This is that moment of vulnerability where it's on you to make it safe. So even if the idea is something that's terrible and you would never use that idea or, or agree with it or whatever. Just listening to it saying, okay, interesting, let's talk through that. Or I can see where you'd come with that. And here's a couple of thoughts I have.

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Welcome back to the show today, we are going to answer a question I have heard from business owners, managers in the corporate world, leaders of any variety, which is how do I get my team members to be more proactive with problem solving? How do I not assume the role of answering all the questions, solving all the problems, making all the suggestions and how do I make a shift in my team?

And this is something that shows up in any kind of team. I know for small business owners, it can feel like. Well, I feel like I'm the only one making the decisions around here. I feel like I'm the only one bringing creative ideas to the, to the table. The only one really growing the business. And for larger teams or managers in the corporate world, I know sometimes you can feel like, well, I want my team members to step up.

They bring a lot of complaints. They bring a lot of questions. They bring a lot of problems forward. But how do I make that shift where they know they can be bringing problems and solutions. They can bring you problems and ideas, and that is going to help them grow in their careers. And you're going to make the whole situation easier and better for everyone.

So making this shift, this is what we're going to talk about today. And when I thought about it, you know, I feel like there's really three things that we have to do in order to make the shift. If people are coming to you and they're just dropping a problem on your lap, or they're waiting for someone else to solve it, or you see a lot of idea generation, but it kind of stops there.

Then it's really important to do these three things because that means there's a gap and people feeling like it's safe to move forward and actually start solving the problems. The first thing I want to suggest you do is put out the invitation. Sometimes people just need to know that I want you to be solving problems.

I want you to be bringing ideas forward. For example, let's say you are managing a team and you're significantly senior to those people. So in the corporate world, maybe you're VP or director level and you have a few entry level employees. There might be that power or hierarchy differential that might be causing people to not feel safe to come forward with ideas and solutions.

So making the invitation saying, Hey, I want to run a team where everybody feels like they can bring ideas, bring solutions to the table. And here's how to do that. Here's the forms that is going to be really powerful. In a smaller business, it might mean creating forums for people bringing ideas forward in a team meeting saying, Hey, I want to make sure we got everybody's ideas on the table or creating a Slack channel where people put ideas out there, whatever it looks like.

If we want to see a behavior change, we got to make sure people know that we're expecting that. So putting out that invitation saying, Hey, I want to be seeing solutions and ideas and innovation and proactivity. Saying that now people have the expectation set and now they can step into that role. Second thing we want to do is really lean into open ended questions.

And this is a skill I talk a lot about with coaching, right? Using open ended questions like, how would you solve this? Or what do you think? And this is especially important if your team members come to you with problems, drop them on your lap and go, what do you think you should do? Right? We want to make that shift.

So when a team member comes to you and says, ah, I'm feeling really stuck. I can't, I, you know, I keep not hearing back from my client or my stakeholder, or I'm having this problem with this colleague, really reining it in as that manager, not jumping in with here's what you should try. Here's what you should do.

Or here's what I would do. Slowing down, taking a pause. And asking an open ended question, for example, what do you think you might want to try? What feels right as a next step? Well, what's worked for you in the past? What do you think's going on with the other person in the situation? Where do you feel like you're getting stuck?

All of these open ended questions, keep that solution in your team members court. Okay? This means you don't have to put that monkey on your back. You are leaving with them. You're offering support and you're going to be there to have the conversation, but you are still showing them they are accountable to coming up with a solution and coming up with ideas.

Now, if they come up with an idea that's like way out of left field, then you're like, Oh, I don't think so. Then you can say, well, let's talk about what, what some of the benefits, you know, pros and cons to that are, but it's still important that you're leaving those solutions with them. And I got to say, the open ended question is one of the most powerful tools you have in your tool belt as a manager.

Use it as often as you can because it gets someone thinking, Hey, I have the internal resources to solve this problem. It reminds us I can do it. It shows your team members that you have faith in them, that you believe in them. It builds trust because you're showing them, Hey, I want to hear how you would solve this.

Tell me what you would do here. So it's a really, really powerful tool for helping people step up and being proactive, be problem solvers, and generally for figuring things out and really owning that solution. Third thing we got to do, and I'm going to tell you right now, this is the most important one. We have to make it safe to make mistakes.

We have to make it safe to share an idea that never would work instead of just shooting it down saying, okay, well, let's, again, discuss the merits of that and see what we might try. We have to make it safe for someone to bring an idea to the table. Without feeling like, well, if I get it wrong, then no one's going to listen to me next time.

