SkarpChapter 2 of 3
Listening for Missing Context, Missing Skill, and Missing Confidence
Decide whether a team member needs a question-led coaching conversation, direct instruction, additional context, or removal of an organisational obstacle.
1. Diagnose the Gap Before You Coach
Diagnose first
A stalled engineer does not automatically need coaching. First distinguish context, skill, confidence, and an organisational obstacle.
Several gaps may coexist. Address the constraint that most directly prevents safe, useful progress rather than defaulting to a conversation about individual performance.
2. Create Conditions for Accurate Signals
Use an observable opening
Name facts, not traits: "The proposal changed twice and review is waiting. What is making the next step difficult?" Then leave room for an answer.
Psychological safety supports honest signals; clarity supports action. In Sweden, organisational and social conditions are part of the work environment.
3. Case: A Large Change That Will Not Move
Listen beyond the self-diagnosis
Leila says she needs to be more decisive. Yet conflicting reviews, an undocumented design decision, and a broad pull request point first to context and workflow.
A large change is not proof of weak skill. Small, self-contained changes can improve reviewability, feedback speed, and rollback options.
4. Practice: Ask Four Diagnostic Questions
Pause and test your first instinct
Before reading on, write one question for each category:
- Context: "What outcome, constraints, or prior decisions are unclear?"
- Skill: "Which part could you demonstrate or complete with a worked example?"
- Confidence: "If the decision were reversible, what would you choose and why?"
- Obstacle: "What must change outside your control for this work to proceed?"
Avoid leading questions such as "You understand the architecture, right?" They invite agreement, not evidence. Prefer requests for explanation, demonstration, and concrete examples.
5. Sort Evidence Into the Right Response
Four responses
Missing goal or constraint: give context. Missing practice: give instruction. Sound reasoning plus hesitation: use coaching. External constraint: remove or escalate it.
Do not coach an engineer to work around absent authority, overloaded reviewers, or contradictory priorities. Treat those as management work.
6. Apply the Diagnosis to Leila
Primary diagnosis: missing context
Leila understands retry risk but lacks the product tolerance and decision owner. The manager clarifies the boundary instead of asking her to become more confident.
Then narrow support: align reviewers, split the change, and pair on one unfamiliar test design. Use coaching after the decision context is stable.
7. Recognise When It Is a Work-Environment Signal
Current Swedish framework
AFS 2023:2 entered into force on January 1, 2025 and repealed AFS 2015:4. It addresses demands, resources, communication, participation, and responsibility.
Repeated blocked work is organisational evidence. Escalate systemic workload, authority, staffing, or review-capacity problems rather than individualising them.
8. Choose the First Intervention
Scenario
An engineer can explain a proposed technical solution and its risks, but says they cannot proceed because product has not defined the acceptable latency trade-off and two staff engineers give opposite direction. What should you do first?
What is the best first intervention?
- Clarify the product constraint and decision owner, then resolve the conflicting direction.
- Give a tutorial on latency optimisation techniques.
- Ask coaching questions until the engineer selects one staff engineer's approach.
Show Answer
Answer: A) Clarify the product constraint and decision owner, then resolve the conflicting direction.
The engineer has demonstrated relevant reasoning but lacks decision context and is blocked by unresolved authority. Clarify and remove the obstacle first. Instruction or coaching may be useful later, once the decision boundary is known.
Key Terms
- AFS 2023:2
- Swedish Work Environment Authority provisions on planning and organising work-environment management for employers; it entered into force on January 1, 2025.
- missing skill
- A gap in the ability to perform a specific practice reliably, despite understanding the task.
- missing context
- A gap in the information needed to act, such as goals, constraints, prior decisions, ownership, or user impact.
- missing confidence
- Hesitation to act or contribute despite adequate relevant knowledge, capability, and decision context.
- question-led coaching
- A conversation that uses questions to help a capable person examine options, evidence, trade-offs, and next actions.
- organisational obstacle
- A constraint outside the person's practical control, such as unavailable access, conflicting priorities, insufficient authority, staffing limits, or review bottlenecks.