What I try to do is tell people I’ll take a look and get back to them. But I never found a good way to do it confidently, in a way that doesn’t make it seem like I can’t be trusted that I know what I’m doing. Particularly if they want me to do the task in front of them.
Any advice?
You can also offer a "back of a napkin" answer if it's appropriate, but make it clear that you will give it the proper consideration and give a better considered answer. Maybe specify a large margin of error.
All that said, not everything requires rigor. In some cases, "fuzzy" answers are good enough. Learn to identify them and not to waste time giving less important things extra attention.
So I have written scripts to check out all repos under a given org for github, so I pre clone before meeting with them. For questions like how much of the site is such and such a thing, I wrote a thing to run some spark jobs over our logs every week or so and add some nice meta data and show it in a tabular portable and filter able format. I have even generalized the spark thing so I can answer many many questions from the logs in a day.
I tell people when I don't know, but I enhance my ability to find out (and then try to get teams to productize similar tools when I think it is of general value)
Truth be told, Claude code excels at these sorts of tools, much more than at production high thru put applications.
What will give you confidence is actually following up and getting back to people and closing the thread.
Then people will trust you as well.
They key isn't how you say it, the key is that you consistently do it so that people learn that when you say it, you mean it.
An intermediate answer you can give is something like "I would take such and such steps, but I'm not sure this will solve the issue and I need to verify this offline". Don't bullshit people, it's a small world, it's almost never worth it.
I probably end up slightly wordier...
"Hmm, not sure. My best guess is that we're probably pulling some values from context and then using that to determine the behavior you're seeing, but I know my manager has a few contacts on that side of the org, I'll reach out to her and get back to you, probably in the next few days"
And then yea, just... delivering on what you say you're gonna do or updating if there's some bends in the road you didn't see.
As far as how to do it confidently? The same way you say "that is a tree" when you're looking at a tree. You're 100% sure you don't know, just say it. The rest is probably in your head. That's been my experience at least.
If you keep your word consistently, people will trust you and the conversations will become easier and easier.
Because how do you challenge this? Insist someone should know an answer without thinking? Insist their guess should be the same as a thoroughly thought out answer. At the same time you're not being evasive, or saying that you have no idea. You're stating you want to deliver a high quality answer first time round.
Even if people push back on this, you made it clear you're offering a guess, not a considered opinion. Nothing wrong with providing a clearly labelled guess, then changing it later.
If they don't believe you, tell them Derek Sivers, the CD Baby creator is also a slow thinker https://sive.rs/slow
Instead, I'd spin it to say you need more time to investigate thoroughly to give them an accurate answer.
1) Questions for which you can recall the answer off the top of the head, or by sharing an _existing_ note, document, link, etc.
2) "Questions" which cannot be immediately answered from memory / existing records, and are in fact a request to do _new work_, be it research, analysis, writing some document, etc. etc.
Hopefully, you are sufficiently well organized, keep notes, and anticipate obvious inquiries such that that many questions are of type #1. Think of those as L1 or L2 cache hits.
Then, for the remainder that are #2, you can say "sorry, I don't have anything to hand, haven't thought about that, but I could look into it and get back to you with something in X amount of time, if that's useful. should we create a ticket, and prioritize this alongside other priorities?".
The thing that will inspire confidence is not saying this all the time, but only for the non-#1 things, and that many things are #1 and get an immediate response.
It's also powerful to build these constructs into questions of other people. You could ask "Hey, Bob - I'm wondering, do you know, off the top of your head, where the code that does X is?".
Ideally, Bob can then say, "oh, yes, I was just looking at that yesterday, it's here: http://....", or alternatively "Hmm. Actually, no, sorry.".
An annoying non-answer would be "No, but it's probably in place X, because Y, or maybe it's Z, or it could be found using git history or blah blah blah..." - that's not helpful, because if it needs to _searched for_, you can do that just as well as Bob, the question was whether he had it _to hand_, not whether he could make some guesses about where it _could_ be...
