Humility Cocktail 2 – “Teach her Small”

I learned an important lesson today: I’m still quick to judge people, and have little tolerance for people who aren’t perfect off the bat. I’ve recently started running a district-wide survey, and have 14 field staff on my team and a secretary.

After a frustrating week with Jessica (secretary) in the office, who I originally pegged for slow, I needed to ask Douglas if something was wrong with her. After seeing that she was incapable of photocopying and putting together packages, reading, and then loading a staple; I seriously thought that she might just be a bit slow.

But when I asked Douglas, he was taken aback by my question. “That’s the problem with the education she receives! In the school they learn nothing, so when she comes on attachment [co-op] here, she is supposed to learn those skills” he defensively explains as though it were him I was calling slow. “In the office she learns nothing because there are 3 secretaries and only 1 computer. So she spends her time doing nothing.”

After hearing this my first reaction was that she IS here to learn. She’s not expected to come in being perfect, the reason why she is here is to be coached and taught how to do office work. I realize that her lack of skills is not a deficiency on her part, but an outcome of the failing education system I so often criticize.

“Can you use her for your work?” Douglas asks.

“I can use her for some work, such as photocopying and printing the packages. But I need somebody who can read the answers on the sheet, and then input that into the computer. Because she has trouble reading, it makes her almost useless to me for that task.”

This is when I get my second slap across the face of shame. Peter proceeds to say one of the simplest yet incredibly profound messages, in a genuine voice that sounded like a mother counseling a child.

“Teach her small. Just teach her small, and she will get better.”

At that moment, Peter transformed into a mirror, and I was staring at a reflection of myself. But my reflection didn’t look like me, instead I was looking at most of the Ghanaian directors I have often criticized for overworking certain staff and leaving others idle.

Finally being put into a leadership role, with the power to choose who to delegate work to, I realized the difficulty that Ghanaian directors face in working with their staff. It’s often the first observation any outsider will make. There are many people who have little to do and seem to just watch the days pass by idly, and there are few people who have too much to do.

I’ve always pegged the cause of this phenomenon as a capacity gap: a few highly skilled people, and many very low-skilled people. The result of which is that the many people who are far too unskilled to keep up with the pace of work, never get delegated work, and thus rarely grow. The highly skilled people get 80% of the work, get more experience and thus develop faster, and the cycle is perpetuated.

So now, in a position to perpetuate or combat this cycle, my first reflex was to fall into the same action as everybody else. My reason was what a micro-manager would normally say: ‘there’s not enough time’.

Thanks to Douglas and Peter, I was able to draw an important reflection out of the experience and avoid falling into a cyclical trap that restricts the growth of so many civil servants in Ghana. A trap that leads to mass underutilization of human resources and slows progress.

But what is almost more important than that reflection are the values that surfaced in Douglas and Peter’s reaction. First, the patience to work with people, even if they aren’t capable for the tasks; instead of rushing to achieve the outcomes of the project. Second, the faith to work with and help everybody, instead of giving up on people who aren’t ready right away.

“Teach her small” - Peter