In my first role as a manager, I thought of the manager’s role as that of solving problems my subordinates brought to me. I felt great in being able to help a staff member through a challenge and coming up with a better solution. That’s what had gotten me promoted in the first place, and after all, that’s why I was paid the big bucks, right?
Wrong. As I learned, this was not only wrong-headed, it had potentially negative consequences for the team and our business.
The problem with problem-solving for your staff…
As a manager, once I’d jumped in to solve the problem for a member of my staff, I’d done what HBR article “Management Time: Who’s got the Monkey?” describes – I had allowed an employee to get the monkey (problem) off their back, and place it on mine, overburdening me, and leaving them virtually free of responsibility for the outcome.
There are several reasons this is damaging to you and your organization:
- It’s not your “highest and best use” – if you’re mired in the details, you’re not objectively able to assess your best alternatives. You’re doing your staff member’s job, and not fully doing yours.
- It can lead to missed opportunities. Often, your staff know more than you do about how to solve a problem. Their job is to apply their detailed knowledge to recommend the best ways to get that done. Your job is to make that clear by demanding their best thinking, providing guidance only when necessary, and generally staying out of their way until you have a clear decision to make.
- Your leaders don’t get better if they aren’t making decisions and solving problems. If you keep jumping in instead of empowering them to do their job, you will frustrate your best people and enable your worst staff to get by with minimal effort. In effect, you lower your organization’s performance level to the lowest common denominator.
Funding solutions
Instead, you want your staff to:
- Retain the issue as part of their responsibility,
- Bring possible solutions to you, and
- Where necessary, enlist your insights to help them refine and ultimately recommend a solution.
You then select the best solution to “fund.”
Some words of caution. While you want to develop your staff and empower your team, this DOESN’T mean you take an entirely “hands off” approach to their developing solutions for you to fund. You may still need to actively stir the pot, asking “next step” questions and setting new big picture targets when you’ve achieved the previous ones. It also requires that you manage situationally; your leaders will be at different development stages, and your level of “funding” will vary accordingly. Some will be able to fully formulate good solutions, and others will be adept at making decisions on tactical steps but not on interpreting the information in the first place.
Balancing all this isn’t easy, and many new managers struggle to always strike the right tone. I certainly did at first. But by encouraging my staff to keep the monkey on their back as they developed a solution, I found a better balance that began to work for me and the team.