How Do I Train Someone Without Doing It for Them?

Brad Duncan could fix anything you pointed him at. Hydraulics, a gearbox, a sensor that only acted up on humid days. Give Brad a problem at seven in the morning and it was running by lunch. What Brad could not do was write a work order anybody could use. He waited until the end of the shift and rebuilt his whole day from memory, and memory at three in the afternoon is a creative writer.

So how did I, the professional with the clipboard, train someone at work who needed it? I fixed his work orders for him. Every night. For months. I sat at my desk, called him on the radio, pulled the story out of him one question at a time, and typed it up myself. I felt very helpful. I was the problem.

Here is the short answer. You train someone at work without doing it for them by showing it once, doing it together once, and then handing it over and keeping your hands in your pockets while they do it wrong the first time. Your job is to ask questions, not to grab the tool. Every time you take the task back, you teach them one thing: that you will take it back.

Why Do I Keep Doing It for Them?

Because it is faster. Today. That is the whole trap.

Doing it yourself takes ten minutes. Watching somebody else do it takes forty, and they miss a step, and you have to bite your tongue so hard you can taste it. So you reach over and say "here, let me," and the job is done, and you both walk away feeling fine.

Except nobody learned anything. You just bought ten minutes today with forty minutes tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day until one of you leaves the company.

There is a second reason, and it is less flattering. Being the one who knows feels good. Being needed feels good. I liked being the guy who could make Brad's paperwork make sense. It took me a while to admit that part of me did not want him to get better at it, because then what was I for?

Machines teach you this if you let them. A pump that runs on a bypass forever never gets its real problem fixed. It limps along, looking fine, until the bypass fails too. People are the same. If you are the bypass, the real problem is still in there.

How to Train Someone at Work: I Do, We Do, You Do

This is the simplest method I know for training a new employee, and it works on a lathe, a spreadsheet or a phone call with an angry customer.

I do

You do the task once while they watch. Talk out loud. Not just what you are doing, but why. "I check this gauge first because if it is low, nothing else matters." The why is the part that lets them handle the day it does not go like the manual says.

We do

They do it with you right there. Their hands, your eyes. You can point. You can ask "what comes next?" You do not touch the tool. This is the step people skip, and it is the step that matters most.

You do

They do it alone, and you check the result afterward, not the process while it happens. Then you talk about what went well and what they would do differently. Let them answer first.

With Brad, "I do" was me showing him what a good work order looked like. "We do" was me standing next to him at the machine while he wrote down each step as he did it, in a pocket notebook, before he forgot. "You do" was Brad writing it up himself and me reading it the next morning. I asked questions. I did not rewrite a word. The first ones were rough. Within a few months his were better than mine, mostly because he wrote them while his hands were still greasy.

What Do I Say When They Ask the Same Question Again?

Ask one back. Every time.

"What do you think?" Or "Where would you look first?" Or my favorite, "What would you do if I was on vacation?"

This feels mean the first few times. It is not. You are teaching them to find the answer instead of find you. If they get it right, tell them so and walk away. If they get it close, point them the rest of the way. If they have no idea at all, that tells you something too. It usually means you skipped the "we do" part.

One rule helps a lot here. Ask them to bring you the question and their best guess together. "I think it is the valve, but I am not sure." Now you are coaching a thinker, not answering a vending machine.

A question asked for the fifth time is not always laziness. Sometimes it means the answer lives only in your head and nowhere they can find it. Write it down. Tape it to the machine if you have to.

How Do I Let Them Make Mistakes Without Wrecking Anything?

You decide ahead of time which mistakes are cheap and which ones are not.

Cheap mistakes are the teachers. A report formatted wrong. A part put in the wrong bin. A phone call that went a little sideways. Let those happen. Talk about them after. People remember the mistake they made far longer than the lecture they got.

Expensive mistakes are different. Anything with safety, lockout, a customer walking out the door, or real money on the line, you stay close and you step in. There is no lesson worth somebody losing a finger. Tell them this up front, so they know when you step in it is the stakes, not a verdict on them.

Most of what you are training someone to do sits in the cheap column. We just act like it does not, because watching somebody struggle is uncomfortable for us.

Be Honest About What This Costs

I will not pretend this is free.

It costs time up front, a lot of it. Your numbers may dip for a few weeks while somebody slower does the work you used to do fast. Your boss may notice. Some days you will go home thinking you would have been done by noon if you had just done it yourself, and you will be right.

It also costs a little pride. The first time the person you trained solves something without you, it stings for about a second. Then it feels better than anything you ever fixed yourself.

And there is a real chance they get good enough to leave, or to get the promotion you had your eye on. That happens. I have trained people who went further than I ever did. I am told this is what success looks like. I am still getting used to it.

Maxwell calls this the Law of Contribution: growing yourself enables you to grow others. The part people miss is that it runs both ways. I got better at my own job the month I stopped fixing Brad's paperwork, because I finally had my evenings back to work on the things only I could do.

How Long Should It Take to Train Someone?

Longer than you want and shorter than you fear.

A simple, repeated task can move from "I do" to "you do" in a few days. A real job, the kind with judgment in it, takes months. A rough rule from the floor: they can do it with you watching in a few weeks, they can do it without you in a couple of months, and they can teach it to the next person in about a year. That last one is the real finish line.

If you are still doing it for them after that, look at the method before you look at the person. Nine times out of ten when training fails, the "we do" step never happened.

Common Questions About Training Someone at Work

How do I train someone who does not want to learn?

Find out what they do want. Nobody gets excited about a procedure, but most people care about going home on time, looking competent, or not getting yelled at. Tie the skill to that. If they truly want none of it, that is a conversation for their supervisor, not a training problem you can fix with better slides.

What if they do it differently than I would?

Ask yourself one question. Is their way wrong, or just not mine? If it is safe and it gets the result, leave it alone. Some of the best improvements I ever saw on a line came from a new person doing it "wrong" and it working better.

How do I train someone when I am too busy to train them?

You are too busy because you have not trained them. Block thirty minutes a day for two weeks and protect it like a meeting with your boss. Start with the task that interrupts you the most. That one pays you back first.

Is it my fault if the person I trained still fails?

Sometimes, and it is worth asking honestly. Did they get all three steps, or did you jump from showing to handing off? If you did your part and they still cannot do it, it may be the wrong seat for them. That is not failure. That is information.

Reflection Questions

1. What is one task you are still doing for somebody because it is faster today?
2. When you step in, is it because of the stakes, or because watching them struggle makes you uncomfortable?
3. What do you check without thinking that nobody has ever seen you check?
4. Who trained you well, and what did they do that you have not done for anyone yet?

The Bottom Line

Every time you take the wrench back, you teach the lesson you did not mean to teach. Hand it over, ask questions, and let the cheap mistakes do their work.

This week, pick one task you keep doing for somebody else. Do it once with them watching, once with their hands on it and yours in your pockets, and then let them do it alone. Check the result, not the process.

So here is my question for you. Who on your crew is still calling you on the radio for something they could do themselves, and what would it take for you to stop answering?

This ties back to The Law of Contribution — one of John C. Maxwell's 15 Laws of Growth.