Explaining a technical issue to your manager: how can you check understanding?

When working with your manager, a technical explanation can seem clear without establishing a shared basis for a decision. The useful question is not simply “Have I explained enough?” but “How can we check that we understand the implications in the same way?”

What the literature establishes

Colin Camerer, George Loewenstein and Martin Weber (1989, Journal of Political Economy) show experimentally that people with privileged information cannot always set it aside when anticipating the judgements of less informed people. This “curse of knowledge” limits accurate perspective-taking. What seems obvious to a specialist may therefore depend on information the other person does not have.

Expertise does not guarantee accurate estimates of difficulty

Pamela J. Hinds (1999, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied) shows that expertise can lead people to underestimate the time a novice needs to complete a task. Her study also examines methods for correcting this bias, without supporting the assumption that simply asking experts to put themselves in a novice's position is sufficient. This mechanism matters in exchanges with a manager: intimate knowledge of a process does not guarantee that someone will identify the steps that require explanation.

The premature conclusion

One might conclude that information given to a manager should always be simplified. That would confuse accessibility with removing information needed for a decision. A short presentation can remain opaque if it leaves out the connection between a technical constraint, its consequences and the choice required. (our executive and employee training programmes)

What these studies do not establish

These studies do not directly test a communication method for employees and managers in a Swiss industrial company. Nor is the manager necessarily a novice: the knowledge gap may concern just one issue, and it may run in the opposite direction on commercial or organisational matters. The studies encourage checking assumed understanding, but do not demonstrate that any particular presentation format improves the managerial relationship on its own.

A practical check in Neuchâtel

As part of SHR's programme on building an effective relationship with your manager, an exercise to test in Neuchâtel's microtechnology, watchmaking or precision microelectronics sectors is to conclude a technical discussion by jointly restating the decisive constraint, its operational consequence and the decision required. The employee and manager first write down these elements separately, then compare their formulations without treating the exercise as a competence test. Over a two-week trial, record the number of discussions with at least one discrepancy requiring clarification, divided by the total number of discussions reviewed. This indicator describes discrepancies made visible, not the overall quality of the relationship; it nevertheless provides a verifiable basis for adjusting explanations. To go further: explore the Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager training in Neuchâtel in the canton of Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

In pictures: Building an Effective Relationship with Your Manager in Neuchâtel

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