Luminary Leaders avoid creating a team of passive problem presenters

In my early years of teaching coaching skills in the Air Force, I had two Sergeants (SGT) explain a problem they both shared. These two military managers oversaw a team of technicians who conducted aircraft maintenance. As luck and military posting cycles would have it, they had a very junior team. Many of their people were only recently out of their initial employment training.?

While these junior technicians had the basic knowledge they needed, they lacked experience. As a result, whenever they encountered a problem they would come to the SGTs for help. Whether it was to show them how to do something, where to find a piece of information or help identify what process to follow, these SGTs ended up spending most of their day helping their troops. This meant they had very little to do their own work. As a result, they habitually had to stay back late, take work home or come in on weekends.?

This is a challenge that I have witnessed leaders struggle with many times since and is one you can probably relate to. Your people encounter a problem and struggle to figure out the answer. So they bring it to you. If you are like most leaders, what is your initial reaction? Give them the answer, tell them what to do, or even do it for them.?

Why is this your initial reaction? Because it's what leaders do. Help and support the people they lead. Right?

PASSIVE PROBLEM PRESENTERS

Yes, leaders are there to help and support their people. However, if that help looks like you solving people's problems and telling people what to do, all you end up doing is creating passive problem presenters.?

Here's how it works.?

When your people encounter a problem and they don't know how to solve it. It feels uncomfortable, they don't like it. They want it solved so they can overcome the obstacle, achieve the desired result, and feel better about work. The quickest and easiest way to find a solution and get rid of the uncomfortable feeling is to get someone else to do it. So they come to you.?

You tell them what to do and provide them with the answer. The problem is solved. They stop feeling uncomfortable. And what happens next time they encounter a problem? They go to the source of their last solution. You.?

In essence, you train them to stop thinking whenever they encounter a problem. They become passive, not even trying and solve the problem. They have learned the quickest and easiest way to find a solution and remove the uncomfortable feeling of incompetence, is to present the problem to you.?

In psychology, we call this a form of negative reinforcement. This is a form of operant conditioning where a negative stimulus is removed in response to a particular behaviour. There have been many experiments on rats where small electrical pulses are sent through the floor of their cage. This shocks the rats and is mildly uncomfortable for them. The pulses can be stopped by activating a small lever in the corner of their cage. The rats soon learn that as soon as they feel a shock, they press the lever.?

In the same way, with the best of intentions to help your people, if you are constantly giving answers, providing solutions, and telling people what to do, you are unwittingly training people in order to remove the uncomfortable feelings encountered by challenges and obstacles they need to present their problems to you.?

When your response to seeing your people need help is to heroically swoop in and save the day, you prevent them from growing, changing, learning, and saving their own day. Both now and in the future.

THE SHIFT

So what do you do? You still provide help and support. However, you change the nature of that support. You make the shift from?telling?to?asking.

Instead of telling them the answers and what they need to do, you ask them what they could, should, or would do. In asking them questions, you re-engage your people's brains. In order to answer your questions, they have to actively think. When you ask them a series of questions that facilitate them finding the answer, they learn how to generate solutions themselves.?

This is the art of coaching. Coaching is how you as a leader develop your people - as you lead day to day. It produces greater levels of proactivity, creativity, and initiative. It improves autonomy, responsibility, and performance. It is how you take a group of passive problem presenters and create active solution generators.?

That’s what the two SGTs did. They took the coaching skills I equipped them with and when I spoke to them several months later, performance had increased and morale was significantly higher. The biggest change for the SGTs? They now had time to do their own work during work hours. They got to leave work on time and spend more time with their families.?

That’s one of the reasons I'm so passionate about coaching. Not only does it produce significant benefits for leaders and their people. The flow-on effects make it into their homes.?

In that small way, we make the world a better place.?