The first five of these conversations can be awkward for managers because it’ll be obvious after your first two questions (“What is it?” and “How does it work?”) that you have absolutely no clue what’s going on and you think it’s a manager’s job to appear knowledgeable. Wrong. It’s a manager’s job to be clued in. You work in an industry populated with engineers, and these are folks who are paid a lot of money to care about the details, and that means they see right past feigned knowledge. Sure, they’re not saying anything because you’re the boss, but, um, you look stupid.
