Teaching "Juniors" to be Administrators

Have someone who knows what they're doing document a manual task in sufficient detail to allow a level helpdesk person to perform it. Have them perform these tasks; possibly under supervision, but certainly with some sort of audit log of what they did. Review their work afterwards for accuracy. They should be encouraged to communicate any issues with the procedure, any unexpected output or unclear instructions, etc. They should also be encouraged to stop if they encounter something unexpected, and pass it on to an admin. You may choose to have them present when the admin diagnoses the problem.

Helpdesk staff who are capable of following basic instructions accurately are possible candidates for junior admin roles. Staff who contribute improvements to the instructions (e.g. clarifying ambiguities, noticing and clarifying issues with unexpected output) are even better. Staff who can do all that and suggest process improvements (while also having the discipline to communicate their suggestions without trying them out on production systems first) are definite candidates for admin roles, and may actually have a career ahead of them.

People showing this sort of promise should definitely be present when an admin is diagnosing (non-mission-critical) problems, and encouraged to discuss how to automate the process. You'll soon know whether or not the person is ready for a junior admin role!

There is a lot of overlap with this question. Just take that as a list of thing things you need to teach.

One important thing to do is to correctly assess their readiness level so you can respond appropriately. I created a cheat-sheet for myself that is based a model from Management of Organizational Behavior.

• If junior is unwilling or unable you need to provide specific instructions and supervise performance. Do: Tell, Guide, Direct, Establish.
• If junior is unable but willing or confident you need to explain decisions and provide opportunity for clarification. Do: Sell, Explain, Clarify, Persuade.
• If junior is able but unwilling or insecure you need to share ideas and facilitate decision making. Do: Participate, Encourage, Support, Empower.
• If junior is able, willing and confident then you need to turn over responsibility and implementation, he may no longer be junior. Do: Delegate, Observe, Entrust, Assign.

I suspect the more promising junior candidates will be not be unwilling, if they are unwilling to learn you may be fighting a loosing battle. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

Keeping in mind their readiness level, start assigning them tasks. Try to give them tasks that are just a small bit beyond their comfort zone or current ability. Then help them grow their skills to accomplish the task. Don't use them purely to do the stuff you don't want to do, (write docs, review logs, etc) give some tasks that you think they would find interesting on occasion. When there is minor outage take advantage of it and encourage the junior admin to take lead for solving the problem.