The Nurturing Leader

I want to talk about problem solving as well. Do you have a go-to question or a set of questions perhaps that you ask yourself or your team as you begin the problem solving process? Can you share that with us?

Sure. So first, making sure that everybody understands what the problem is. So defining the problem so we’re aligned on that. But the two things that we always start with are: what other information do we need? And balancing that against knowing that we will never have perfect information.
But the second is: who are the key stakeholders? Because what I found is that sometimes when we’re moving really quickly, it is easy to get tunnel vision and be a little bit siloed. And so taking a breath to really lift our gaze and look across the horizon and think about all the different stakeholder groups, is another piece that we are very intentional about.

And how do you nurture an environment that encourages creative problem solving?

Being open and creating the time and the space and the forums for people to contribute and not moving too quickly. I think balancing the need to be agile, but also making sure that we’re pausing to listen. I have unfortunately seen and experienced situations where one raises an idea, it’s quickly shot down, people move on, and then that person is hesitant to do it again. And that stifles creativity.

You’re kind of killing that person’s passion before they even take a chance to breathe.

Right, exactly.