Sometimes in our work, we come across someone who knows everything (hopefully, we are not that person). You may find yourself in a situation where they claim to know something, something that they swear to, something that they will die defending… but you know it’s not true.
There’s an expression:
Give them enough rope to hang themselves.
The idea is that you share out just enough information to force them to keep talking and paint themselves into a corner and look foolish. This is great to do to your enemies and makes you feel good.
The problem is, the people you work with aren’t your enemies. This isn’t Game of Thrones. This is designing and building with the help of computers. I wish there were dragons.
We’re going to update that idiom:
Give them enough rope to pull themselves out of the pit.
Ask some probing but delicate questions about the topic. “Oh I didn’t know xyz did that…” “How did you make it do abc…”
This lets them…