Teaching Employees To Solve Their Own Problems

The following is an excerpt from our article that was published by FastCompany.com on September. The full article can be found at:  http://www.fastcompany.com/3051480/know-it-all/how-managers-can-teach-employees-to-solve-their-own-problems

Managers often find themselves trapped in the middle of situations that aren't theirs to solve. Arbitrating certain disputes robs your team members of developing their own conflict management skills.

One of your other jobs as a manager is to help your team grow, both individually and together. To do that, you need to help them resolve some of their own issues collaboratively. Here are five tips to help managers do just that.

1. Know When And How To Intervene

Different circumstances call for different responses. If one employee’s weak performance is preventing other employees from getting their jobs done, you most certainly have a role to play. Address the performance deficiencies of that team member.

But if the matter comes down to disagreement over strategy or tactics involving a certain project, that might be a time to step back and encourage your team members to sort it out. You can and should give guidance, but you don't always need to make a final call from on high.

2. Give Your Employees Room To Grow

Employees need the freedom and authority to solve problems that relate to their work. So give them the opportunity to learn conflict management techniques and develop problem-solving skills. In the midst of a dispute, your team members can get frustrated and aren't always likely to see it as a teaching moment. That's where you come in.

3. Recognize When Egos And Emotions Get In The Way

Define the problem and the impact it’s having in the workplace—tempers and egos aside. That won't calm everyone down automatically, of course, but it will help your team members focus on the issue itself and not how they feel about it. Remember that the dispute could involve someone's passion project. If emotions flare, help your employees control them so they don’t interfere with the resolution.

4. Facilitate, Don't Dictate

As a manager who takes this approach, you’ll be a neutral observer. From that vantage point, you can help mediate the discussion. […] define roles and set ground rules. Again, the employees are the primary players here, not you.

5. Make The Conflict Mean Something

When team members butt heads over a project-related issue, it's sometimes the sign of creativity and innovation trying to break through. Employees who are close to the work often have great ideas for better solutions. So help them brainstorm these ideas, then help them evaluate and prioritize them.

That employee who asks you to step in and resolve an issue may not know it at the time, but they're really asking for help to grow. So embrace the conflict, don't solve it. When everyone on your team can step up and own the issues they confront by working together, everyone benefits.

This article was published on FastCompany.com on September 25. It is adapted from The Essential Workplace Conflict Handbook: A Quick and Handy Resource for Any Manager, Team Leader, HR Professional, or Anyone Who Wants to Resolve Disputes and Increase Productivity (Career Press, September 2015) by Cornelia Gamlem and Barbara Mitchell.

Dining In The Dark

Two separate events had similar outcomes, namely how we experience things differently when we draw on different senses.

The first was a morning meeting lacking sufficient caffeine – a lesson on mindfulness. The facilitator instructed us to pick up the small cup containing the strawberry. Look at the strawberry, closely. What do you observe? Now pick up the strawberry, feel it and smell it. What do you observe? Each step, each question was focusing us on how we use different senses, sight, touch, and smell to experience the same thing. Finally, close your eyes and take a small bite of the strawberry. What do you notice? With eyes closed and in a quiet room it was amazing. The strawberry was one of the sweetest tastes I can remember - a natural and succulent sweetness. It melted in my mouth.

The purpose was to widen our awareness and make us think about where our attention was at a particular moment – one moment when you’re looking at the strawberry, another when you’re touching it, etc.  Just like you strengthen your muscle memory, you can strengthen your awareness.

The second event was a dinner sponsored by the Foundation Fighting Blindness. After a reception of sushi and wine - plenty of stimulation - the dinner began. The salad and wine were served, while the lights were still on. Then preparation for the main course began. All attendees were given a "Mindfold" - a black blindfold with foam cushioning for comfort - and asked to put it on – the main course would be served and eaten in the dark. Quick, take note - wine here, water next to it. Close your eyes and practice picking them up. Do the same for your knife and fork. Memorize where all these items are relative to your reach. Strengthen your awareness.

Once the dinner came, there was a great deal of chatter in the room. I would have preferred quiet so I could focus more of my senses - taste and touch. So many similar events in hotels prepared me for a meal that would consist of a protein, starch, and vegetable or two. Being a sighted individual, I even had a pretty good sense of where on the plate each item would be located - muscle memory at work. No surprise, the protein was chicken. Clue: the knife was an ordinary table knife. Steak would have required a different knife – more challenging in the dark.

