A favorite article of mine, published in 1974 by Harvard Business Review, boasts the creative title: Who’s got the monkey? The article is one of the first to implore managers not to solve every problem their employee brings through the door, but rather support the employee in developing problem-solving skills. And then empower the employee to be accountable for problem resolution.
The analogy used in this article is that each problem brought to you is a monkey that you must now take care of and feed. And if you believe you must solve the problem for your employee, because that is your job, you end up with an office full of monkeys. And if that’s not enough, your office was already full of your own gorillas and orangutangs. You have become the primate zookeeper.
A manager’s role in problem solving can be tricky. How do you balance giving support that is needed, without taking on the problem? How do you empower an employee to be accountable when you fear that it won’t be done right (or should I say your way?). And yet, you are fully aware that you are out of bananas and simply can’t take on another monkey!
To fix this dilemma, there is a mindset that needs to change. Somehow, we’ve come to believe that job of the manager is to become the superhero, Answer Manager. This superhero feels the pressure to always provide an answer; to fix any problem put in front of them. When our focus is answer manager, we miss the fact that often people aren’t asking you to fix anything.
We see this in our home relationships as well. How often do we shut down our child or our spouse because as they start to share a concern, we put on our solution ears and jump in with advice. The response from the loved one is often, “Sigh, why do I bother. I don’t want a solution; I just want you to listen”. As I shared this in one of my workshops, a participant said, “I’ve been known to take answer manager to the extreme. I tell them what they could have done to prevent the problem in the first place!”
The kryptonite to this answer manager superhero is to learn to coach problem resolution. Coaching is when accountability and ownership stays with the person you are coaching. John Whitmore, author of Coaching for Performance (and the GROW model) put it this way:
Building awareness, responsibility and self-belief is the goal of the coach
Here are ten questions I use to Coach the Gap. That is, coaching problem solving without being answer manager or becoming primate zookeeper.
1. Let’s take a moment and see if we can overcome this problem / roadblock (G)
2. Summarize for me what’s been going on (R)
3. What would a perfect resolution look like? (G)
4. How would you describe the gap that needs to be closed? (R)
5. What could you do to close this gap? (O)
6. What might be a good first step? (O)
7. What else? What’s another idea? (O)
8. What approach / idea do you want to focus on? (W)
9. How can we make the plan SMART? (W)
10. When shall I check back? (W)
May answer manager rest in peace!