Tell new hires upfront that they'll hit problems they don't know how to solve, and they should ask you for help instead of struggling alone. Your reaction matters: dismiss them once and they stop asking; support them and they'll keep pushing to do better work.
So one of the things that I will do with people when I first hire them is I'll tell them, hey, look, at some point, I know you're going to get stuck on something. You're not going to know what to do. When that happens, I need you to come to me because you're going to want to disappear, and disappearing is the worst situation that can happen. And if you come to me, then I'm likely to help you solve this problem. By setting this expectation with them, I open up this communication option for them where when they feel like they're stuck, when they feel like something's going wrong rather than turning in something really poor, they can come to me and say, hey, I don't know what to do here. And when they can say, I don't know what to do, or I have a question that really allows them to try other things. Depending on how you respond. If your response is, oh my gosh, that's a stupid question, I already told you that, then they're probably not going to be willing to try. But if you open this communication where you allow them to ask you questions, even if they're stupid questions, even if you've answered them before, if you've answered them before, you can tell something is wrong in your communication. If they're not willing to communicate with you, then they're probably also not willing to go above and beyond in their work. They're not willing to be impressive.
Stop Being the Dispatcher, Start Being the CEO: How to Scale Your Field Operations 🛠️
