Cortex Leadership Consulting

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Effective Problem Solving

“Problem solving is the essence of what leaders exist to do,” says Glen Llopis of Forbes. The best problem solvers realize that it’s a skill they need to build and refine constantly.

TRY answering these questions:

  • When faced with a problem do you widen your options?
  • How often do you identify and then test your assumptions?
  • How often are you successful at implementing the solution that was decided on?
  • Do you consistently consider your blind spots when solving a problem?
  • Do you take an emotionally long-term, rather than a short-term, view to solving problems?
  • Do you prepare yourself, your team, and your organization in case the solution is wrong or fails?
  • Do you consider the unintended consequences of the solutions you will implement?

WATCH this:  Tom Wujec gave a TEDxTalk that explains a new process, perhaps, for problem solving using your teams.  If you’ve seen post-it notes all over a conference room lately, they’re probably using some form of this method.   You can find templates on Tom’s website to help walk you through each step of solving specific problems at work you might be facing.

LOOK for these when solving a problem:  Strategic assumptions.    Mark Hollingsworth states in his article, Strategic Assumptions:  The Essential (and Missing) Element of Your Strategic Plan states, “A major reason for the absence of a set of strategic assumptions is that often senior management does not recognize that assumptions are, indeed, being made.  They genuinely believe that future markets, competition, customer needs, etc. will evolve exactly as they are expected to.  The resulting “group think” – valid and well-founded or not – is therefore not viewed as a set of assumptions at all.  It is viewed as fact, the most dangerous assumption of all!”

START HERE:  Define the problem, not just the symptoms.  If you have a workforce that is not demonstrating initiative, it’s important to consider how team members are treated when they fail at something.  If team members at work are not encouraged to fail, then they probably aren’t going to feel comfortable trying something new.   The symptom you notice is lack of initiative, when the root cause may be a culture or boss that isn’t open to or discourages new ideas or verbally punishes those that try and fail with new innovations.  It’s also possible that team members need to be encouraged to develop skills in idea generation and creative thinking.

A popular 7-step problem-solving method can be seen in this short (4:38) video and is outlined as:

  1. Definition
  2. Data Collection
  3. Cause Analysis
  4. Solution Planning & Implementation
  5. Evaluation of Effects
  6. Standardization
  7. Evaluation of Process

READ this:  As part of the newscasts this month, you can receive my e-book, 4 Keys to More Effective Leadership by clicking here.

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What Being a Supportive Leader Really Means

TRY answering these questions about whether your support is effective:

  • Have you measured your team members’ satisfaction level at work, with their job or with you lately?
  • Are you seeing an ever-increasing or consistent high-level of commitment from your most impactful team members?
  • Over the last year, are your best team members experiencing lower or higher levels of stress? (There’s a tool to measure this. Click here.)
  • Is the self-confidence of your high potential team members increasing or decreasing this year?
  • What level of performance is your team operating at?

The care and support you provide to your family and friends is something different than what you, as a leader, need to exercise at work towards the team members you serve.  Yes, the deeper feeling of empathy ties the two areas of your life together.  What’s different at work, when you are demonstrating supportive behaviors, is that you are responsible for the performance of your team in a way that serves your organization and creates a profitable or specific outcome.  For this reason, how you support valuable team members has to be different than what you might do for a friend or family member.  You might also have to make some tough choices about who you support and how you support them.

Effectively being supportive, as a leader, is about demonstrating behaviors that lead to a work place where your best employees thrive and your organization reaches it’s goals and desired outcomes.

VIEW this:  Watching this short slide show will assist you in understanding some of the core principles and methods of being a supportive leader.

DO these to learn how best to support your team:

  1. Observe your team members this week.  In your next meeting, practice some moments of detachment and watch to see which team member isn’t speaking up.  Find an appropriate time, after the meeting, when you can be alone with them, and ask them how they are doing in general.  What did they think of the meeting?  What were their thoughts about what was discussed?

 

  1. Ask each of your high potentials and best performers, individually, what you do that makes them feel supported by you.  Many times, there are specific things you do that mean the most to them.  You can save your energy for those behaviors rather than wasting any on the ones that aren’t making an impact on that person.

KNOW this:

Sometimes things don’t work out as you had hoped they would with a team member.  You pour your heart and soul into the relationship, follow the “manual” for leading them and BAM! they quit.  You’re left feeling sad, sometimes angry, and many times frustrated that you have put so much time, energy and resources into someone who will take their new found confidence and ability to another company.  That’s going to happen.  Some of the superstars that now run organizations were discovered and cultivated by their biggest competitors.

It’s part of being a great leader.  The more people you grow to be great, the more great people will want to work for you.  The more you work on getting this right, the easier it will become to recruit talented team members to join you to reaching each person’s and your organization’s highest aspirations.

READ this:  As part of the newscasts this month, you can receive my e-book, 4 Keys to More Effective Leadership by clicking here.

LAST WEEK:  David Steidle, owner of Steidle Law Firm, Kathlynn Stone and I discussed the best way to get results at work that will get noticed on WFXR’s Good Day Virginia and Becky Freemal’s 10pm Newscast last Sunday night.  My previous article can give you tips to help as well.

 

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4 Keys that account for 89 percent of a leaders success

Out of these top 20 leadership behaviors, which 4 do you think really matter according to McKinsey & Company, a global firm that invests more than $400 million dollars annually in knowledge development for leaders?

Here are the top 20 leadership behaviors to choose from:

 

  1. Be supportive
  2. Champion desired change
  3. Clarify objectives, rewards, and consequences
  4. Communicate prolifically and enthusiastically
  5. Develop others
  6. Develop and share a collective mission
  7. Differentiate among followers
  8. Facilitate group collaboration
  9. Foster mutual respect
  10. Give praise
  11. Keep group organized and on task
  12. Make quality decisions
  13. Motivate and bring out best in others
  14. Offer a critical perspective
  15. Operate with strong results orientation
  16. Recover positively from failures
  17. Remain composed and confident in uncertainty
  18. Role model organizational values
  19. Seek different perspectives
  20. Solve problems effectively

There were 4 out of the 20 that McKinsey found to explain 89 percent of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness. They were number 1, 15, 19, and 20. Yep. Your focus on those 4 behaviors could mean the difference between your success and failure in reaching your desired outcome.

  • Be a supportive leader (my resource guide will tell you more about each of these behaviors and how to build your skillset in them)
  • Operate with a strong results orientation
  • Seek different perspectives
  • Solve problems effectively

So how do you measure your effectiveness in those behaviors and develop them?

Our brand new ebook is now available:   4 Keys to More Effective Leadership Behaviors that will help you quickly measure your effectiveness in each area.  You’ll then learn, why you might be challenged in that area, which practices and skills sets are most effective in helping you modify your behaviors, and a simple and easy method for getting you started with the change you want to see.

The e-book is currently designed for participants of our Cortex Leadership Program classes and individual executive coaching clients. It is, however, helpful for any professional looking to be more effective in their leadership role.

From many years of training and consulting leaders along with the data from our www.gomonti.com system and hundreds of executive coaching sessions, each chapter will help you and your team quickly identify which exact behaviors you need to modify to improve the results you are currently getting.

If you or your organization is not currently a client of Cortex Leadership Consulting, I would ask that you consider how I might be able to assist you in reaching your goals through one-on-one coaching sessions or group leadership training or a team building retreat this Fall.

If these articles are valuable to you and your team, let me know how you are using them. Your feedback helps me serve my clients more effectively.