I decided this weekend to begin a new weekly feature, a supervisory tip of the week. This week I want to focus on a coaching skill that is useful for all supervisors and managers when dealing with a workplace challenge – the solution focused question. I learned this one from my friend Bill Mills up in Minneapolis. I guess it is human nature, but many organizations train managers (here I do not mean “train” as in sitting through a training course, but instead teach by rewarding poor behavior) to begin the examination of problems with the assessment of blame. Who did it? How did you let this happen? Do you have any idea what this is going to cost us? These questions are designed to assess blame (and by implication make clear that the speaker is in no way responsible for the problem). These are problem-focused questions. Strong managers or supervisors do not ask these questions – and they quickly stop someone who starts their description of a challenge by providing the answers to these questions without being asked (by the way, this is a good test to identify whether you and your organization is a problem-focused versus solution-focused one). Instead they ask solution-focused questions. For example: How can we fix this? What resources do we have available to us? Is there anyone we need to help us? Are there changes we can make to ensure we don’t have this challenge again? Problem-focused questions are a good way to get people on the defensive, dug in and focused on covering their rear end. They are for losers. Solution-focused questions, on the other hand, communicate loud and clear that what your organization values is results – everyone is in this together. When we have a problem we fix it and move on. The best managers know that the blame for any problem is squarely on their shoulders. They may not have actually done what went wrong, but somewhere down the line they did not ensure that their team had either the skill level or the awareness they needed to be successful. That is the job of a leader. So why waste time trying to figure out who was at fault? If you really feel the need to blame someone, blame yourself; then get your team to work on the solution, not the problem.
