Jason Buffington .com

video transcript

Had lunch with recently with a manager who’s been working with an early career professional that had been an intern. The manager was telling me how their mindset had shifted from “coaching the intern” to telling the new employee “you gotta figure it out.”

The intent was to teach self-reliance – that the job (and the world) was not going to give them the answers or tell them how to do everything. Good intent – but the result was this early-20s employee wasn’t thriving … they were flailing.

So, I talked about how we do it in Scouting, where:  

• 12-year-olds are leading a patrol of six of their peers to plan logistics for a weekend
• 14-year-olds are leading a troop of 30, with leadership teams and weekly meetings
• Eagle Scout candidates are leading service projects with hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars.

In each case, the adults start with, “You gotta figure it out”.

But then, after we’ve seen them putting forth effort (not always great interim results), we ask questions:

• Have you thought about …
• What’s your plan for …

The questions aren’t a quiz nor interrogation – but to get them thinking about those areas differently, so that they figure more of their own stuff out for themselves.

My favorite part of that journey is mentoring through debriefs, which works just as well as 13, 18, and 23. Asking:

• How do you think it’s going?
• What would you do differently next time?
• (after that) Could I offer you some additional ideas?

Those dialogs are especially powerful when you have a long-term mentoring relationship (or a managerial one). Some of my favorite experiences in Scouting were working one-on-one with senior youth, where I saw them solving multiple goals over a year or two years. So, we could have that same,

• You got to figure it out … to
• Have you thought about … to
• What could you do better … in recurring conversations.

I’ve tried to apply that in parenting. My kids are all in their 20’s, so it would be easy to tell them “Go figure it out” but we still occasionally go through:

• Have you thought abouts
• (and) What’s your idea on

Candidly, parenting a 20-something isn’t that different than managing or mentoring an early career professional, as long as you embrace learning through doing and giving them space, with coaching. To new managers and mentors, some early career professionals are going to thrive through “sink or swim” directive that reinforces self-reliance. 

The trick … kind of like you gotta parent each of your kids a little differently based on their needs and learning styles … is to understand where each of those young career folks are and give them the right balance of directives, questioning, coaching, and mentoring … so that each of them can reach their highest potential.

See you next Monday.