Guiding new staff to independence
Some ideas for supporting new recruits to develop get up and running
Recently I’ve had a number of conversations with people about the challenges of new staff members. How, it can be hard to get them to take responsibility for their work, and stop coming to you with questions; and how these managers struggle to set boundaries or push back. Sure, they’re learning and you give them some allowance, but at a certain point you need them to step up and do some of the brain work of their own role, but how do you get there?
All of the people were kind, thinking and considerate bosses, but they were frustrated with how the situation was panning out. And tired with being ambushed out of a meeting (or worse, on days off) because they had team members who always who were always deferring and had learnt helplessness rather than independence.
It’s certainly a trap I’ve been in before now, and it can be hard to know how to get out of it. Particularly as the nature of the problem means you’re super busy and don’t have time to think through the issue. A couple of years ago, through circumstances I couldn’t control, I ended up with high turn over in my team for a time. This made the perfect opportunity to try and see if I could find a better way. Through this, and discussion with coaching clients, I think the solutions to the problem are three-fold: make help accessible, support them to take responsibility, support yourself to let go.
Find a way to make help accessible to them without having to come to you.
If you have time before someone starts who will eventually be responsible for something, write down the process they’re going to need to follow. A number of years ago, I started a job after my predecessor had already left. However, she’d written down the process for everything. As a result, a complete handover was carried out without me ever having met her and with nobody left in the office really knowing what it was she did. I tried this in my team, and it’s remarkable how much less someone needs to ask for things if they’ve got it written down. Seems simple, but very easy to overlook, particularly if you don’t have time to plan before someone starts.
If you are in the situation when you don’t have time before they start, or if the idea of making time to sit and write a nice how to guide is just too much right now, then get the new person to write the guide. Talk them through the process and get them to make notes. At the end they write up what you’ve told them and you correct their draft and that’s it. The guide is done. I’ve tried this with new staff members, and have found it can support their learning and understanding, as well as not adding to my workload, so it can be a double win.
Don’t be afraid to include some of your thinking in the guide. What made those handover documents so nice all those years ago, was that the writer had included some of the evolving thinking “I did it like this, but wondered if I might do it like that next time”. Suddenly these were no longer guides which said “this is the one and only way for this to be done” but instead left me room for autonomy and independence. By noting what had to be as it was, and what had the potential for change, she gave me the gift of empowerment.
Use technology to your advantage. If you are showing how to do something once, then record you doing it using teams or zoom. Suddenly they have something they can watch back when they get stuck rather than having to come to you with the same question countless times.
Help them take responsibility for themselves - and be clear where you want them to take ownership.
If you know that you’ve given the answer before or it’s in a guide, start a strict policy of not answering the same thing again “have you looked at the guide?”. I once had a manager who used to ask me where I was writing it down when she answered a question. It annoyed me at the time, but I now realise her wisdom. I did get better at taking notes, and also stopped asking the same thing fewer times which must have been a relief for her.
If they’re asking you to solve problems, ask that they come to you with a proposed solution. At first it might be more effort to explain what they’ve missed in their idea, but in the long run it builds their capability and confidence in solving things themselves and eventually you’ll just be able to ok things, rather than do the mental work of trying to come up with a solution. This also helps you understand if they’re missing bits of knowledge. If they always bring proposed solutions with similar gaps in, then that’s the thing that needs teaching next.
If they’re always asking what they should be doing next, try and stop doing the thinking for them. Be open that you want them to learn to be self-starting and get them to learn the list of likely places they might start. For example, my placement students quickly learn that the places to start are “shared mailboxes, newsletters, seminars, and outstanding chasing”. After a while, they know the list as well at me and only come to me when they’re completely out of jobs rather than every time they finish a task.
If you’ve built a team that is completely reliant on you might want to set a rule of “who can you ask before you bring it to me?”. I have to say, this strikes fear in my heart and I’d rather my team asked me rather than setting things running all over the place. But if you are super busy and there’s other people in the team who are able to help, it’s a poor use of resources for all questions to come into one person.
Work on your own attitude.
Learn to set boundaries and stick to them. It’s tough to learn, but consider that you are doing more to help them by empowering them to learn, than you would be if you just did it for them. We can get so hung up on being kind, helpful or liked, that we forget that in the long run we might be being anything but. If we always jump in and do the thing, we’re robbing them of a chance to grow. And nobody wants a grumpy resentful boss, so who are you really serving here?
Believe that you have value even when you’re not the only one who can do the tasks. A final step, but arguably the one that all the others flow from, in order to empower your team, you need to let go of feeling like your value is in knowing everything or worse, doing everything. It’s all very well doing guides and training, but if you’re secretly terrified that you’ll be redundant the second you’ve got them trained up, then you’re not going to do your best to give them the skills they need.
I think this is the step that’s hardest to do independently, certainly I benefited from coaching around the time I had to make this leap. But ultimately, if you don’t make the step of letting go of some things, it’s not just your team who won’t progress, you won’t either. By holding on to the things you already know too tightly, you’ll not have space to learn new things, and potentially not even head space to think about what they might be. But trust they will be there, they’re not going to catch up with you just because you’ve shown them how to do some basic operations tasks.
Have you found better ways to solve this issue? Are there other things you’ve found helpful that I’ve not thought of?
If it is something you’re currently struggling with, I’ve got coaching spaces free to start now, so get in touch if you’d like a bit of support to find a way through!