How do you get your team to figure things out on their own?
If there’s one big pattern I’ve noticed among accidental leaders – it’s that many of them are promoted precisely because they were really good at what they were doing.
The problem is when they’re in the new role, they tend to hold on to the tasks they were good at, leading to at least one of these things happening:
- Their team doesn’t learn how to get good at that task
- They keep getting bogged down in details – meaning they can’t focus on their bigger picture work
- They become the bottleneck because they want everything to go through them
- The team feels like they’re being micromanaged
- The team doesn’t learn how to problem solve and they’ve inadvertently created a team that can’t think for themselves
What’s the flip side?
Some leaders are more than happy to delegate and give stuff away.
But they quickly get frustrated when newer folks can’t “figure it out on their own”.
Inevitably the blame goes to the “younger generation” or people being lazy or lacking the motivation/work ethic/[insert whatever work cliche you want here].
Whether you’re overly blaming other people or feeling like you’re the bottleneck, you’re missing the point entirely.
What’s really going on
For better or worse, you have to come to terms with a few truths:
- You were promoted especially because you had the right combination of problem solving, taking initiative, and motivation.
The reality is not everyone has the same combination of those traits. If everyone had them, they’d either all be leaders or they’d be an extremely high performing team. You can’t expect everyone to think like you. Which leads to number 2:
- Unless there’s a good reason, not everything has to be done the way you would do it.
Obviously there are times when a specific process or procedure needs to be done a certain way. But outside of that, you need to ask yourself if it truly is ok if someone approaches a task their own way and you let them figure it out. Even if it takes a longer time.
- People increasingly need to be taught how to problem solve.
When I was a kid, I had a Nintendo. And anyone who grew up with it knew that when there was an issue with a game, we solved it by blowing into the cartridge to clear out any dust. Did it work? Who knows. The bigger question is how did we all know to do that?
Nowadays, if you have any problem, there’s most likely a blog or article or YouTube video that walks you step by step on how to solve a problem. It’s literally how I’ve replaced a lot of toilet parts when we first moved into our house.
You can either spend your time blaming the “younger generation” or realize people are increasingly a product of the environment in which they grew up.
Meaning you have to spend more time teaching, coaching, and mentoring.
But no matter why someone has difficulty problem solving, here are 4 strategies to get them better at thinking for themselves.
Strategy #1: Ask them their opinions
The first strategy is the easiest: when they come to you with a problem, just ask them,
“What do you think we should do?”
It’s all about getting out of your own way and letting them come up with their own ideas. From there you can give feedback or *gasp* let them try it their own way to see how it goes.
But often, you’ll find that people may say “I don’t know”. You can either keep helping them explore ideas or try the next strategy.
Strategy #2: The 1/3/1 approach
I first learned about this from Dan Martell and after using it and teaching others, I’ve found it’s been an incredibly useful way to teach people a thought process.
In this approach, you implement a structure with people when they bring you a problem:
1: What is the one problem/question they have?
3: What are 3 possible options to solving that problem?
1: Which possible solution do they recommend as a course of action?
This approach isn’t something you can do spontaneously, take some time to introduce it and help them think through ways to find options to solving it.
The secret sauce is when they research/brainstorm 3 ways to solve that problem and a recommendation. You’re subtly teaching them how to brainstorm potential solutions AND think through how to move forward.
Speaking of brainstorming…
Strategy #3: Get better at brainstorming
Most people think brainstorming is just throwing ideas on a board willy nilly.
You can do this 1:1 or even in groups, but the best way to do it actually requires 2 steps:
Step 1: Get all ideas on the board
The key here is restraining everyone from evaluating any ideas. The goal is to get the largest number of ideas possible.
Step 2: Evaluate each idea one by one
By separating idea generation and idea evaluation, you get a few different benefits:
- With time, people feel a bit more separated from their ideas, so they don’t feel as emotional and the need to defend it
- Seeing an unfiltered idea might trigger another idea in someone else they previously wouldn’t have gotten – leading to more creativity
Here, you’re subtly teaching them how to generate and evaluate ideas in a structured way.
Strategy #4: Teach them a structured problem solving approach
This goes back to my original point about teaching/coaching. Sometimes, people need a way to think about problem solving.
So brainstorming is one way to do it.
Another approach I actually like using is the fishbone diagram.
Whether you use an actual fish diagram or a table, the key is helping people visualize different areas/domains that might be contributing to a problem.
Now, it was originally designed to help people identify root causes.
I’ve also found it helps people think about an entire ecosystem of what can contribute to a problem.
Traditionally, you take a problem and you look at how people, processes, facility/physical issues, policy, program design, management/leadership might be impacting the issue.
It might sound time consuming (and it sometimes can be), but with one team – we were able to identify how a pattern of hiring people wasn’t due to asking the wrong questions or not properly preparing a new hire – it was because the process was filtering out the wrong people from the beginning.
A straightforward fix that led to reduced turnover of new hires for their team.
It doesn’t actually matter which technique you teach. Maybe there’s one you learned somewhere that you use all the time.
Use it!
It truly doesn’t matter, just teach your team what’s in your brain and what’s made you successful.
No fate but what we make
These techniques aren’t magical and they aren’t designed to be quick fixes.
If your team can’t think for themselves – it may be not a motivation issue
And every time you ask “what do you think?” instead of just answering, you’re building something a team that thinks.
That’s a better use of your time than being the smartest person in the room who can never leave.
If you can learn how to get out of your own way, or learn to stop blaming, you can instead focus on leading a high performing team instead of solving daily problems.
It’s your choice, which one do you want?
PS – Here are some additional resources for you:
- Want to read the whole case study of how the imPACT Leadership Academy helped The Women’s Center leadership team function at a higher level? Download it here: https://www.tinyurl.com/twccase
- Want to hear about the power of Coaching vs. Training? I was on the Learning for Good podcast to talk about the value of executive coaching in developing leaders. You can listen to it here or read it here.
