Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and then say more

How do you answer when your team leader asks if you know how to do something? Team leader Ben tells of his experience with a highly skilled migrant on his team.

Read the text below while you listen to the first half of Ben’s description. Then listen to the second half and see how much you follow. Finally, use this text for shadowing. The first half will be easier since you can see the words as well as hear them. For more challenge, shadow the second half too.

Click here to listen to Ben

Yeah well this person came along and was willing to do anything to help. And when I gave her tasks to do, it was difficult to tell if she was going to be able to do them or not, because, um ….. For example, I wanted data analysis done of some spread sheets I had, and I didn’t know how familiar she was with the programmes. But everything I asked her to do, she just said “Yes I can do that” and the more I dug into her skills, the more she just said yes to everything. And so I just had to give her some work to do and I told her there was plenty of time and it doesn’t matter if it takes a couple of weeks. But she got it all done in the first day. And then, I was really impressed with how much she knew and she knew a lot more about analysing this data than I did. And so then I was able to work with her a lot more and get a lot more done with her. But still every new task I gave her, she would still only say yes when I asked her if she could do it. So we had a review time halfway through her experience period. And I explained to her that this was something that surprised me, and it would have been easier for me to gauge and to delegate work to her if I knew what her capabilities were to begin with. And so …..