Need to Improve your Problem-Solving Abilities?

There’s a problem. Your team is struggling to find the solution. You’ve noticed disagreements and strained relationships. Someone has come to you privately with what looks like a reckless approach to solving the situation. You don’t want to diminish their idea, but you have doubts about the plan’s effectiveness.

Or, something catastrophic is going on that you need to investigate.

What do you do? The answer is both simple and challenging – shift your mindset. Knowing how to quickly shift your mindset in pressurised situations strengthens your overall resilience and gets results.

Shift Your Mindset for Faster Problem Solving

It’s normal to feel irritated or frustrated when confronted with situations that others should manage themselves. Even when the buck stops with you, it can be hard to see the reality of the situation in the heat of the moment.

So, when you’re faced with a challenging situation, take a moment to quieten your mind. You may be experiencing some overwhelm. Step away and take a few breaths. This is known as putting your oxygen mask on first.

There are various strategies that can help:

• Step away to view the situation from a different perspective – read more about that here.
• Positive vs Negative – ask yourself how you can make this better rather than immediately looking for all the problems and issues.
• New ideas and approaches – initially, anything new can feel like a problem. The phrase ‘It’ll never work’ may spring to mind! Instead, switch to your positive mindset to help spotlight the solutions.
• Overthinking a problem can make things worse. Instead, push negative thoughts aside and act. The sooner you act, the fewer sleepless nights you’ll have ruminating on the problem. As Nike says, just do it!
• Chunking down the problem helps to find the solution. In this newsletter, I describe how to chunk a problem up or down to find out what you can do and where you need help. You’ll find more problem-solving techniques that will help here, too.
• Remember your ‘why’, your purpose. That reminder will help to clarify the steps you need to take to achieve your ultimate dream. To help, drop me an email at ian@ianrose.co.uk asking for a downloadable PDF of my Purpose Triangle. There, you’ll find the steps to help you remember or refresh your purpose.

Snowballs, Radiators and Sponges

One of the strategies I share in my workshops is the snowball effect. When we continually ponder on a problem, we become more negative. We start to think, ‘Woe is me! I can’t handle this.’ And our negative snowball gets bigger and bigger the more we push it around.

So, I tell my audience to change their language. Start using positive words about the situation to melt the giant, frozen snowball into a smaller boulder. Eventually, the more positive thoughts you have will break that boulder down into manageable pebble-sized solutions that are easily dealt with.

This leads on to leading by example. I’ve seen massively positive differences in organisations who implement a ‘lead by example’ strategy.

So, to help team members become more positive and solution focused, imagine yourself radiating out positivity. And they’re the sponges, ready to absorb all your positive vibes and purposeful qualities.

Radiating positivity from your leadership role helps to gel your team and improve performance. Traits to radiate include taking responsibility, creating a no-blame culture, seeing challenges through, and using all challenges as learning opportunities to help improve work performance and careers.

The Positive Power of ‘Yes, And…’

Part of leading by example includes how you respond to others. How often do you answer a question with, ‘Yes, but…’?

To the questioner, the word ‘but’ invalidates the word ‘yes,’ turning the response into a negative. You may as well just say, ‘No, mate, forget it,’ creating negative feelings and even damaging relationships. This can lead to reduced confidence, downturn in performance, and even clashes within the team, having a knock-on effect to the whole organisation.

Being mindful of how people respond to questions can prevent that. So, radiate saying, ‘Yes, and…’ instead of ‘Yes, but…’

For instance, when you’re asked, ‘Can we speak about XYZ today because…,’ instead of immediately saying, ‘Yes, but I don’t have time,’ you could say, ‘Yes, and I see how important that is. Thanks for highlighting this. Unfortunately, my other priorities mean that I can’t today, but I’ll make it a priority for tomorrow.’ Or words to that effect.

So, to the person who came up with a reckless solution mentioned earlier, you could say, ‘Yes, and that idea has a lot of merit. Let’s explore it tomorrow.’ And then examine their idea, find the good elements, and incorporate them into a new, more solid plan together.

Positive responses like that are far more solution focused, helping your team to gel and improve your KPI figures.

Help and Support

Finally, ask for help. Where there’s a skills gap, get some training. Or outsource. When you need someone with an unbiased perspective to talk to, find yourself a good business coach.

Asking for help is a sign of strength – I’m here to help you when you need it.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein