Beyond the obvious issues of lower confidence and imagined windmills, inexperience colors the way people respond to instruction. Inexperienced team members and colleagues live in a new world full of information and issues they have never before considered. As a result, they can quickly become lost in the vast set of new ideas and actions required of them.
Inexperienced team members see themselves at sea without knowing how to sail, but remain anxious to learn and prove themselves capable. They stand ready to receive their leader’s wisdom, advice, and direction.
Most leaders use this opening to explain the world to them, highlighting the many norms and rules that govern performance. Teaching them the game before they play an active role in it appears the best way to fuel their understanding and get them ready. Showing them the mistakes not to make, the traps not to fall into, and the rules not to violate sounds like a recipe for later success.
Unfortunately, this approach zaps their confidence and usually paralyzes their ability to act and learn.
Here’s what experienced people forget about being inexperienced: There is a world of difference between knowing what NOT to do versus knowing what to do and doing it. Inexperienced team members need one thing more than any other from those who lead them: the direction to act.
When a leader tells an inexperienced team member what not to do or explains the conventions surrounding the game, the person can become paralyzed. They can’t grasp the rules or the reasons for them. The idea of non-action leaves them stuck. In their effort to act, they can only think of what not to do and what mistakes not to make.
Counterintuitively, directed action is what inexperienced team members need most. Leading inexperienced team members requires more than patience and a willingness to let them fail and learn from their mistakes. The best leaders recognize the difficulty of entering a new field of knowledge and action, and they initially adjust their instructions and feedback to get people moving.
Instead of providing inexperienced team members with the context to succeed, they give them small actions to execute. It is through these actions and the relevant feedback that comes from them that novice team members begin to understand how things work. Telling them just creates confusion. Showing them is not yet possible. Directing them in given actions and tactics is what opens the mind and enhances the learning process.
Once they engage successfully in basic performance, leaders can begin to describe the lay of the land and offer more context. But there is plenty of time to do that. Get them engaged in action first. You’ll find they perform just fine with a set of clear directions.
