A mentee and I were grabbing our regular Friday morning overpriced flat white and discussing asking for help and how we generate ideas as a team when he said something that struck me.....
"As soon as you speak, that's the idea we go with."
As the technical lead on the team I had until this point assumed speaking up and offering suggestions was always helpful. A smattering of natural arrogance makes me think my ideas are great. Certainly the ones that make it to my mouth!
This lead to a bit of a realisation that perhaps keeping quiet is the best way to help others discover things, not always leaping in with an idea or suggestion.
Since that flat white, I'm trying to sit back in meetings and let other suggestions come out, consider those and speak up if I have a better idea. In pair programming / debugging situations, I'm trying to let people discover for themselves, rather than just give them the answer. When people do ask directly for help I ask questions like;
- What have you tried so far?
- At what point did your code break?
- What do you think caused it to break?
The intention with these kind of questions is to have them leading the conversation, working through the problem in a methodical, analytical way, with the intention of starting to acquire some core engineering skills.
Finally, if none of these things work, remember it's also ok to say no to helping someone. It might take them longer, they may make more mistakes whilst finding the solution, but sometimes the journey is as important as the destination.