🎙️ EP 47 : Don’t give me solutions, give me problems!

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You hang up the zoom call and you take a deep breath. You know, this was not a good outcome.

IT just told you that they need additional 4 more weeks, due to COVID-19, to set up a crucial system. You know, right then and there, that this means your team will break the contract terms with a very important client.

You also know that your boss will talk to that very client later in the morning. She’s also in the office like you, on rotation. You want to approach her; you already got up from your chair.

Then you remember. She told the team a few weeks ago, in a stern way:

You sit back down on your chair. You spend the next 60 minutes, crafting a number of possible responses, none of which is the feel right or truly convincing.

Eventually you summon your strength. You do approach your boss who sits just a few rows away.

You share the problem and the solutions that you were able to come up with. What is your boss’s response?

What happened in this blatantly simple scenario?

2 people who had positive intent caused unintentional negative impact. I have heard the phrase ‘don’t give me problems, give me solutions’ many times over the past years, uttered with pride by the Leaders who say it.

As I shared in the beginning, insisting on a solution from the start will likely reduce the number of problems bubbling up to the Leader. This can become dangerous quickly, if it impedes good decision-making and prevents information flow. Stopping the flow of problems entirely is AS problematic as keeping it completely unchallenged. The key is in the right balance.

Team members may simply not have a solution in that moment, and may not have the capability to come up with one. If that happens, they will feel stuck and evaluate the risk of approaching the Leader to get reprimanded vs staying quiet and hoping that things will improve on their own (which they sometimes do, making things worse). This introduces unnecessary risk in the organisation and cuts the Leader off from potentially crucial information.

All this reminded me of a definition of what a great team is (I lost the source I am afraid, but it stuck with me): A great team recognises problems early and brings them out early in the open.

Well, as a Leader, we clearly want that our team members think things through as much as they can (unless we face a burning platform of course!). It’s a valid expectation.

One of the first things we can do is to look at how we get across our message. ‘What is your solution?’ invites black and white thinking. It raises the expectation that there must be a perfect way. In episode 9 of this very podcast, I shared the question ‘What is your recommendation?’. It is (in my view) a much better and safer choice to balance this better. You are not letting people off the hook by insisting on a recommendation. It does not have to be perfect, but you insist that it should at least be a well-supported hypothesis.

1. No expectation of perfection. You make it safer for people to share.

2. It shows a living, breathing coaching mindset in the leader who is interested in their people’s ideas (well, provided they don’t shoot them down with immediate judgment!).

3. It trains team members to think and practice their judgment. The non-negotiable element that you introduce is that your team members MUST take a position towards their problem, despite incomplete information and uncertainty. It puts people into a healthy kind of discomfort.

4. It gives you a great source to observe your team member’s quality of judgment and thinking. It is so hard nowadays to observe actual performance directly. Here is one.

5. Over time, when used consistently, it will likely lead to your team members preparing better recommendations.

Of course, all this depends a lot on how you respond to their recommendation. You want to respond in a way that conveys the spirit of collaboration and partnership. It is obvious that shooting someone down is not the most motivating way to react, even if the recommendation is something you cannot agree with.

A good follow-up way to help your team member and to get clarity when the recommendations they gave seem out of the world:

This kind of question, delivered in a spirit of curiosity, is a great way to probe people’s thinking further.

In this article I explored the limits and pitfalls of the popular Leader mantra ‘don’t give me problems, give me solutions’. I shared that it raises the bar significantly for team members to bring up problems early before they blow up. I then suggested a way to balance both needs:

1) The need to require input from the team member that they thought through AND to share it early.

2) Living the coaching mindset. The question ‘what is your recommendation’ can be a great way to accomplish that as it embodies the coaching mindset, gives space and trains team members to take a position before approaching you.

I close by adding that it all hinges with the response by the Leader. If they inquire further into the recommendation with curiosity, they will likely get higher-quality outcomes.

Cheers, Maik