Asking and Helping
We kickstarted our exploration into back-end today with an unexpected exercise that focused on how to be a better question-asker and helper. We began with a viewing of ‘Your Brain’s API: Giving and Getting Technical Help”, presented by Women Who Code founder, Sasha Laundry, at PyCon2015.
Sasha started her presentation discussing the learning process and how you can shift your mindset around challenges and new information — what she playfully refers to as moving from an “error → ‘damnit’” mindset to an “error → ‘interesting’ mindset. She also touches on the fact that the feeling of confusion is a sign that you’re on the precipice of learning a new concept, which is a cool rebranding on an oft-frustrating sensation.
The presentation then shifted into Sasha’s main focus, which centered around tools for asking and tools for helping. The whole video is worth checking out, but I’ll sum up a some of her ideas here:
Tools for Asking:
- Pick a Good Place to Work: when you’re interviewing for positions at companies, organizations, schools, etc. it’s important to pay attention to the culture/environment and to try your best to gauge whether it’s one in which curiosity and questions/learning are nurtured and encouraged.
- Ask Early (aka the ’15 Minute Rule’): if you are stuck on a problem or challenge, give yourself 15 focused minutes to try to figure out a fix. If you’re not making headway after 15 minutes, find someone else in your team/community to ask. This is preferable to spending hours staring into the abyss, which only leads to frustration and an increased hesitancy to ask for help with something you feel should have been completed hours before.
- Demonstrate Competence: when you go to someone for help, it is important to have clear communication and be able to articulate where you’re stuck and where you’re trying to go. This demonstrates a level of consideration and “can-do” attitude, and inspires interest and commitment from the person you hope to engage. This approach will only help you in your learning process as people are way more likely to give comprehensive assistance to folks they believe are competent and able to grasp big ideas and grow from what they are saying.
- Communicate Clearly and Succinctly: ex. “My current understanding is ____. I expected to see _____, but instead it’s doing _____. What’s going on?”
- Confirm: make sure you have clarity around what someone is actually trying to tell you. A good way of doing this is to repeat back what you think they’re saying so that they have an opportunity to clarify if your understanding isn’t accurate.
Tools for Helping:
- Mindset: every question you receive is an opportunity to make your team stronger.
- Welcome questions: encourage all questions and reward people who ask them — this can be as simple as preceding your response by saying “great question!”
- Communication: people ALWAYS remember how you made them feel. NEVER use words/phrases like “easy”, “obvious”, “well, actually” when you’re attempting to answer a question. Such language often results in people feeling less smart/competent/valued, which doesn’t engender an overall “growth” culture within your team.
- Check In: It’s important to assume competence of your fellow co-workers/teammates/employees. It can help to begin a conversation by checking in with them about their familiarity around the given subject. Just because they have a question doesn’t mean they’re coming from ground zero. Make sure you take the time to understand where they are and where they’re trying to go so that neither of you is spinning wheels and wasting precious time and resources.
I thought some of the most interesting takeaways came from the segments around helping. “Learning how to help” isn’t something I’ve ever really thought about as an acquired skill. They can be improved via dedicated time and attention.
In my experience, it has always felt like ‘help’ is something you do or don’t do. It’s more a verb than an adjective. It’s about action, not about who you are.
I’ve never once thought of it as something you can intentionally develop and improve upon. The underlying assumption being that if we understand how to do something, then we’re able to help someone who doesn’t.
Knowing something and being able to communicate effectively on that topic are different things. Knowing and being able to communicate AND being able to relay that information in a helpful way are different things.
Sure, you need a bit of the knowing and certainly a bit of the communication piece in order to be helpful in most cases, but having the first two in place doesn’t guarantee that your delivery will ultimately be effective.
For example — if someone comes to you looking for help and you maybe tell them how you would solve a problem, but do so in a way that is — perhaps unintentionally — condescending or shaming, a person is going to come away from that experience feeling down on themselves. A few or those situations may lead them to go elsewhere with their future questions. Or, worse yet, they may choose to simply not ask at all — something that will ultimately damage the culture at your place of work/education and will undermine the output of your team’s production.
All in all, I felt like the presentation contained a lot of interesting insights and some immediately actionable practices, which I’m looking forward to using as I continue to move forward in this brave new world. Hope everyone is enjoying a solid start to their week!
Song of the Day: “It’s Time to Run” by Lord Huron

