Teaching for non-teachers
May 31, 2023 8:42 AM Subscribe
I have a new hire who is earnest and hardworking but is just not picking up what I'm putting down when I walk through processes and concepts with him. Can you recommend resources for me to learn to teach better/differently?
My job involves a fair amount of somewhat nuanced, judgment-based, semi-technical work (e.g. getting unclear/messy spreadsheets and turning them into a harmonized format, making decisions about what's in-policy based on a nuanced understanding of our rules, communicating questions back to data providers across a sometimes-difficult language gap). I have a team of two people that do this work, and have had folks rotate every 1-2 years since we started the team in 2019 so I've taught a total of five people to do this work over the last few years. I always struggle with the best way to communicate this material, and it takes longer than I'd expect for folks to get the hang of it. I think a lot of that is on me and my communication.
I've never been formally taught to teach, although I do try to emulate things I've seen others do (e.g. having the person I'm teaching walk me through their thinking, explaining why I do things a certain way, keeping clear records of prior transactions that are very accessible to anyone on the team as a reference, job aids in multiple formats like checklist/explainer documents/video). I also try to make myself very approachable for questions (and, based on the questions I get, I've been very successful at that), although sometimes at some point I find I need to push a team member to at least try to answer/research their question before coming to me so that they're familiar with other resources. I also try to encourage them to go to the other junior team member with questions, as it's helpful to both, although if I don't jump in sometimes with best practices, it can sometimes lead to shared bad habits going unchecked.
I have ADHD and struggled for years with traditional teaching styles (particularly lecture-style learning) so I'm extremely sensitive to the fact that different people need different types of resources and teaching. I think this new team member really wants to be successful, and I 100% share that goal, but I've hit an impasse where I can thoroughly walk him through a short/simple task including the "how" and "why" (encouraging him to take notes/recordings), show him the relevant resources, encourage him to ask lots of questions throughout, but then when I ask him to repeat it back to me or to take the next one solo, he just says some version of "I'm sorry...I just don't understand what I need to do here" and when I probe farther, his thinking is pretty jumbled. We haven't even managed to work our way up to the more judgment-call level tasks that I'm expecting him to be able to take on within the next month or two. Is there a "teaching 101" resource (ideally something relatively short/digestible) that you'd recommend so that I can work to communicate this type of information in a more clear or better-differentiated format?
My job involves a fair amount of somewhat nuanced, judgment-based, semi-technical work (e.g. getting unclear/messy spreadsheets and turning them into a harmonized format, making decisions about what's in-policy based on a nuanced understanding of our rules, communicating questions back to data providers across a sometimes-difficult language gap). I have a team of two people that do this work, and have had folks rotate every 1-2 years since we started the team in 2019 so I've taught a total of five people to do this work over the last few years. I always struggle with the best way to communicate this material, and it takes longer than I'd expect for folks to get the hang of it. I think a lot of that is on me and my communication.
I've never been formally taught to teach, although I do try to emulate things I've seen others do (e.g. having the person I'm teaching walk me through their thinking, explaining why I do things a certain way, keeping clear records of prior transactions that are very accessible to anyone on the team as a reference, job aids in multiple formats like checklist/explainer documents/video). I also try to make myself very approachable for questions (and, based on the questions I get, I've been very successful at that), although sometimes at some point I find I need to push a team member to at least try to answer/research their question before coming to me so that they're familiar with other resources. I also try to encourage them to go to the other junior team member with questions, as it's helpful to both, although if I don't jump in sometimes with best practices, it can sometimes lead to shared bad habits going unchecked.
I have ADHD and struggled for years with traditional teaching styles (particularly lecture-style learning) so I'm extremely sensitive to the fact that different people need different types of resources and teaching. I think this new team member really wants to be successful, and I 100% share that goal, but I've hit an impasse where I can thoroughly walk him through a short/simple task including the "how" and "why" (encouraging him to take notes/recordings), show him the relevant resources, encourage him to ask lots of questions throughout, but then when I ask him to repeat it back to me or to take the next one solo, he just says some version of "I'm sorry...I just don't understand what I need to do here" and when I probe farther, his thinking is pretty jumbled. We haven't even managed to work our way up to the more judgment-call level tasks that I'm expecting him to be able to take on within the next month or two. Is there a "teaching 101" resource (ideally something relatively short/digestible) that you'd recommend so that I can work to communicate this type of information in a more clear or better-differentiated format?
