Ask Better Questions | Stop Appearing Clueless at Work

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Hey folks, we are going to the comments. Um, this one is from Epic Technav who's always got good questions. So, thanks for submitting this one. Um, it's about asking for clarity. Uh, trying to work through issues when you're not fully sure. Um, I guess there's a couple parts of this like what the ask is or maybe how to approach uh tackling the problem. say your your team's busy. Um, and so like it's not just simply a matter of going to ask necessarily, but also like I think the underlying part with the question here is like how do you go about this kind of thing without coming across like you're incompetent, right? Like you don't know something. How do you make it seem like you're not an idiot? And I think that's a I think that's a very normal kind of uh concern, fear, right, that people have.

Um it's uh it's uncomfortable to not know things, especially like I can't speak for other uh professions outside of software engineering cuz that's all I've done. But uh I think in particular with something like software engineering there's a lot that like a lot of pressure on us to be like intellectual smart people solving problems and so being in a position where you're like I don't know um can can feel kind of like kind of scary pretty bad like people are expecting me to be smart and I don't know something so like uh uh-oh and so How do you navigate something like this? And I think personally it's a it's a couple of different parts that are loaded into the same question. And so I wanted to talk about the different aspects of them because one of them was around like clarity of the ask of you and the other one is sort of like how to go approach the thing.

Um the reason I want to break these things into two is because uh I think that if you don't know the clarity of the ask, this is the this is sort of the bigger one that needs to be addressed uh more specifically. So what do I mean by that? Um if let me let me put it this way. If uh if I asked you to do something or your boss asked you to do something, right? if uh if you don't know exactly what I'm asking you about and like it's not clear and you just kind of say sure okay I'll get it done and then even if you are brilliant or you can work super effectively or you know you build the best engineered systems if uh if I asked you to build X and you build Y instead and you built the best Y that's ever been um you still didn't build X.

So, uh, instead of going in the completely wrong direction, uh, I think it's important that we address clarity, uh, of the ask up front. And so, um, I I don't know, like I I guess before I get totally into that, I it's worth me saying like I I suspect a lot of this uh sort of fear and concern around feeling like, you know, uh unintelligent, feeling like a dummy, feeling uh incompetent. I think a lot of that is probably self-inflicted. And um I say that too like as someone I like who has felt that way, right? I'm not I'm not trying to discredit like the feeling of that. I'm I'm just saying that I think a lot of it is probably self-inflicted where uh you know if you ask for clarity, ask for help on something. Uh people's you know first uh reaction to that is not well this person must be stupid.

Um it's usually like cool like let me let me clarify. I think where people start to get uh frustrated is if you ask something and then people spend time with you to try and help you and then you ask again and then you ask again and then you ask again because it's less about oh this person must be stupid. It's this person must not care. Right? There's nothing wrong if you ask for clarity. So you ask a question, you ask for clarity, and you ask again. Like, it's not that that's wrong or bad. It's that if you're asking the same thing and someone is spending the same like sort of energy and time investing into you to help you, uh if you quite literally are not making any progress in terms of furthering your understanding and it's the same story over and over, um it

like it probably just means that like and I mean this in a non like condescending way like you probably genuinely don't care enough to try and like, you know, retain and and learn and and, you know, understand it in a way that's going to stick with you. It's probably a matter of like, I don't like the position that I'm in for whatever problem I'm trying to solve. How do I get this out of my way? Right? And that's I'm saying I'm not saying it in a condescending way like, oh, you just don't care. I mean, like, you genuinely probably don't care enough in whatever that situation is. And it's like, hey, if this person can get me unblocked and I don't have to worry about this, like, great, let's get me unblocked. Um, but if people are legitimately spending time with you, trying to teach you things, and it's on repeat the same thing, then people usually get kind of frustrated by that.

It's completely different. Um, and it actually can uh work the opposite in a positive way. If someone spends time with you to like teach you something and then like the next time it's a different thing and the next time it's a different thing, someone might say like, "Yeah, I'm going to spend time with this person to help them and teach them because clearly I spend that time and then like they it sticks with them and then they're coming to me for the next thing. So, it's like it's not a it's not me wasting my time trying to help them when clearly they don't care enough. Okay. So, I think a lot of the time it's genuinely not like this person must be dumb. Um and and not that uh you know asking for clarity or help again is an issue. It's when you give off this vibe that like uh someone's putting in effort and you simply don't seem to care enough.

