Learning Opportunities and Leadership
Don’t jump in to answer, ask some questions instead
There were several well articulated points in this post by Lean specialist John Shook about why it’s so important for leaders not to try and solve all the problems on behalf of their teams. An outdated style of leadership believes that all the answers exist at the top of the organisation and flow down. Yet in fast-changing, complex adaptive environments the focus needs to fundamentally shift to how quickly you can learn — as individuals, as teams, and as an organisation. So admitting when you don’t know something as a leader is a strength not a weakness.
With the desire to move fast it’s tempting to give people the answer if you think you know it but as Shook says, this can be a bad idea for three reasons:
- It robs people of the opportunity to think a problem through for themselves
- It deprives them of ownership of it
- You might be wrong
Deeper than this, it puts all the emphasis on the solution as the focus rather than the process of understanding. If, as leaders (or indeed outside consultants), you get asked a question and you think that you do know the answer it’s worth pausing to consider if there might be reasons why they’re not getting there themselves. Or at least relaying the answer in a way that will help them to learn.
This feels similar to one of the basic rules of parenting — just as jumping in with an answer all the time stops children from thinking for themselves, so telling children exactly what to do and how to act can result in them not taking the initiative and owning the problem. Yet suggesting ways in which they might understand the problem better and make a better decision on how to solve it is a learning opportunity.
And yet, in business, we so often we do the opposite.
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