I work with a person that went presented with a problem, works through it and arrives at the wrong solution. When I have them show me the steps they took, it seems like they interpret things incorrectly. This isn’t a language barrier, and it’s not like they aren’t reading what someone wrote.
For example, they are working on a product, and needed to wait until the intended recipients of the product were notified by an email that they were going to get it. the person that sent the email to the recipients then forwarded that notification email to this person and said “go ahead and send this to them.”
Most people would understand that they are being asked to send the product out. It’s a regular process for them.
So he resent the email. He also sent the product, but I’m having a hard time understanding why he thought he was supposed to re-send the email.
I’ve tried breaking tasks down into smaller steps, writing out the tasks, post-mortem discussion when something doesn’t go as planned. What other training or management tasks can I take? Or have I arrived at the “herding kittens” meme?
Have you considered events from their perspective? From what you’ve described, they were told to wait until a notification was sent, then they were given a notification with the instruction “send this”. If it was me my first thought would absolutely be that that’s the notification to be sent, the only reason I’d hesitate is because those sort of communications are well outside my job description.
The reason they sent the product afterwards is obvious; they were told to send them after the notification was sent, and they had sent the notification.
From what you’ve described, you are communicating incredibly poorly then blaming your workers for misunderstanding.
Yes, it was too vague. OP may have set a tone that doesn’t allow for clarifying questions, or the coworker honestly thought they were carrying out every step exactly as it was told to them and didn’t see the need for clarification.
I wasn’t directly involved in this example, so if the problem was with how I communicate it didn’t affect this situation.
I agree that the request was worded poorly but you correctly hesitated.
Unfortunately they seem to be the only one that has difficulty in asking questions when the instructions are unclear or outside the norm.