As a young boy, I was afraid of water until...
How do you know someone does CrossFit? He will tell you.
Anyways, as I was doing CrossFit today, I thought about how my workouts are manageable now in contrast to how I heaved and felt faint in the first three months of every CrossFit workout. And during the workout, I pondered how employee onboarding should be. If I should drive every fresh employee to the expected level of competency right from day zero; or if I should provide a gradual slope to get there.
I learned to swim because I was thrown in the water
If I remember correctly, I was afraid of water as a young boy. So I was thrown into the water until I embraced it. Today I swim well.
Today, I am the person that throws myself into the water. I have similar expectations of people around me, including my staff. I throw them a hard task, and I expect them to ask me questions so they will navigate to the objective.
Expectations as mentorship
The best staff/interns I had were fantastic learners, and I have written some articles about them. Two people that come to my head are my CTO and Mario, my ex-intern. I pushed them hard to surpass me, and I am so proud when they do. And for a while now, my CTO schools me technically.
The question here then is if I am too hard to people who are less inclined to navigate their way around hard tasks without step-by-step guidance (AKA babysitting). if I should provide a "guided tour" for fresh employees to accomplishing hard tasks from day zero. I do not know.
Sticking to the guns as a strategy
Alas, I pick my battles. I am not interested in lowering my expectations and having my staff assume that babysitting is a culture here. No.
Instead of investing my time in babysitting, I have spent time in building up our internal wiki so anyone, even a newbie, can get up to speed with our step-by-step guides. And if they still are incapable of doing it, then it is time to revise my hiring tests.