How strong are your team’s problem-solving skills?

Our reader poll today asks: How strong are your team’s problem-solving skills?

• Extremely: they can crack any problem they face 24.62%
• Very: they can solve all but the most difficult problems 32.83%
• Somewhat: they can solve easy problems but struggle beyond that 18.71%
• Not very: they require a lot of help solving problems 15.38%
• Not at all: I end up solving all the problems 8.46%

Building Problem Solving Skills. A whopping 43% of you report your team members need to improve their problem-solving skills. That’s a scary number. It’s probably driven by one of three things – they don’t have the skills to do it, they’re letting you do the problem solving for them, or they don’t feel empowered to solve problems on their own. If they lack the skills, explore ways to build those problem-solving muscles like training or mentoring. If you’re solving things for them, step back and ask them “what do you think we should do?” instead of immediately giving answers when they ask for help. If they don’t feel empowered, set guardrails for what kinds of problems they have the authority to solve then get out of their way. If you’re the one managing the problem-solving process all the time, they’ll never build the skills to do it on their own.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post?  If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog.  It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!).  SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.