My experience struggling on both sides of this kind of situtaton is that there may be some kind of fundamental "given" or assumption or purpose that is accidentally missing. They don't know what is missing either. There's just a blank spot in the logic that keeps them stuck in "can only follow rote process" mode versus being able to synthesize and extrapolate.
/This is more of a sympathy reply than a solution, I guess. Trying to get the kind of context that I personally need to create solutions at a job and also teach others to problem-solve is kinda the crux of my current state of professional burnout.
posted by desuetude at 10:30 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
/This is more of a sympathy reply than a solution, I guess. Trying to get the kind of context that I personally need to create solutions at a job and also teach others to problem-solve is kinda the crux of my current state of professional burnout.
posted by desuetude at 10:30 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've both done a lot of training and worked at a company that provided almost no training and expected me to figure out all aspects of my job through trial and error, so I've had a range of experiences. Here's some thoughts:
Before anything else, start with the big picture. What does your company do? How does your department fit into that? What does your team specifically do? Who are the other people on your team? What is the chain of command, from him to you to your boss to your grand-boss? Are there people on other teams or in other departments they'll come into contact with frequently? Start with mission statements and org charts. Introduce him to as many of the people as possible. If a new person doesn't have familiarity with your company, your industry, or your process, these are questions that will come up during training, and they'll be distractions. Get them out of the way first so that you don't have to stop what you're doing and explain who exactly Jim from Accounting is. You can just say "and then you forward this to Jim from Accounting". It'll also warm up your trainee's brain, so that they're in note-taking mode and concentrating by the time you start talking about your actual workflow - like jogging a lap around the track before you start sprinting.
Then I'd think about the job duties at a pretty high level. What are the bullet points you'd put on your resume? In the sense of a) we design new widgets, b) we manufacture those new widgets, c) we repair old widgets, and d) we conduct market research about the widget-buying public. Keep them all separate. It may be obvious to you that there's a defect in step three of the manufacturing process that results in a lot of repairs later on, but those two things are separate, and mentioning that while you're talking about manufacturing is a distraction.
If you can break the tasks into even smaller chunks, that's even better. Think like an outline, with bullet points nested within bullet points. That's essentially your table of contents for how to do the job.
I like to say that training isn't showing a trainee how to do something; it's more about teaching them how to find the information they need so that they can figure out how to do it themselves. But that presupposes you've got information handy, which, if you don't, you should. Ideally, what you'd do is to create a knowledge base with a separate file/page for each bullet point in your outline above. And if you don't have one yet, the best person to write it is... definitely not you. Why would your communication be any more effective in writing than in speech? The person to write it is the trainee, once they feel like they know what they're doing - generally like 2-3 months in. You can edit what they write, but think of it as a kind of final exam for them.
The 2-3 month period is important, though, because no matter how well you train them, they won't be able to explain it right at the beginning. They need repetition to feel comfortable. Even if you've never thrown a football before in your life, I promise I could teach you to throw effectively in under 45 minutes. But you'd presumably want a little more practice before throwing in an NFL game, right?
One piece of advice I got that I found especially helpful for post-training pre-mastery new employees is "don't come to me with a problem; come to me with a suggested solution". Make them suggest what they think they should do next, and then you can either say "yes, exactly, you're right!", or you can say "no, actually, do x instead". Don't say anything more than "do x instead", though; you can let the process repeat after they try to do x.