The starch was risotto - I could tell by the texture in my mouth. The strawberry experience prepared me for that. I was grateful for the chatter, however. It alerted me that one of the vegetables was cooked spinach - not a fan. As I ate a piece of asparagus, I began searching with my folk for the spinach to no avail. I put the folk down, reached for a glass - good, it's the wine - and took a sip. Then I ran my fingers over the back of the plate and discovered the spinach. Yes, now I know where it is and I can avoid it. I finished just in time for the announcement that the main course was over. We could remove the “Mindfold” and get ready for coffee and dessert – which appealed to all the senses.

This month is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. Individuals with disabilities have the courage to stare into the waves, know the limitations of some senses and rely on the others. Organizations can be courageous too. Understand the reasonable accommodations individuals with disabilities need to succeed in the jobs for which they qualify!

Legal Eaglets

While visiting my friend Donna this summer, we drove past the building in her home town that once housed the law office where she worked as a legal secretary right out of high school. Donna went on to become a legal assistant and was part of the movement to first certify as a legal assistant in her state. She was surprised when I told her what I’d read recently about the State of Washington, where the legal profession is taking a page from the medical profession’s songbook and authorizing a new class of professionals called “limited license legal technicians” (LLLTs). Essentially, LLLTs are the nurse practitioners of the legal field.

Washington state was inspired to implement this ambitious experiment because of the high number of people with civil legal problems -- 80 to 90 percent -- who never consult an attorney because the cost is prohibitive. The government is required to provide counsel for criminal cases, but for consumer, employment, real estate, and family law, people are on their own if they can’t afford a lawyer.

To qualify as an LLLT, individuals will have to take classes at a community college, sit for a licensing exam, and apprentice under a lawyer for 3,000 hours before they open their own practice. This will entitle them to prepare court documents and perform legal research, just as lawyers do, but at a significantly lower cost. Revolutionary and groundbreaking, except that legal secretaries, paralegals and legal assistants have been doing this for years under the license of the law firm that employed them. While LLLTs will be able to fill a void, they will not be able to represent their clients in court.

Not surprisingly, economic issues are driving this evolution of the legal profession. The cost of the program is estimated at $10,000 -- far less than the cost of law school. Lawyers incur tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of educational debt and need to charge high fees just to pay it off. Clients often can’t afford to pay these fees. On the other hand, there is a glut of law school graduates competing for limited positions. The irony: too many lawyers and too many clients being underserved. Over time, as the program grows, the services LLLTs may be able to offer could expand. More individuals who are drawn to a career in the legal field may opt to become LLLTs rather than invest in a pricey law school education.

It’s not only organizations that have to innovate if they want to remain vital and grow. Professions also have to look for ways to change and open up opportunities -- not only for individuals to join the profession in new roles, but for consumers to receive the assistance they often need.

Video Interviewing—Good or Bad Idea?

I love learning new things so when I was asked to do a webinar for BLR on tips for using video to interview candidates I said yes.  I thought I knew I something about this topic because I‘ve been in HR for a long time and recruiting is my favorite part of HR. However, as I began to research the topic in order to prepare my slides for the webinar, I found out there is more to this than I imagined.

That got me to thinking about how often I just jump in and start doing something before really giving it thought or doing research.  I’ve always been this way—it would never occur to me to read the instructions before putting something together. I remember the last car I bought and the sales person making me sit in the car before I left the dealership while he went through the driver’s manual. It was torture for me but paid off the first time one of those dashboard lights came on—I knew what it was and didn’t panic.

Wish I could tell you that now I always read the manual before turning on a new appliance but at least I now know it pays to keep those instructions manuals in a place where I can find them if needed.

Back to video interviewing—I had no idea that organizations are using videos to replace phone screening interviews.  What a great idea to send applicants 4-5 questions and ask them to record their answers on a video and email it back—since everyone is so good at short videos from watching YouTube, most applicants are happy to do it.  In fact, research shows that less than 2% refuse and most of them, I think, hope that by saying no to the video, they will get a face to face interview with the hiring manager—which is probably faulty reasoning!

Then, two way video using technology like Skype or Facetime or Google Hangouts is a great way to interview a candidate in another country or even in another town—so much more cost effective than flying people in before you know if they have the skills you need.  Better to do a video interview to probe for their strengths before you go to the expense of bringing them to your location.  Another benefit of video interviews is that the hiring manager can share the tape with others in the organization to get additional reads on the candidate’s qualifications.

Of course, the same good interviewing skills are needed whether it’s a face to face or video interview.   Interviewers need to know how to do a fair and legal interview and how to ask open ended questions.  I’ve said it before and I will say it again—there is nothing more important than bringing the right people into the organization and video technology can be a real asset to making that happen.