Or if it's another developer and it would be useful: "I don't know, but let's find out." (and then we can look at the code together).
If you're actually confident about your version of reality, you can say it in any words you want and it will seem confident and stand up to scrutiny.
With your emphasis on 'confidently', it sounds like you're looking at social consequences. I find that stopping the conversation with 'I don't know' and getting on with what I'm doing, socially 'reads' as authoritative. I'm sure part of it is my lack of equivocation: if I went 'I'll get back to you, I promise I swear I'll be able to know eventually, soon, I promise, pinky swear I will honest!' there would obviously be no authority, I'd be grovelling.
I could probably double down, unethically. 'I don't know, what a stupid question, why would you even ask that malformed question, that's not a real question'. I think that would lead to suspicion, though.
'I don't know' can be a power move, if you HAVE the confidence to mean it and let it lie there. I guess that's the answer. "I don't know. This is what I'm actively doing now…" This relies very much on there being many things you do know…
or, similar
"That's needs some thought. I'll get back to you about it."
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I think there's no avoiding "I'll get back to you" or something substantially similar. After all, the whole point is to tell them that that's what you're going to do.
But "I don't know" is the bit I think you have a problem with. It seems to suggest that someone else would know: if only they were here, they would be able to just "look up" the answer from the right corner of their brain. But you want to communicate that this is a problem that actually needs solving, whoever is doing it. "needs thought" is the best I can think of for that.
I don't know, but I'll find out and get back to you." is fine. If you're really anxious, you can say "I want to give you a good answer, so let me think on this and get back to you. Is an email/slack convenient for you or should we reconvene at <datetime>?"
A couple of pointers:
1) Make sure you understand what they really want. It is common for a person to ask "can your hardware run on 12V", for example. But what they really want to know is something like "can I use this on my solar powered RV that will be parked in a 122F desert". This is just one of a billion examples from my career. You need to determine things like do they mean a stable 12.000V from a power supply, or a really variable 12VDC vehicle system that can range from 11-15V commonly. And then there is the whole ruggedness of the hardware issue. You need to be able to look ahead a bit and often assume the person isn't really asking the question they want an answer to.
2) The best way to be successful in business is to predict the future :) By this I mean determine how to set achievable expectations. If you feel confident that you can get an answer by COB, then state that and do it (predict the future, make it come true).
3) Communicate commitment and honesty. It is ok to tell someone you don't know, but you can say this in a lot of ways. Depending on all the variables, saying something like "this seems possible, but I need to check with X", or "I believe we did something similar for another situation, let me get more data internally and get back to you by tomorrow morning", etc.
If you want to setup a coaching session I'm happy to do a 30 minute zoom/whatever.
It sounds like you're suffering from imposter syndrome. I promise you, no one thinks about you nearly as much as you think about you.
By the time you uttered the words, your team's mind has already moved on to something else.
Say the words and then follow up later.
I was on the other side for years and I hate when consultants try to avoid the questions or give me foggy replies.
Or if you want to not do it: "this requires some investigation. X person or Y team is best place to look into it"
OR
"No clue. Let me do some digging first."
Have literally never had this come up in my ten years working in tech. Big picture advice? Don't overthink small things like this.
You'll just make yourself feel and act more unconfident not less.
That sentence is widely accepted as a substitute for „I don‘t know“, but at the same time doesn‘t hold the same conclusion, since there could be a myriad of reasons why you can‘t say anything about a topic.
That doesn't match your context perfectly, but I think it does communicate the importance of managing expectations.
I'm pretty good at thinking on my feet, but I'm also not above changing my thoughts once I've examined a situation in detail. So when asked a question on the fly, I'll respond "my gut tells me X, Y, and Z but I'd like to think about it a bit and get back to you". If you do that, it's important that you follow up with some real thought and structure that provide real value. The confidence comes not in how you ask for time to think, but in your audience knowing your followup will be worth their while.
