By Daniel Bobinski
Imagine a manager being stopped by a technician about a problem. After 30 seconds, the manager knows exactly what to do, because he spent years doing the same technical job before being promoted. With just a few questions he confirms the problem, then gives the technician an answer and heads to his office.
Once there he receives several important phone calls followed by an urgent email. This pace continues, and by the end of the day he’s barely touched the work he planned to do.
This kind of day is common for managers who come up through technical professions. Why? Because they get promoted due to being good at getting things done. They excel at diagnosing problems, finding answers, fixing what’s not working and moving on to the next challenge.
Unfortunately, after getting promoted to management, the habits that made them successful at the technical level are hard to leave behind. This explains why research shows managers spend nearly 40% of their time resolving immediate problems but only 13% of their time developing their people.
This should not be.
When a technical expert is promoted to management, they’re at a new level in the organization. That requires not only a new level of thinking, but also a new set of behaviors. As managers, one of their new responsibilities is developing people to be able to solve problems without them.
Think of it this way. If you’re a new manager with the answers everyone needs before moving forward, you’re not creating a team, you’re creating dependence.
The problem? Dependence can look an awful lot like good management. People come to you because you get problems solved and projects move forward. Your calendar is packed, your phone never stops ringing and you’re seen as indispensable.
Why is that a problem? Because one of a manager’s primary responsibilities is to create capabilities in other people.
Research by the Gallup organization over the past few years has found the following among American workplaces:
- Only 31% strongly agreed that someone at work encouraged their development
- Only 32% felt strongly connected to their organization’s mission and purpose
- Just 28% strongly agreed their opinions counted at work
How to Develop Your Team
If you’re a manager and you’d like to be better at developing your team, here’s a suggestion: Stop answering every question. In other words, the next time someone brings you a problem, resist the urge to demonstrate how quickly you can solve it. Instead, try asking, “What do you think we should do?”
At first you may get a blank stare, but that’s OK. Drill down by asking what they think is causing the problem, what they’ve already tried and what options they see. Another question you might ask is, “If I weren’t here, what would you do?”
The point isn’t to play a game of managerial 20 questions. If employees don’t have the knowledge or experience to make the decision, that becomes an opportunity for training, not an opportunity for you to look good by providing an answer.
One of my clients had the habit of answering every question that came his way. It made him feel important, but whenever he left the office for even a few days, problems backed up and he was slammed when he returned. Why? Because his people had learned to depend on him instead of making decisions themselves.
The two of us discussed ways he could ask questions instead of answering them. It worked. Later in our coaching relationship he said, “You’ll be proud of me. I haven’t made a decision in over a month.”
Taken out of context that could sound like an admission from a lazy manager, but I knew exactly what he meant. By asking his direct reports to diagnose problems and having them recommend solutions, he taught them to become self-sufficient. After that, when he left the office for a week, his workplace hummed along like a finely tuned machine.
Does this growth process flow smoothly? No. Developing people requires some tolerance for imperfection. Your employees may not solve problems exactly the way you would. They may choose option B when you might have chosen option A.
One key to succeeding in such situations is to ask yourself a simple question: Does it matter? In other words, if both roads solve the problem safely and get you to the right destination, does it matter if the employee doesn’t do the exact thing you would do?
I’m not suggesting you lower your standards or accept inferior work. I’m talking about cooperatively defining success and giving people room to operate within that definition.
Why Developing People Matters
For managers, taking the time to empower direct reports is vital because the workplace isn’t getting simpler. In a recent study from Deloitte, one of the world’s largest business consulting and professional services firms, one-third of workers surveyed experienced 15 major changes in a single year. That’s a big number. No manager can oversee that much change and continue dispensing the right answer for every situation employees encounter.
Organizations need people throughout the workforce who can think, decide and act. Managers help create those employees by providing clear expectations, asking good questions and resisting the urge to personally solve every problem that lands on their desk.
This brings us back to our manager walking down the hallway. Imagine it’s three months later and the same technician stops him with another problem. Once again, the manager has a pretty good idea what the answer is, but this time he asks a question the technician has heard many times before: “What do you think we should do?”
The technician is ready for it. He suggests two possible solutions, lists the pros and cons of each, and recommends an action. The manager thinks about it for a second and says, “Sounds good. Make it happen.”
Bottom line, it’s healthy when a manager empowers his or her people to take responsibility for their work. Investing time to develop team members is time well spent. •
Daniel Bobinski has a doctorate in theology and is a best-selling author and a popular speaker at conferences and retreats. For more than 30 years he’s been working with teams and individuals (1:1 coaching) to help them achieve excellence. He was also teaching Emotional Intelligence since before it was a thing. Reach him by email at DanielBobinski@protonmail.com or 208-649-6400.