Or if I get it wrong, my evaluation's at stake or whatever we think. Because if it's not truly safe to make a mistake, then why would we take a risk? And it is taking a risk to try to solve a problem. It is taking a risk to share an idea. It is taking a risk to be proactive. So, how do we make it safe? And now I will say, we talk a lot about psychological safety.

That is what I'm talking about here. Making it safe to make mistakes, making it safe to share ideas, to be vulnerable without it being held against you. So this is really about psychological safety right now. How do we make it safe? We talk about mistakes openly and we learn from them. Maybe that looks like hosting a retrospective after a project, talking about what went well, what could have gone better, what we want to do differently next time.

As the leader in the company or in the team, you sharing the mistakes you've made or learnings that you've had is really, really valuable saying, Hey, when I started a project like this, here's some of the pitfalls I ran into, or the lessons I learned, here's some of the things that I'm doing differently, here's some of the feedback that I'm actioning, that's going to be making it safer to make mistakes.

It also makes it safer to make mistakes when we get everybody's ideas on the table. And this can look like having brainstorms using kind of the design thinking framework or using exercises like stop, start, continue are really powerful. Getting ideas in the table in a low stakes environment, sometimes it's called a pre mortem where you have a brainstorm about what could go wrong before a project so that everybody can share ideas when the stakes are low.

These different forms are going to be really, really powerful to make it safer to share your ideas. And again, when someone comes to you feeling stuck and they say, I have this problem and you say, you know, well, what do you think you want to try or what have you done in the past or what are you considering here?

Whatever they share is that next idea. This is that moment of vulnerability where it's on you to make it safe. So even if the idea is something that's terrible and you would never use that idea or, or agree with it or whatever, just listening to it saying, okay, interesting. Let's talk through that. Or I can see where you'd come with that.

And here's a couple of thoughts I have. Not just shutting it down, even again, if you don't agree with it, but the person that is sharing their idea is looking at you and your reaction. They're coming to you in a moment of vulnerability, putting themselves out there with an idea, and they're looking to you.

Think of it as like, you know, kid on the baseball team looking to coach like, Hey, you gotta do a good job. This person is watching your reaction and how you react or don't react positively or negatively or neutrally or whatever it looks like. That's going to inform how they contribute again next time.

So we want to really show an openness and appreciation for ideas. And if you're finding someone comes with solutions that are totally off base, time and again. Then that's a great opportunity to talk about the team and company values. What are your broader priorities? What are kind of focuses of the work so that you're scoping?

What are these solutions and ideas that you're looking for? For example, let's say you're talking about how to improve, you know, client or customer experience in, in your team or company. And a team member is coming to you with ideas that really don't relate to what you would want to try. For example, like you are really grounded in human experience.

You really want face to face communication when possible. You believe in, you know, high touch customer service. And someone comes with ideas like let's automate everything and use and use AI and maybe switch it over to VR. And like, we don't have to see anybody in person and you're like, Whoa, Hey, you know, really cool, fun, futuristic ideas.

And we really want to re anchor them to our team values of. human connection, you know, being in person, uh, you know, having that face to face contact, whatever it is. And then you say, Oh, okay. Like, Hey, let's take another shot. Now that we have these values, we're all really aligned on where we're going to kind of talk about when it comes to sharing ideas.

So, again, it's not about shutting down that idea. It's about scoping it to, well, actually, let's focus over here and then I'd love to hear really future thinking, cutting edge ideas that are grounded in this zone over here. And because we framed it that way, we've made it okay to share an idea that we're not going to run with because we didn't shut it down.

We didn't make that person feel stupid or incompetent for suggesting it. We said, great, like all these ideas could be interesting. And the ones we're going to move forward with are the ones that are more closely tied with our priorities or goals or values or vision. So this is how we create a team of problem solvers.

People that are proactive, people that don't just throw problems over the fence and expect you to solve everything. And I will tell you when people feel like they are proactive and they can solve problems and they're coming with solutions, that's when you foster that ownership mindset. That's when you have people out there in the field, growing your business, hating their metrics, driving great results, increasing your productivity, increasing profitability.

This is how you get there. So this is something that is so, so important. And as you heard in this conversation, it's not that hard to do. We want to put out that invitation. We want to use open ended questions to fuel ideas and we want to make it safe to make mistakes. See you next time. That's all I have for today.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the managing made simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at Liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.