Why Leaders Should Resist the Urge to Fix Everything

You can significantly impact your team and boost your business when you step back from fixing everything.

Do you often advise or provide immediate feedback to your team members to solve the issues?

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg has conducted research recently that shows that rushing to give feedback and advice or offering immediate solutions to organizational issues has aggravated the problems. The study found that 85% of the organization managers and bosses fail to diagnose the roots of the issues. Their rush-to-fix-everything advice only has led tiny issues to more significant problems.

I don’t say the leaders should stay back and offer the solution. But it’s different. Instead of controlling the situation, you should wait and let your team member solve it himself. Or at least to wait for diagnosing the real issue.

Michael Bungay Stanier offers the best solution to leaders in his best-selling book, The Coaching Habit. He says,

“Giving advice — even if it’s the wrong advice — often feels far more comfortable than the ambiguity of asking a question.”

But leaders should ask good questions, and they should stay a little longer to evaluate the actual problem and give the employee time to solve the issues innovatively.

So, you should advise your team. You should educate them on certain issues, and it’s not bad. But your advice shouldn’t hinder them from using their innovative capability to provide better solutions independently.

You should understand the strategy of how and when to use feedback and advice. You can use the same thing in three different ways, and here is how:

• Advice: It’s useful and a potent tool in the administration to guide your team members. But you should try to resist the urge to control the situation when giving advice, and it should be more like conversations.
• Feedback: It’s also an effective tool in the hands of a leader to direct his team to the right path — the path of productivity. But a leader should know when to give feedback and how to give it, and give feedback once you know what the real issue is.
• Coaching: It’s another prominent way you can direct your team. But here, you allow your team to grow. You work on their growth factor instead of pushing them towards stumble blocks. It’s more like staying curious and asking questions to make things clear. Once you appear to be a coach, your team will look up to you for accurate guidance. They will clear the misunderstanding with ease. And clarity leads to solutions.

Here is how to apply these three strategies better:

1. Give feedback in the best way

Do you offer feedback immediately after someone shares an issue with you?

If you do that, it’s not a good way.

The best way is to hold a little and collect as much information as possible. Equip yourself with the relevant data on the issue and clarify your mind. Ask the person good questions, and ask the good questions so that person may give you more information about their challenges.

Once you have collected enough information, process it and ponder various possibilities before giving feedback. Evaluate your feedback and know if you are neutral or biased in your approach.

You should also consider the person and how your feedback will affect them. Know what they value and like.

This is how to do it

• Allow them to speak and observe their behaviour when they share their opinions.
• Describe their impact on someone or something when they speak for or against.
• Ask them more questions about bringing changes and innovation to something. What possibilities and alternatives are there.
• Tell them how you can help them reach a decision or a solution in the best way.

2. Adopt a coach-like approach in your organization

Being a coach-like approach is the best way to take your organizational efficiency to the next level. It makes your work environment more like an experimental place, a private laboratory where every employee strives hard to bring out the best of their abilities.

You can do this by asking them questions that are better and inquisitive in a creative way. And you listen to them with curiosity when they share their vision, opinion, or challenges with you.

Just don’t be on fire when an employee comes to you with a challenge. Don’t rush to give advice or solutions right away unless you know what’s the matter.

You can instead respond to them like this:

• “I can wait to hear back from you unless you are clear on your situation. And admire your struggles.”
• Tell them that they are the experts of the challenges and they should reach the roots of the problems to bring out a suitable solution. Repose your trust in them and see wonders.
• Tell them you trust them and have tremendous confidence in them. Make them clear that it’s not about you to solve their every problem immediately. Hold back your bits of advice and allow them time to come back with a better plan.
• Appreciate them and motivate them for doing their best. It will increase your productivity more.

3. Give advice but don’t control the situations

There is a time you have to advise your team on various issues. But giving advice and controlling the situation are two different things, and you should know the hidden motives that your advice carries.

Give genuine advice and have good intentions. Don’t try to downgrade someone in your team. At least in front of others. And not even alone. Respecting others wields immense power, and this power makes your team follow you everywhere.

When you advise your team member, ask them questions like,

• How would you look at it like this if we start it all over again?
• How would you think of changing the approaches to solve your problem?
• Do you think we can reach the best solution to the current challenges?

When you ask these questions instead of directly ordering your employee, it gives you enough space to keep your curiosity intact and impress them to come with other new ideas.

It also gives you time to wait and evaluate the situation thoroughly. Even if they don’t have proper alternatives or solutions, you can proceed because you have their confidence.

Final words

Leading a team requires skills. But the success of utilization of those skills rests on how flexible and understandable you are from within. You will be a great leader if you resist rushing after every problem and offer quick solutions.

It will make you the best leader because you will save a lot of energy for other important works that direct your organization to the path of success. If you are running after every employee and advising them can adversely affect the health of an organization.

If you want to make the best impact on your team and make your organization/company more productive, you should resist the urge to fix everything.