Kind of honestly, though, this seems like something you might try to screen for during the hiring process. Obviously you want to screen for the actual skills needed to do the job, but you might want to start screening a little harder for soft skills too. "Tell me about a time when you had to learn a complicated task quickly" and all that. If you're turning over the position every two years, that's quick enough that, to use a car metaphor (that's not actually accurate, but you'll see my point), acceleration is more important than top speed. Would you rather have a Ferrari that can go 160mph but only goes 0-60 in 10 seconds, or a Honda Civic that tops out at 110mph but goes 0-60 in 6 seconds? If you're only driving a couple of miles (~the average tenure of your employees), I'd at least consider the Civic.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:33 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Before anything else, start with the big picture. What does your company do? How does your department fit into that? What does your team specifically do? Who are the other people on your team? What is the chain of command, from him to you to your boss to your grand-boss? Are there people on other teams or in other departments they'll come into contact with frequently? Start with mission statements and org charts. Introduce him to as many of the people as possible. If a new person doesn't have familiarity with your company, your industry, or your process, these are questions that will come up during training, and they'll be distractions. Get them out of the way first so that you don't have to stop what you're doing and explain who exactly Jim from Accounting is. You can just say "and then you forward this to Jim from Accounting". It'll also warm up your trainee's brain, so that they're in note-taking mode and concentrating by the time you start talking about your actual workflow - like jogging a lap around the track before you start sprinting.
Then I'd think about the job duties at a pretty high level. What are the bullet points you'd put on your resume? In the sense of a) we design new widgets, b) we manufacture those new widgets, c) we repair old widgets, and d) we conduct market research about the widget-buying public. Keep them all separate. It may be obvious to you that there's a defect in step three of the manufacturing process that results in a lot of repairs later on, but those two things are separate, and mentioning that while you're talking about manufacturing is a distraction.
If you can break the tasks into even smaller chunks, that's even better. Think like an outline, with bullet points nested within bullet points. That's essentially your table of contents for how to do the job.
I like to say that training isn't showing a trainee how to do something; it's more about teaching them how to find the information they need so that they can figure out how to do it themselves. But that presupposes you've got information handy, which, if you don't, you should. Ideally, what you'd do is to create a knowledge base with a separate file/page for each bullet point in your outline above. And if you don't have one yet, the best person to write it is... definitely not you. Why would your communication be any more effective in writing than in speech? The person to write it is the trainee, once they feel like they know what they're doing - generally like 2-3 months in. You can edit what they write, but think of it as a kind of final exam for them.
The 2-3 month period is important, though, because no matter how well you train them, they won't be able to explain it right at the beginning. They need repetition to feel comfortable. Even if you've never thrown a football before in your life, I promise I could teach you to throw effectively in under 45 minutes. But you'd presumably want a little more practice before throwing in an NFL game, right?
One piece of advice I got that I found especially helpful for post-training pre-mastery new employees is "don't come to me with a problem; come to me with a suggested solution". Make them suggest what they think they should do next, and then you can either say "yes, exactly, you're right!", or you can say "no, actually, do x instead". Don't say anything more than "do x instead", though; you can let the process repeat after they try to do x.
Kind of honestly, though, this seems like something you might try to screen for during the hiring process. Obviously you want to screen for the actual skills needed to do the job, but you might want to start screening a little harder for soft skills too. "Tell me about a time when you had to learn a complicated task quickly" and all that. If you're turning over the position every two years, that's quick enough that, to use a car metaphor (that's not actually accurate, but you'll see my point), acceleration is more important than top speed. Would you rather have a Ferrari that can go 160mph but only goes 0-60 in 10 seconds, or a Honda Civic that tops out at 110mph but goes 0-60 in 6 seconds? If you're only driving a couple of miles (~the average tenure of your employees), I'd at least consider the Civic.
posted by kevinbelt at 10:33 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
For this particular situation as you've described it, you need to ask him to set his own goals.
For example, set aside specific time to work together, but ask him very clearly to to prepare by writing down what he needs to learn. If you have to, make it a worksheet: "By the end of this hour, I want to be able to: ____. " If he can't tell you what he wants to learn to do, sit there patiently and silently until he does.
He should keep a running list of questions and tasks for you to work through together. This also serves as a list of accomplishments and successes to be celebrated.
In my experience, some students have made it through school by showing up and being told exactly what to think and do. They've never been asked to be an active participant in learning. You can make a big impact simply by expecting more.
posted by dum spiro spero at 10:34 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
For example, set aside specific time to work together, but ask him very clearly to to prepare by writing down what he needs to learn. If you have to, make it a worksheet: "By the end of this hour, I want to be able to: ____. " If he can't tell you what he wants to learn to do, sit there patiently and silently until he does.
