Thanks. The most interesting paragraph for me was “When I’m working with someone on their own projects...”, but unfortunately it didn’t have much detail. Are such conversations the only technique you use for helping other people? How effective is it?
That’s not the only technique, but it’s by far the most common and useful one that I use.
My approach to helping others with their problems varies depending on the type of problem, and there’s not much I can say that really generalizes—brainstorming ideas for how to approach a well-defined technical problem doesn’t have much in common with figuring out what’s at the root of a bad emotional habit. One of my most common approaches, though, is basically a much more interactive version of rubber ducking, with the advantage of not requiring the person to have the skills necessary to notice the conflicts in their own models, since I’ll do that part. Getting someone to stay on one topic for long enough will pretty reliably unearth any inconsistencies in how they’re thinking about that issue, and when such an inconsistency is the cause of a problem, finding and correcting it is usually enough to solve the problem without any further advice being necessary.
Thanks. The most interesting paragraph for me was “When I’m working with someone on their own projects...”, but unfortunately it didn’t have much detail. Are such conversations the only technique you use for helping other people? How effective is it?
That’s not the only technique, but it’s by far the most common and useful one that I use.
My approach to helping others with their problems varies depending on the type of problem, and there’s not much I can say that really generalizes—brainstorming ideas for how to approach a well-defined technical problem doesn’t have much in common with figuring out what’s at the root of a bad emotional habit. One of my most common approaches, though, is basically a much more interactive version of rubber ducking, with the advantage of not requiring the person to have the skills necessary to notice the conflicts in their own models, since I’ll do that part. Getting someone to stay on one topic for long enough will pretty reliably unearth any inconsistencies in how they’re thinking about that issue, and when such an inconsistency is the cause of a problem, finding and correcting it is usually enough to solve the problem without any further advice being necessary.