"I'd be happy to look into that. It'll require x, y, and z. I'll let you know what I find."
There's a lot to unpack here and I don't know you well enough to give personalized advice. But this problem kinda requires personalized advice.
> in a way that doesn’t make it seem like I can’t be trusted that I know what I’m doing.
Why do you feel this way? I can think of several possibilities:
1.) You really really want the ability to know the answer instantly. While your mind know that's not reasonable, your heart is disappointed. As a result, your body language sends the message you don't know what you're doing.
2.) Verbal interactions are tough and you're looking for the right canned phrase that will give you time to think. However, that canned phrase sounds practiced, and people mistake it for a canned i-dont-care response.
3.) You want to people to understand why you don't instantly have an answer. As a result, you provide far too much justification, which winds up sounding guilty.
Personally, I have had great success with encounters where I absolutely don't know the answer, and I barely know where to start. Charlie asks me a question. I reply "I don't know, but Bob might know!" We ask Bob, and he doesn't want to be bothered, but he does know that Fred should know the answer. We then go to Fred, and I pay attention as the other two talk. I learn about Fred, a new topic, and Charlie winds up thanking me the most. In the future, Charlie comes to me first instead of Bob or Fred, and I wind up learning more than Bob and Fred put together.
It wasn't about how I said it, it was about putting in the effort to be present. And then people remembered I'd actually put the effort in.
FWIW I usually respond with "let me consult this with my team".
But as others have said, I think you're overthinking this. I would far rather you tell me that you don't know but will find out, than have you make something up.
That aside, I find it is useful to say a bit about what is involved in answering the question. "We haven't calculated that figure, but I can work it out based on these other measurements we have." "I don't know off hand. I know X colleague has some experience with that aspect, I'll check with them." "That's a little bit subtle because it might conflict with this other feature, I'll have to do refresh my memory." "That is relatively simple to do, I'll put it at the top of my list for when this meeting is over." (Of course, these also depend on the kind of question).
If you say "I'll look and get back to you", the only way I'll think badly of you is if you never get back to me.
• If it's theoretically possible to answer:
"You know, that is such a great question, and I want to be able to give you a thoughtful answer. Let me take it offline and get back to you tomorrow with [a concrete plan|my recommendations|a few options|a potential solution]."
"That would be interesting to see! I could probably crunch that for you in ___ days/hours. Right now I'm currently working on ____. Should I put that work on pause while I get the answer for you?" or
"I'd have to spend a little time to dig into that. Should we add it to the backlog?"
"Fair question, but it's a bit more nuanced than you might think, so I'd like to look at it more closely. If I answer now, you're just getting my own bias."
"Oh, I hadn't considered that. Can you give me a little insight about the reason for the question? I'd love to know what's behind your interest in ____." or
"Ah, interesting. Are you just asking out of curiosity, or is there a deeper reason for the question?" or
"Wow, I would be curious to know the answer to that too. Why do you ask?"
"You know, I am honestly flattered that you think I would know that off the top of my head, but I'm actually a big believer in documentation and researching best practices. I can check for you."
"We can certainly get an answer on that, but just so I know how best to respond, can you help me understand how this will be used as an input? Put another way, what's the action or behavior this will change?"
"It's a good question, but I get the sense that you already have an idea in mind. What are your thoughts?"
"I get it, it's frustrating. Before I answer, do you want to press pause and talk about what's really going on?" or
"Happy to answer, but if this is about me or my performance, why don't we take it offline so you can give me some feedback 1:1."
you can add the reasons why the question is more complex than it seems
nothing worse than people pretending to know when they don't
Every meeting should have notes. These notes include follow-up items that were raised in the course of the meeting
So someone asks a question you don’t have an immediate answer to? Add it to the list of follow-ups and say we will chase that down and close it out
joules77•4mo ago
sloaken•4mo ago
In addition, you need to write down the question, and to enforce your commitment, read it back to confirm. At the least if you do not read it back, email them what you think the question is.