3 Problem-Solving Techniques to Unlock Your Team’s Full Potential
By Studiowide
How can you as a frontline leader help teams to solve problems more effectively?
In this article, I am going to examine the ways in which you can unlock greater potential in your teams to solve problems more effectively and eradicate serious, persistent problems.
The Productive Industries team has conducted hundreds of problem-solving exercises with frontline teams and as part of that process, we often lead in with a simulation to help demonstrate key points.
We often work with teams who don’t always do as well as they would have liked during the simulations, and in this article, I would like to share with you some of the ‘Brilliant Basics’ that we use to increase team performance both within the training exercises but also in the real work situation.
1. Balance the dominant and less-vocal team members but avoid compromise.
A lot of leaders see themselves as peacekeepers when trying to mitigate problems amongst teams where opposing views may exist; so they try to navigate a form of common ground between the group and end up compromising on the solutions.
The reason teams don’t always get to the best solution is that often they’ll have a dominant team member who is really working hard to get their views across, perhaps sticking their heels into a particular solution and not willing to budge. This is coupled with less-vocal team members who may be reluctant to get involved despite having a great idea that would benefit the team.
The leader’s job in this scenario is to ensure that the dominant team members don’t cause the less-vocal team members to not contribute. Otherwise, the leader will only end up with the dominant view or idea without hearing from the less-vocal members who might end up having the best idea.
It’s important to remember though that you’re not trying to make everyone on the team happy, you are however trying to find the best possible solution to whatever the problem is.
2. Leaders should speak last
It’s only natural to expect leaders to open a meeting or to set the scene and the objectives. However, good problem-solving sometimes requires something a bit different.
Think about the meetings you’ve been in where a more senior manager says what they think about a particular issue or what they think should be done. A lot of what starts to happen beyond that point with the team dynamic is that team members can seem to start to fall in line and risk agreeing to whatever views or assumptions ‘the boss’ has articulated.
When the leader speaks first it tends to draw the team just to that option. This makes for a limited and risky approach, especially where problem solving is concerned. By making sure that as the leader you speak last, you’re enabling an opportunity for fresh ideas to come forward and for team members to learn that they can speak up and that it’s OK to disagree.
3. Strive for consensus
When you’re in the room with your teammates and fellow leaders you should always try to debate and take different sides of the issue and work hard to go through all aspects of the problem – in other words, don’t be afraid to mix it up!
However, when you leave the room it’s important that as a team you’re able to leave in agreement. Once all the ideas, suggestions, and options are on the table it’s important to work through a process that enables a narrowing of ideas that gradually bring everyone along to the same, common conclusion.
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our Brilliant Basics of Team Problem Solving!
Finally, don’t forget that creating a high-performing team enables managers, team leaders, and colleagues to achieve world-class levels of Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, and People performance. However, getting there requires the adoption of an essential set of practices that when done well and done habitually combine to create a results mechanism that we call ‘The Brilliant Basics’.
If you would like to learn more, why not consider coming along to our 2-Day Management Workshop in January where you will learn how to make process improvements through effective problem-solving. Details on this event will be released soon so make sure to follow us on LinkedIn for updates.
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