“What do you want me to do?” prods you to give concrete examples of what a solution looks like. That can reveal aspects of the problem you didn’t realize, and implicitly shows people an model of the problem. Which is crucial, because communicating is hard, even with people you’re close to. Especially if they haven’t didn’t notice the problem themselves.
I have not communicated the subtleties here. I was mainly complaining about a situation where the other person is not making the mental move of actually trying to solve the problem. When I don’t have an answer to “What do you want me to do?”, they see it as an excuse, to do nothing and move on. Your interpretation presupposes that they are trying to solve the problem. If somebody would do what you are describing, they would do well to state that explicitly.
“What do you want me to do?” is much worse than “What do you want me to do? I am asking because maybe you have already thought of a solution, and it is just a matter of you telling me how to implement it. Then I can go ahead and implement it if I also think it is a good solution. If not that is fine too. In this case, let’s try to solve the problem together. Let’s first get clearer about what a solution would look like. What are the relevant properties a solution should have, and what is weighting on these properties? …”
“What do you want me to do?” prods you to give concrete examples of what a solution looks like. That can reveal aspects of the problem you didn’t realize, and implicitly shows people an model of the problem. Which is crucial, because communicating is hard, even with people you’re close to. Especially if they haven’t didn’t notice the problem themselves.
I have not communicated the subtleties here. I was mainly complaining about a situation where the other person is not making the mental move of actually trying to solve the problem. When I don’t have an answer to “What do you want me to do?”, they see it as an excuse, to do nothing and move on. Your interpretation presupposes that they are trying to solve the problem. If somebody would do what you are describing, they would do well to state that explicitly.
“What do you want me to do?” is much worse than “What do you want me to do? I am asking because maybe you have already thought of a solution, and it is just a matter of you telling me how to implement it. Then I can go ahead and implement it if I also think it is a good solution. If not that is fine too. In this case, let’s try to solve the problem together. Let’s first get clearer about what a solution would look like. What are the relevant properties a solution should have, and what is weighting on these properties? …”