In meetings im often asked to answer a question or solve a problem on the fly. I hate to do that because it doesn’t give me time to fully think through what needs to be done, the best way to do it, and any implications.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.