You just kind of want to get it out of the way. Um so it's another reason too, by the way, if you're on the other side of this, I recommend when you're teaching people things, get them to drive. Get them to do the thing, right? Like don't don't just tell them like, "Let me screen share and let you watch me do it." No, you screen share and then I'm going to tell you where to click and what to do and like you're going to do it. I'm going to guide you, but you're going to do it. Um, just as a heads up. And I know I'm being specific about like screen sharing and someone clicking through, but uh when you teach people, I highly recommend like when you're helping them, get them to be doing whatever thing they can so that they're actively engaged. it kind of uh is a bit of a forcing function that's not like let me give you the answer and do it for you while you fall asleep.

Okay. So on the clarity part, um coming back to that, I think, yeah, like it's it's super important to get clarity of the ask if you're not sure because it can mean like you could get lucky and build the right thing or do the right thing, but uh if you're not clear about what the ask is, I I think it's like extremely important to get that clarity. And I I don't think that asking for clarification is a sign of like incompetence in any way. I actually think it's responsible. Um like if I let me put it this way, if I had someone who never asked me for uh to recclarify things, and it doesn't have to be me. Yeah, it could it could be like they were just, you know, they were assigned something and they never asked any questions about it and statistically they were just building things that were like hit and miss.

Um, that person to me would feel a lot less dependable for delivering things than someone who was like, "Hey, like I'm coming back for the third time. I just want to double check my understanding of like what we're after here, right? like I think I got A, B, and C, but I want to check X, Y, and Z now. Um, and if that person had to keep coming back to clarify things to be like, hey, like one more question, like as I'm getting through this, like what about this now? Um, I like to me that that seems like a lot more uh of a responsible, dependable person cuz they're trying to get the clarity. Um, again, not that not that it means that you have to be asking those things to come across as responsible and dependable. You might actually know what the ask was in the beginning, and that's fine.

But if you need clarity, I think it's critical that you ask for it. Um, and so I think another thing to consider too is like when it comes to communication, like I've said this in a lot of videos, but uh communication involves uh like will involve two or more people. So um maybe someone has given the ask to you to go solve some problem, build some feature, whatever it is. Uh if you don't understand it, that doesn't just mean like well it must be because you're dumb. No, it probably means that the person who's conveying the information, you know, maybe they didn't do a good job conveying it, maybe it wasn't clear. So, like I I just want you to remember that like communication, there's ownership on multiple ends of the communication, right? um someone who's trying to convey information to someone else and can do like do the communication of the information.

Um it's sort of like they can't control whether or not the person on the other end is going to understand it. Like that's that's out of their control. But what is in their control is to to find different ways to try and explain it. That's 100% in their control. And what's in your control as the receiver of information is not how that person's going to tell it to you, but if they do tell it to you in a way that you don't understand, it is in your control to ask for clarification, right? Like we can only control what we can control. And so I I know it sounds kind of weird to talk about like communication like this, but uh you know it's multiple parties involved in any conversation or relaying of information and people uh have to take accountability on both parts. It's like if I was trying to uh like literally just let's use the example of me talking in these videos, right?

like what I can do is try my best to find ways to communicate my thoughts, my perspective, my opinions on things. Um, and this is uh one of the reasons why you'll probably I mean there's multiple reasons for it, but one of the reasons why I sometimes might sound like I'm talking around things. There's a there's a couple of reasons and I'll acknowledge like the first one is just that like I'm driving and like there it's inevitable without having a planned like conversation that I'm probably going to touch on things again or maybe go a little bit in circles but uh even with planned like when I've done courses and stuff like that uh or actually planned like YouTube videos um it's intentional that I will uh repeat things.

So if you've uh not not that I'm trying to promote courses unless you're a C developer um but uh when I'm teaching in courses the one of the first things I'll say in the beginning is by the way my teaching style I acknowledge up front like you will hear me repeat things. The reason for that is that it literally will take you multiple times to hear something for it to start to stick. Okay? So that's intentional. The other part is that I need to find different ways to convey that information because what's effective for you versus the next person might look different. So I need to find different ways and uh like that is in my control to find different ways. If I try two, three, four ways and it's still not sticking like that's not in my control whether or not it lands for you and I I can't do anything about that.

