On Helping And Being Helped
Assymetry in experience and understanding makes it hard.
Some experience frustration when they don’t have a good understanding of what they are discussing. Others have embrace and enjoy being in that mode. When the one being helped is frustrated, and the one being helped enjoys it. There is a big risk of mutual frustration without a guidebook or a way of communication that finds the common ground. Under time duress this makes it even harder.
The helper will come with their understanding, their biases and their conceptualization. The helpee is coming from a position of confusion so any gaps, or concepts will be difficult to understand. Time duress causes exacerbates the confusion and stress.
In my situation, I’m asked semi-regularly to swoop in and help in an area that I am not familiar with. We’re both in tech. However I tend to pick things up faster than my partner, and so I’m invariably the helper. However I spend a miniscule amount of time in her area.
The typical pattern falls into one of two scenarios
1) She’s got a clue, I don’t
- Can you help me this behaviour (usally it is deep within the bowels of the system)?
- Sure. (I walk over)
What ensues is a quick dance of “i’m looking at this”, scroll have a page, “which is related to this”, and after switching browser tab “I was looking at this”. By this stage I’m completely lost, she’s asking me questions, I’m asking her questions. I feel my frustration grows because a) I really want to help her, b) I can’t help her without understanding more, c) she’s assuming I’m following on. Of course there are the confirmatory “right?” statements all through as switching in. The tone is a question, but there is no response, it’s more of an checkpoint in her thought process.
I hate these sessions, since I’ve got not context, no system understanding, and a barage of questions with no way for me to understand.
What I need is a floorplan, map, diagram or textual description of what is being shared. The code is isolation is almost impossible for me to help with live while things are being jumped around. It feels that I’m supposed to know through osmosis what is going on. In these situations I can get on top of it, but usually need an hour or two to get there.
2) She’s struggling, I’m learning
Now we’re in the opposite situation. Sometimes, it’s as a result of the first scenario where I need some time to get my bearings in her code and system. Other times it’s a new area and I she’s confident that I can light up a path for her.
In these situations I’m completely aware that she is coming from a position of not understanding. However I’m also only a few minutes, hours or days ahead of her. I try my best to draw diagrams, write notes, whatever. I conciously check in for her understanding.
However, the usual tools don’t work. If I ask her to restate (recall is one of the best ways of learning, retelling is also a way of confirming that it’s understood). Unfortunately, if you don’t have an understanding, restating or retelling takes a large amount of personal risk and requires vulnerability. Without high levels of trust, it may lead to embarrasement, self loathing (I should know this), or repitition that increases frustration and leads to anger.
What won’t work
It’s no use for an theoretical mathematician to try to explain cosmological thought experiments by throwing Math equations that only a few would understand. It’s also no use for them talking the language either. It’s incomprehensible to anyone outside that field.
It’s also no use intentionally dumbing it down and ELI5 or mansplaining (eargh, I hate that term) it.
It is impossible for the helper to tune perfectly the delivery of their message to the audience blind. Even with experience, it is implossible to know what has happened since the last time a topic was discussed. Was their training, an inspirational wiki page - who knows.
What might work.
The helpee needs to take responsibility for ensuring that there is a consistent way of communicating and sharing the information. They need to be comfortable saying I don’t understand. If a term that is not familiar comes up repeatedly they need to be willing to pause and either ask for an explanation or accept that there is a gap and acknowledge that their current assumption may be wrong.
The helpee also needs to take responsibility for the contextual framework that they want to fill. It needs to be more that jumping around tabs or a dump of information. That gives the helper no scaffolding to assess and understand how the helpee is conceiving what is going on. Even worse is without the helpee’s contextual framework, the helper is only left with their likely much more complex, nuanced framework which is indecipherable to the helpee.
The helper needs to be willing to translate their higher level of knowledge or understanding into the helpee’s contextual framework.
The helper needs also to allow time for the helpee to process and integrate the updated concepts into their understanding.
Structure, structure, structure
Asking for help, helping and finding that effortless communication is amazing when it works. However it works only through a structure. The structure needs to be formal initially, but as better mutual understanding occurs, the structure can become more fluid and implicit.