Leadership Skills- Creating Problem Solvers
by Andrew Bryant
Executive Coach and Leadership Trainer
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2007! How is your year shaping up? Mine has started busy, I have already taught leadership to The American Club, trained coaching skills for Sentosa and conducted a sales conference for Public Bank.
Whilst making these presentations it struck me that there is a skill that is common to leadership, coaching and sales; that skill is the ablity to encourage people to solve problems.
When an employee or colleague presents you with a problem, they often over generalise or minimise the situation. To solve a problem it is essential to understand its scope and causes and then to consider possible outcomes, resources required and the effects of the solution on the whole organization.
The following is a step by step approach to problem solving by asking questions. You can use it to train people to solve problems for themselves. I encourage you to test it by taking a problem you are currently facing and run it through these steps.
Step 1:
How is this a problem?
To what extents is this a problem?
What are some examples?
Step 2:
What do you think has caused this problem?
Are there any other causes?
Step 3:
Use your imagination to travel into the future to a time when the problem is solved.
What does a solution look/sound/feel like?
Step 4:
Will this solution take care of the problem?
Is there any downside?
Will it benefit our team, organisation, product and clients?
(If not go back to 3)
Step 5:
What frame of mind do you need to adopt to get to the solution?
What resources/help do you need to get to the solution?
Step 6:
What action steps are you going to take personally to put the solution in motion?
Self Leadership International provides customised leadership training to MNC's. Contact us to now to find out more.