He should keep a running list of questions and tasks for you to work through together. This also serves as a list of accomplishments and successes to be celebrated.
In my experience, some students have made it through school by showing up and being told exactly what to think and do. They've never been asked to be an active participant in learning. You can make a big impact simply by expecting more.
posted by dum spiro spero at 10:34 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have found the Carpentries pedagogy useful in teaching other technical areas (as well as the topics that the program itself covers). This is a decent outline. It's focused on a classroom of adult learners, but can be adapted for one-on-one. Namely, demonstrating and then immediately having the learner duplicate (or having you both doing the same thing at the same time on separate computers), providing immediate feedback as you see where his stumbling blocks are, and using errors as an opportunity for learning might be useful ideas for you.
posted by phlox at 10:38 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by phlox at 10:38 AM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Adding to all this, and from jobs in which it was never made clear: define areas where they can and can't use their own judgment (at least at this stage). Then adjust these boundaries later if they progress.
posted by zadcat at 11:11 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by zadcat at 11:11 AM on May 31, 2023 [2 favorites]
Former teacher hated teaching kids and large groups of kids but I did train in “reciprocal teaching” and I’ve used those skills to give presentations and teach concepts that I didn’t even understand really myself. I even tutored a student I doing different work with through his third year of a computer science BA. You guide them through summarizing, clarifying, questioning and predicting. So whenever you are stuck, or they don’t understand- see what technique you need to guide them to use so that they use those skills to bring themselves to the next level of understanding. So you summarize the material to them and ask them to predict what happens next, clarify what you heard them say, they clarify back… get them to ask some questions, you clarify their question and then ask someone else to predict an answer. It works with one person or a group and they don’t need to know that you are using that style of teaching.
posted by pairofshades at 11:26 AM on May 31, 2023
posted by pairofshades at 11:26 AM on May 31, 2023
Also when I was teaching we were told to break the task down into concrete steps a,b,c,d and then when the student said they didn’t understand or were stuck then they had to point to which step they were stuck at. Then you can break that into steps if you have to.
posted by pairofshades at 11:33 AM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by pairofshades at 11:33 AM on May 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
Seconding the Carpentries and recommending Greg Wilson's Teaching Tech Together.
posted by brainwane at 12:49 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by brainwane at 12:49 PM on May 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
It’s not clear if your team members are new to the world of work or have been working a while. If they are new to working, most of them have to pick up a whole new set of skills about how to function in a work place. Whatever tasks they learn are almost secondary to that.
A lot of the practices you describe are more likely to work for people who know how to work, have learned to at least attempt to solve their own problems, have learned to self review etc.
People who are still trying to figure out how to function at work use a lot of their capacity to learn doing that and have less bandwidth to learn the task/role and won’t start to excel until they’ve adapted to working.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:36 PM on June 1, 2023
A lot of the practices you describe are more likely to work for people who know how to work, have learned to at least attempt to solve their own problems, have learned to self review etc.
People who are still trying to figure out how to function at work use a lot of their capacity to learn doing that and have less bandwidth to learn the task/role and won’t start to excel until they’ve adapted to working.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:36 PM on June 1, 2023
It's was saved from nearly a month ago, sorry for late input, but I would suggest:
Pull in the other person in the team (or both if you still have two people), and get them to heeeaaavily help with training.
Even pull in other colleagues who might want to know how some of it works who have nothing to do with your time. Two people are much more likely to stop you when they are both confused, and if *both* people don't understand, they'll feel more confident asking you to rephrase/explain.
It sounds like you are very confident and competent in your job! This can be a disadvantage tho, because you are less familiar with or don't remember as recently what it's like to not know the topic or field or job *at all*. And that gap is what makes training people hard.
Whoever most recently learned will be better at empathising with someone who knows nothing, or at least interjecting to clarify when you've gone past.
That's also why a colleague can be helpful because a new starter will often not mention they are confused until they have a concept throughly mixed up, rather than saying the first time something didn't make sense with the mental model they are building.
