> From: discuss-boun...@lopsa.org [mailto:discuss-boun...@lopsa.org] On > Behalf Of Trey Darley > > Suppose you have a junior colleague with bang-up technical skills but > who > gets thrown off-track whenever things don't work as expected. Suppose > this > person gets routinely blocked from working until a more senior person > has > the availability to unblock them. Suppose this person routinely gets > blocked and it turns out that there is a common-sense workaround. What > would you do to help them to see the light?
It sounds like: Somebody who's excellent at memorization of details, but routinely forgets the bigger picture, right? I would suggest: #1 First, they need to recognize when they've gotten stuck in the mud. But it's hard to learn that at first ... Try to find a way to set a trigger of some kind, to break out of the rat hole. To recognize when the problem is occurring and they need to do something different. Perhaps "Before I ask for help, I must do the following..." Or perhaps a reminder, "I've been stuck on this problem for over 15 minutes..." or something like that, as appropriate for your situation. #2 Once they've triggered and recognized they're having a problem right now, what to do about it? The first step to achieving a bigger picture is to ask *why* do something. "I'm having a problem getting this square block through the round hole... Why do I need to do that? To get the square block to the other side. So I'll just try going around or over instead." And, it's been mentioned by others already, you can provide encouragement by helping encourage self confidence and self esteem. Most importantly I would say, don't micro manage. Micro management makes a person feel constantly powerless and inferior. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
