Ask, don't hand over

In a book I was reading, a man kept going to his mentor for answers, and the mentor would only ask him pointed questions. Every time, once he found the answer himself, he could tell the mentor had known it all along and just wouldn't hand it over. That's the Socratic method—strategic questions that stir up your own thinking.

I caught myself wanting to do the opposite: just tell people the answer so they'd nod and move on. But there's a difference between memorizing what someone told you and arriving at it yourself. The second kind is yours to keep. So when I want you to understand something, I'll ask instead of tell—the questions are how you learn to think for yourself, even when they're frustrating.