But I can try my best to find alternative ways. Okay. Um, so clarity is important. Go ask for it. Uh, don't be embarrassed and keep asking for more clarity. I can't uh I don't know. I can't encourage that enough. Um, spend way too long on that. The other part of this is like if you have clarity and you're just like, man, I have no idea what the hell I need to do. Um, this is trickier, but uh, at the same time, like I think there's a couple of different parts to this. Um, if you're if your team is unavailable or your team is not, you know, the subject matter experts for whatever reason on this kind of thing. I think some of the framing of this question was like, say they're not there, right? Or like they're not available. um like how do you get unblocked?

I want to pause on that for just a moment to say like I think that uh similarly like if you're on the clarity part if you know what the ask is now you're it's very clear what you need to go accomplish or the goal. Um, I I do think that like regardless of whether or not someone's an expert or whatever else, if you're like, I don't know how to start this problem, um, I do think there's an opportunity, whether it's someone on your team, uh, whether it's going back to your manager, whoever made the request, or even if it's, uh, someone else on a different team, if you're stuck and you're like, I don't know how to start, um, I do think that if you're able to, you know, put your head together with someone else just to like even if that interaction is like

I don't know but maybe if you go ask Billy on the other team or you know Sally when she's back from being out of office or something she could probably give you more guidance. Like just having a little bit more direction on like who may have more information I think is super helpful. Um I do think that if you can yeah connect with someone probably better than just like kind of floundering. Um another thing depending on the scenario uh and what the ask is I think there's a lot of opportunity now with AI tools to be able to lean into that more. So, if you're like, "Cool, I know I have to go build uh, you know, I have to go build thing X and it's a new feature in codebase Y." If you're like, "I don't I don't know how to build this. I don't know.

I'm not I'm not even used to this codebase, like great. If uh you have AI tools at work, um, that might be a really good place to start, right? You could sit down with your favorite model in whatever your favorite tool is, point it at the codebase, and just start asking it questions. Um, and I'm being very specific around asking it questions, not telling it to go do things. Asking it like, "Hey, like I'm new to this code base. Like, can you walk me through different parts of it?" Um, sorry, I was waiting for that light to change. Uh, and just like spend like spending time with it, like asking questions, getting it to navigate. Um, just taking that step back from like how do I prompt this thing to go get me the code written? Forget it for now. It would be the same as you trying to find someone on the team to ask them questions.

Right now, it's at your fingertips. And sure, it may not have the subject matter expertise or like maybe the trust level that you're looking for, but it's a starting point. So it's able to go across a lot of the code base very quickly. It's able to give you different angles of things. You can keep asking it for different perspectives on things. Um and then the same thing like you could say, okay, cool. Now that I have a bit better understanding of the flow of this codebase, you know, I have to go build feature uh X here. um instead of saying go build it for me like asking it hey like what whether it's you know alternative text stacks if that's new uh areas of the code if that's releveraging areas of the code can you give me different examples of how you might approach this

and then getting it to do some type of like pros and cons analysis at a high level um I think is a great starting point so again you're not you're not even getting to the point where you're like how do I get this thing to write it for me? You're literally just using it to to talk to and then try to understand like more about the codebase and like the deliverable that you're trying to put together. It's purely an understanding exercise because if you don't even understand and you're just like cool, I'm going to ask AI to build it. How like how the hell are you going to know if it did the right thing? you you know what the ask is, but you have no idea how to do it. It means you can't you can't sit there and evaluate pros and cons or like different design choices.

So, I do think like spend some time, ask some questions. Um, and then the final thing I'll say is I'm just parking here at CrossFit is like, uh, I think it's really important. Oh, man. This person's over the line. Crazy. like way over. Um, if you're like getting stuck, like don't hide. Uh, I said this in many videos before, but uh, we have this we often have this fear of like, uh, oh, like I'm I don't know and I'm not on track now and like I need to like not let people know that because I'm going to seem incompetent or whatever it is. Um, I'll tell you what's worse. So, instead of you acknowledging like, "Hey, I'm getting stuck. I need support." If you hide and then people find out a week later, two weeks later, 3 weeks later, they're going to go, "Why the hell didn't you ask for help?" Like, now it's a problem.

Now it's like we're weeks behind and we thought this thing was on track, but you've been like lying about it or hiding. Like, don't don't do that. Um, like I would say being verbose about like, "Hey, it's off track or whatever. I need support." Way better move. Um, it's normal. We're a team. Like, it's normal for people to get stuck. We're a team for that reason so we can help each other. So, I hope you keep that in mind. But I think it's a great question. I hope that was helpful. I got to run because I'm going to be late. Thanks so much for watching. See you in the next one.