Imagine this situation: you’re a business owner sitting in your office and a direct report knocks on your door and says: ‘Got a minute, we’ve got a problem.’ Often, problem solving is something that the business leader has done a lot of to get to where they are. They’ve become pretty good at dealing with anything that comes along. In fact, many leaders come to like solving problems — they become what I call Recreational Problem Solvers (RPS). Problem solving feeds their sense of worth.
Leaders who are RPS will sometimes complain that their key employees won’t take responsibility. When I hear this, I’ll often ask them if they think they may be doing anything to contribute to this unwillingness. As I talk to them about recreational problem solving, they often start to ‘get’ that they might have to change some of their own behaviour.
Instead of immediately solving a problem that an employee brings to them, a leader needs to take a different approach. A leader has to recognize that the problem to be solved may be an opportunity to build their organization by letting someone else have the experience of dealing with it. That’s how people grow as managers and leaders. They may make mistakes — but as those of us who’ve been around for a while know, that’s usually where we learn the most.
When an employee shows up at your door saying ‘Got a minute, we’ve got a problem,’ try asking first what they think should be done. Walk through a problem-solving process together, get an explicit commitment from the employee regarding when they’ll have it dealt with, and then follow up and review what they learned from the process.