Developing effective problem-solving skills
As a leader of a team, you have to be constantly thinking about how to minimize the time it takes your team to get up and running on projects. Managing people is totally different from leading people. In managing people, you are not training them; in leading people, you are training them. When team members grow in their abilities and skills and become more autonomous within the organization they work for, teams can achieve faster outputs with less resources. This post discusses strategies for developing effective problem-solving skills that will allow your employees to learn quicker and take more charge of their own efforts so that they can improve their ability to buck trends, solve issues on schedule, or meet targets more efficiently.
If you are a leader of a team or a manager of people, then there is one thing that you should always remember, and that is the longer it takes your team to get up and running on a project, the greater the opportunity cost. In other words, every second spent sitting around waiting for someone else in your organization to give you what you need leaves less time for getting up and running. A good leader should therefore develop strategies for minimizing the time it takes their teams to get up and running so as to cut out wastage.
But developing effective problem-solving skills for team members can be tricky because when people get stuck on problems, they tend to think they need more information when often this is not true. As a good leader, you have to be able to coach people to eliminate irrelevant variables and focus on what really matters.
What follows next is a list of skills that every team member should possess in order for him or her to develop effective problem-solving skills. These skills represent important behaviors that leaders must inculcate in their teams:
• The ability to suspend judgement about the problem and take all factors into consideration
• The ability to identify patterns and see links between ideas that appear unrelated
• The ability to improvise and not be confined by specific rules. For example, you need not follow the same step-by-step process even when doing the same task or solving the same type of problem again.
• The ability to visualize the outcome and see the desired outcome first before you can think about how to achieve it
• The ability to use examples from your own experience to guide you through new territory
• The ability to express your ideas in a simple and clear way so that others understand your concepts. If not, then others will shut their ears and close their minds.
What these skills don't include is a person's mindset on problem-solving but given below are some factors that contribute heavily towards forming someone's problem-solving mindset:
• Emotional intelligence (EQ) – the ability to manage our feelings, make good judgements about ourselves, and use this knowledge for making effective decisions. It is only when we have emotional intelligence that we can tell whether or not a problem is genuine, and assess our own performance
• Reading and writing skills – the ability to read, write and communicate effectively
• Decision-making mettle – the ability to determine what is important to you, make decisions quickly, cope with setbacks and rejections. Making good decisions takes people out of their comfort zones. It requires that one keeps his eyes open for possible risks they won't otherwise detect, bear in mind all alternatives before making a decision. This includes keeping an eye on all possible consequences as opposed to the short-term gains that are so tempting at times.
• Ability to manage emotions – the ability to keep things in perspective and remain calm in the face of challenges.
• The ability to apply our experience acquired over our careers so that we can avoid making the same mistakes twice.
When we have these skills combined, we will find ourselves susceptible to new ways of thinking and problem-solving when faced with new situations. Now let's look at 4 steps that anyone can take to develop effective problem-solving skills:
1. Get rid of irrelevant factors.
2. Assess the problem from a fresh perspective.
3. See things for what they are as opposed to what you think they are or want them to be.
4. Think about the problem in different ways or from different angles and choose the one that works best for you on that particular day.
All these steps are important because they help us to become aware of our own thinking patterns and thought processes. So the next time you happen to come upon a problem, ask yourself in which of the 4 steps above is your mind stuck? Once you answer this question, ask yourself what kind of approach you need to adopt in order to get unstuck.
If team members do not learn how to develop effective problem-solving skills today or while they are young, they will miss the opportunity to tap into their innermost potential. Thus, it is up to leaders in organizations across the globe (especially those in management) to invest heavily in creating and promoting effective problem-solving skills that will lead their employees towards growth and development.
After all, businesses, just like people, are run by their people. And there's no better way to motivate teams to grow than by developing skills that make them more independent and capable of managing their own issues. As a leader, you shouldn't merely look at your employees as mindless robots performing a series of tasks in the most efficient manner possible. Instead, you should see them as human beings with dreams, desires and personalities that define who they are as people.
It is with this mindset that leaders can build effective problem-solving skills in their people so that they can help organizations grow and stay ahead of the competition for years to come.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/managing-staff-articles/strengths-and-development-skills-for-management-leadership-597807.html
In this article we cover a very practical question: What unique things do you expect your employees to do for you? Now, let's determine their skill set.
Here are some scenarios:
If you are in charge of an artists' collective, then the construction crew would be expected to know how to construct a basic house and provide you with a roof over your head while the painters would be responsible for maintaining the walls and making sure it doesn't fall down on the tenants.
Conclusion
If you are in charge of a construction crew, then you would want them to know how to conduct themselves according to good Christian character and morality. They would also have to be able to work with other members of the crew to create a successful project.
Finally, they will need to know how construction materials and their systems work. In this way, you can be assured that your employees will provide you with exactly what you need from them while maintaining good moral character throughout the process. You'll also see that they come back whenever something goes wrong so that they can repair it quickly without having to trouble you about it.
Finding people who are able to meet your expectations for them is a creative process.