same question 15 times Karen I will fucking cut you

Dos:
-schedule this time
-frame it as a learning session for yourself
-frame it also as wanting to learn the team's process and procedures from the ground up
-take notes
-thank people for their time!
posted by phunniemee at 4:45 PM on November 13, 2019 [5 favorites]

There are places where you can work where if you didn't ask questions it would be a red flag. Part of your job taking over a department is to figure out why they do the things they do and especially to figure out if they don't know why they do the things they do or that the reasons why have evaporated into time and space. Google as I remember it essentially fetishizes both the manager and the new hire as clueless people who help us to figure out that we are clueless too. I think lots of people here have ways for you to make it less burdensome that are great. Don't forget though that its supposed to be uncomfortable at some point for both you and them because you should be asking questions that help the team understand itself or understand that it doesn't understand itself.
posted by Rubbstone at 5:00 PM on November 13, 2019

You should ask questions. For example, if there is something at issue and your subordinate gives a technical answer as to why to choose A rather than B, I think there is nothing wrong with saying, "Tell me what the difference is?" Ask the question again if the answer is technical; ask it until you can understand, at least metaphorically or in terms of budget or future technology, what the difference is.

A manager is not necessarily a technical expert. Someone has to bridge the technical and the purposeful, strategic, tactical issues and that's what you've been chosen to do. Asking questions AND UNDERSTANDING at least at a metaphorical level, is essential so you can report upwards and support your group's agenda, budget, technical choices, etc.
posted by tmdonahue at 5:12 PM on November 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

You have a limited budget to ask questions, so try to spend it on big-picture stuff that is hard to get from instruction manuals, or answering questions when you've spent time trying to figure it out yourself first.

As to whether you should be trying to foster an atmosphere where people feel ok asking questions, have you observed that the team has a problem with this? If not, it doesn't seem like a good idea to get people to change behavior.
posted by inkyz at 7:46 PM on November 13, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm one of those people who have generally have had a manager reasonably versed in my field. During the times that I worked in a technical position with a manager who didn't have even basic knowledge of the technial bits in my field, I found myself not being able to respect them, and found it ... difficult to not let that show. They, or I, never lasted more than 3 months together. You want to be aware if any direct report you'd be asking might have similar temperament.

With that said, I generally really like sharing knowledge, but I hate someone using me for google. With one co-worker I started replying to his more basic questions with "Oh, I've got a great link for that." and would send him a lmgtfy.com link with the correct terms. Due to concentration issues, someone asking a 30 second question effectively seems to destroy at least 5 minutes of work time. I've worked with a lot of people who feel similar to interruptions, and not wanting to be google.

I'm assuming that your direct reports are aware that you don't have basic knowledge (yet) in the software that they're using. For a person of my temperament, I'd much rather you asked to book some time to go over a bunch of things, as opposed to using me instead of google. 5,15,30,60 minutes, whatever the amount of time. The point is trying to make it a knowledge transfer, instead of a string of interruptions. A knowledge transfer implies you're looking to learn/remember. Using me as google says you're not looking to learn/remember. Heck, the same co-worker I mentioned kept wanting to ask me to convert /cidr to .netmask because I could do it faster than he could input it into some sites I sent him links to (I hadn't started lmgtfy'ing him yet).

As I said, I love sharing knowledge, and while I haven't gotten along well with non-technical managers, it's in large part because they were completely content to know nothing about how I did what I did, while still somehow wanting/thinking they can direct that beyond just setting "here's the priorities of what we want." They were walking examples of the Dunning Kruger effect. If you were working to actually gain knowledge of what I did, that would make me respect you.
posted by nobeagle at 7:50 AM on November 14, 2019