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> What I'm talking about is people below average when it comes to understanding concepts, or conceptualizing altogether. Their intuition is always twisted and w
by cweagans 2y ago
> What I'm talking about is people below average when it comes to understanding concepts, or conceptualizing altogether. Their intuition is always twisted and wrong. Completely lack critical feedback. Work needs to be decomposed for them in extremely precise steps if you want anything to happen.
Consider that the statement "their intuition is always twisted and wrong" is itself probably wrong. Their intuition is based on their professional and personal experiences. Two different people with different experience are not going to have the same intuition and that's okay. It's not productive to turn that into a personal judgement ("this person arrived at a different conclusion than I did - let's figure out why" is very different from "this person is an unteachable idiot")
Personally, I'd consider this an opportunity to help develop somebody's talent. I happen to find mentoring to be a very fulfilling part of the job though, so I lean into it a bit more than is strictly necessary. I'd probably start approaching this as a teaching problem, rather than a collaboration problem. If _telling_ this person something doesn't work, _show_ them. If that doesn't work, get some hands-on time by pairing with them on some tasks (in whatever configuration works -- try letting them navigate or drive, and you fill the other role).
If all of those things fail, go to your manager with something along these lines:
"I've been working with so-and-so on some things that they got stuck on. It has impacted the time that I have available for the work that is assigned to me. I'm happy to continue doing that if you're okay with the time investment (roughly x hours over the past month)."
If it's really impacting your work, they'll probably ask why it's taking so much time, so follow up with something like:
"In pairing with them, I've identified some knowledge gaps around x, y, and z -- the time spent is not just on the task at hand, but also in mentoring/teaching to get them up to speed in those areas. If it's too much time, we could consider investing in some training on those topics to get them up to speed independently. Once that foundation is laid, I think our pairing sessions could go much faster (or potentially be eliminated altogether). Alternatively, we could try pairing them with somebody else on the team -- it's possible that I'm not explaining things in a way that works for them."
Give them a lot of grace and focus on leveling up the team as a whole, rather than remedying your personal situation. You'll likely get more engagement from your manager that way, since your manager ostensibly _also_ wants to level up the team as a whole.