(And if the new colleagues have no problem at all with explanations or the other trained person cannot explain things to the new person either, then it can be a heads up that someone might just be an irrecoverably bad fit for this role)
posted by Elysum at 2:15 AM on June 28, 2023
Pull in the other person in the team (or both if you still have two people), and get them to heeeaaavily help with training.
Even pull in other colleagues who might want to know how some of it works who have nothing to do with your time. Two people are much more likely to stop you when they are both confused, and if *both* people don't understand, they'll feel more confident asking you to rephrase/explain.
It sounds like you are very confident and competent in your job! This can be a disadvantage tho, because you are less familiar with or don't remember as recently what it's like to not know the topic or field or job *at all*. And that gap is what makes training people hard.
Whoever most recently learned will be better at empathising with someone who knows nothing, or at least interjecting to clarify when you've gone past.
That's also why a colleague can be helpful because a new starter will often not mention they are confused until they have a concept throughly mixed up, rather than saying the first time something didn't make sense with the mental model they are building.
(And if the new colleagues have no problem at all with explanations or the other trained person cannot explain things to the new person either, then it can be a heads up that someone might just be an irrecoverably bad fit for this role)
posted by Elysum at 2:15 AM on June 28, 2023
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So, rest easy, it is not all you.
(On preview, wow, apologies for the length!)
TLDR:
--it's not all you
--your new employees need to learn how to learn
--slow down
--baby steps until they start getting things right
For my students, I think it's a combination of these factors:
--Minimal experience reading long things (this may or may not be relevant to this situation)
--No practice/experience with complex projects with lots of parts, or doing puzzles/solving problems on their own
--Minimal coping skills when they start to feel anxious/overwhelmed, so they just shut down
--Anxiety/shame around asking questions--so your employee might be lost at minute 3, but won't ask a question or won't admit it until the end
--Very little practice taking notes other than copying verbatim what I write on the board. This is important for you to know, because taking notes is a form of thinking!
--Very little experience (or interest? Don't know) in just jumping in and messing around to figure something out.
Some things that have worked for me that might be helpful; most come from experience and are probably based in research about teaching and learning:
--Break things down in the smallest possible parts, and have him write down everything. You might need to tell him what to write down. (Ex: not just "log in" but explain how do to the log in page? Then tell him to write it down how to get to the page, then ask him to show you how to do it.)
--Remind him that this is new and that a lot of people have some difficulty with it and will take time.
--Show/tell him how the individual tasks are related to the big picture. BUT that can get overwhelming at first, partly because the "big picture" part may take some time to become clear to him. (For me, that means explicitly reminding students of how the thing we're doing connects to the goals/purpose of the class.)
--Use annotated examples. For spreadsheets, that might be "before" and "after" with circles around things that need to be fixed and the ones that are fixed. My students REALLY like visuals.
--Keep the "sidebar" comments during training to a minimum--like exceptions, history, whatever. While it may be clear to you what's important, it won't be to the people you're training. (This one comes from personal experience, ahem.)
--See if you can figure out a way to scaffold the projects: Start with small/easier things that the can learn successfully, then build on it/add to it/learn another small thing then put them together.
--Give him one small chunk of new things to do, on his own, taking as long as he needs, and then come back for you to check it. This will do a lot of good things, including building his confidence and his ability to learn how to learn.
--Remember to say "yay!" when he gets things right! (I really had to work to learn to do that.)
--Ask him what would help him, in terms of learning. (You might not get a helpful answer, but it's part of metacognition.)
--See if you can separate the "how to use the spreadsheet" parts from the rest of the task, in the learning process. It's easy to forget how un-intuitive spreadsheets can be, and it's easy for me to underestimate the technology barriers for my students.
A couple of things for you to do:
--Practice mindfulness meditation so you have something to do that makes you look relaxed, patient, and unconcerned while you're waiting for your employee to figure something out right next to you.
--Remember that you have internalized SO MUCH about your work! And some of it you may have brought with you to the job. That's the hard part of teaching, to see the things you now take for granted.
posted by orange (sherbet) rabbit at 9:37 AM on May 31, 2023 [11 favorites]