Tell Me Your Problems

You’ve heard it before, and maybe you’ve said it to your team.

“Don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions.”

I understand the intention behind a statement like that. It is designed to empower teams to think about and solve their own issues or tackle problems that, as the leader, you shouldn’t be spending time solving.

If this is your mantra, the underlying message you are actually communicating to your team is, “I need you to do my job for me.”.

Richard Branson said, “If people can only speak up when they have a solution, you will never hear about the biggest problems.”

More than one time in my career I have ignored what I knew was a problem, never bringing it to my leader, because I had no idea how to fix it. To me, it was so glaring that I reasoned that the leader had to know about it, so I’ll just work around it until he deals with it. In hindsight, I’m pretty sure they never knew about the problem, and eventually the temporary workaround became the permanent solution to getting around the issue. The mental energy that requires is depleting and unnecessary.

Your time is a valuable asset to your ministry or company, so your team members should be required to “try their best to answer their own questions” – that is different. Problems are barriers to your team moving forward, and as the leader, clearing those barriers is one of the most empowering things you can do for your people. ?

If your team knows that your role is to point them in the right direction, and then clear the path to their success, they will come to you with the problems that they are encountering, especially those they have no clue how to solve.?