Have you ever found yourself getting frustrated with a subordinate’s inability to understand your simple instructions? Or, ever given a subordinate a task that seemed simple to you, only to have the results mangled? How could such a thing happen when your instructions were so straightforward?

Blame your brain. It’s just trying to do things efficiently but, in the process, your brain makes it all too easy for you to leave out the details of an issue you know well. Because of how our brains are designed to work, you now are suffering under the dreaded “Curse of Expertise!”

The Curse of Expertise, which is not the way we usually think of all our accumulated experience and knowledge, pulls a veil of simplicity over a person’s eyes. It means that tasks you have learned to do almost automatically now seem basically simple and straightforward. As a result, when you delegate them to a subordinate for the first time, you tend to give the sort of instructions that make sense to you rather than the sort that would make sense to someone who doesn’t have your experience.

Wait A Minute! Expertise Is A Curse?

You don’t do this on purpose, of course; you are simply trying to be concise, to cut through the tangle of complexity and get right to the heart of the matter. The problem is that this “simple” explanation can sail right over the head of a less experienced person. And this less experienced person might not feel comfortable saying, “Wait a minute, I don’t understand. Could you go over that again?” Instead, he will often say something like, “Yes sir,” and head out to give it his best shot. Sometimes he pulls it off and is successful, in spite of your less than thorough instructions/explanations. But at other times he comes back with less than satisfactory results.

How does your brain contribute to the “curse of expertise?” The answer has to do with how your brain stores the memory of your expertise. In the name of efficiency, the brain takes your memories of what you have experienced and learned, separates them, and stores them in two different areas. To one area you have ready access, but the other area – you might call it “deep storage” – is much less consciously accessible.

The area you have ready access to stores experiences that you use to reason with; this is the area you use when you think through new experiences or consciously call on past experiences to understand something going on now. (Thank goodness it’s ready at hand!) The other area, however, stores procedures or information that you have learned to do thoroughly, without consciously thinking about it. It turns out that it is very useful, in terms of efficient use of storage space, that you don’t have to bring these memories to the conscious level when you want to use them. Let’s look at some examples.

Think about learning to tie your shoes, or walk, or ride a bicycle. In the case of learning to ride a bicycle, you have to learn how to keep your balance, how to pedal, how pedaling affects your balance, how to steer, how to stop, etc. All of these steps go into that deep storage area in your brain and, once they are there, they tend to stick around. That is why you can get on a bicycle after not having ridden one for years and pedal happily away. This is how the “curse of expertise” works for you!

Procedural Memory

Brain experts call the area of the brain that stores procedures and experiences that are so thoroughly learned that they seem automatic “procedural memory.” That means that all of the relevant information about riding a bike is available for you, anytime you need it, without your having to take the time to consciously think it through (“Get on the bike and make tiny back and forth adjustments to tire position to maintain self in upright position; propel self through time and space by turning pedals with feet, all the while adjusting tire position” – and so forth.)

This also means, however, that whereas all the bike riding information is stored in your Procedural Memory and can be used, it is not consciously available to you. This is both good news and not so good news. The good news is that you don’t have a lot of details getting in the way of thinking about new problems. The bad news is that not having to think about all the details of a given procedure, every time you carry it out, can result in making it seem overly simple. Have you ever tried to write down, step by step, how to tie a shoe? It takes more steps than you would think, and yet just about all of us who got out of kindergarten can do it without thinking about it.

You have just run up against the fact that, although you know how to tie a shoe, your procedural memory won’t supply the details readily. And remember: each of us has our own, unique procedural memory. What’s in mine may very well not be in yours.

1T & 3Q: How To Make Procedural Memory Work For You

To keep procedural memory from getting in the way of providing the detail that makes for good delegation of tasks and coaching, use a technique that I call the “1T & 3Q” process: that stands for “One Task and Three Questions.”

The “One Task” part of the process is to define for the subordinate, in clear behavioral terms, what “success” in the task or project will look like. Then ask the person these three questions:

1. What do you see as the challenges you will face in accomplishing the goal of this task or project?
2. What is your estimate of the time that you will need?
3. What support do you feel you will need?

These questions, and the discussion they invite, will help you open your procedural memory vault so that you will have conscious access to the details that give your subordinate the information he or she needs.

The Final Word

Don’t assume that what you know is “common sense” that everyone else can easily see. When you are assigning tasks to subordinates, think carefully about how to describe the outcome you would like to see and then describe it that way to the assignee. And then ask those three magic questions. It may take a bit longer, but it’s the key to successful delegation, coaching, and mentoring.