764: Stop Solving Your Team’s Problems, with Elizabeth Lotardo

Dave Stachowiak:
Jumping in to solve problems feels like we’re doing important work. The issue is that leaders need to be enabling work both for scale, and to grow the skills of others. In this episode, how to get out of the trap of solving your team’s problems for them. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 764.

Dave Stachowiak:
Production Credit: Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Dave Stachowiak:
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I’m your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren’t born, they’re made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. I have had the privilege for so many years of talking to so many of our members and listeners who are part of our community. And one of the words that comes up regularly in my thinking about our audience is compassionate. How compassionate that people are in their work as human beings, but also, of course, with their teams and in supporting others. And it is a wonderful strength to have as a leader.

Dave Stachowiak:
And like any strength, if we over-index on it, it can become a liability for us. And one of the ways that it can sometimes become a bit of a liability is, we jump in too much to help. Today, a conversation on how we can balance the compassion that we all have, and to do it in a way that actually is compassionate and kind and helps people to grow. I am so pleased to welcome Elizabeth Lotardo to the show. She is a consultant, writer, and online instructor who helps organizations drive emotional engagement. Elizabeth writes for Harvard Business Review, is a top voice on LinkedIn, and the author of Leading Yourself: Find More Joy, Meaning and Opportunities in the Job You Already Have. She’s also the author of the Harvard Business Review article “Stop Solving Your Team’s Problems for Them”. Elizabeth, so glad to have you on.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Thanks for having me, Dave.

Dave Stachowiak:
I found the article that I just mentioned in HBR and I was like, oh, this is lovely. So lovely! And it, I was thinking about what you’ve wrote in our discussion today and I have a bit of a theory. And my theory is, is as a leader, you’re more likely to jump in and solve your team’s problems if you tend to be compassionate. Because in the moment, one of the things you talk about in this article is that everybody wins. It’s actually a really good thing in the short term, isn’t it?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
In the short term, it definitely is. And this is something I saw play out in my own leadership journey, and in my coaching practice. Compassionate people, people who are raised in their leadership journey with the servant leader mentality, they tend to be first to say to their team, I’ll remove that roadblock for you. I’ll take care of that problem. I’ll reach out to so and so who isn’t responding to you. Because they come from this place of wanting to be really helpful, but it can bite you to take into an extreme.

Dave Stachowiak:
Yeah. And really does feel good in the moment. I’ve done this so many times in leading teams of, on one hand, I feel good in the moment because I’m doing something that helps someone. If I’m jumping in and solving their problem, I’m supporting them, I’m serving them, servant leadership, like you just said, right? And the other person feels good too, like oh my goodness, thank God! Someone’s jumping in and helping me with this issue I didn’t know what to do with, right?

Dave Stachowiak:
And so it’s like everyone wins and it does. And then of course, it does fall apart pretty quickly, doesn’t it?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
It can take a few years because in the moment it does feel great, right? If I’m the employee, I have this awesome boss who removes all these obstacles obstacles for me. And if I’m the boss, I’m that awesome servant leadership who my employees love. And we all leave feeling great. Until both of us start to pay a price later. The boss who constantly solves the problem will burn out, right? We’re in a time in leadership where people have more direct reports than they’ve ever had.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
People are in more matrixed organizations than they’ve ever been in. And the pace of change, the deliverables is unsustainable in a lot of cases. On the individual contributor side, we’re also struggling because we’re feeling a lack of empowerment at work. We’re feeling like there’s all this red tape, like we can’t make any progress without our hand being held, and grownups don’t want to feel that way. So this dynamic that feels so great in a micro, in the macro causes both sides a lot of heartache.

Dave Stachowiak:
How often do you see this pattern where for often very good reasons, someone has fallen into this habit of jumping in and solving a lot of their team’s problems that maybe they really don’t need to be doing?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
I see it all the time from the most well-intended people. The people who want to protect their team from all this bureaucracy and nonsense from above. The people who don’t want their team running into technical challenges that are sometimes inevitable. The more someone cares about their team and wants them to do well, unfortunately, the more likely they are to fall into this cycle.

Dave Stachowiak:
I see it a lot too. And one of the reasons that the article grabbed my attention so quickly is as I was thinking about this. I was thinking about all the situations that had come across my desk just in the last few weeks where this has come up. And it is a pattern that repeats itself. And then, we also sometimes see the opposite thing too. And in fact, I’m sure there is someone listening to this who would say, well, I don’t have this problem. I tell people to come to me with solutions, not problems. And you talk about this in the article too. And that other extreme isn’t necessarily great either, is it?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Exactly. There’s this other extreme of don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions, and don’t dump anything on my desk. And a school of thought that says people are sort of left to fight or flight independently, and that the leader’s job is not to micromanage and get in the weeds of these things. And there’s some truth in that too. The leader’s job is to not micromanage. The leader’s job is to help people solve problems independently. But I think that side of the spectrum has gotten such a negative reputation because it comes with an absence of compassion, which the first side that we talked about tends to over-index on. So my hope with the article Stop Solving Your Team’s Problems was to acknowledge that compassion in leadership is an advantage.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
This is not something we should be letting go of. But, when we over-index on it, when we rob people of growth opportunities, when we burn ourselves out in the name of servant-driven leadership, everyone pays a price for that.

Dave Stachowiak:
It’s very much a both-and here that, and of course, truly being compassionate is actually, not jumping in just to rescue, but being able to redirect in a way that is maybe a little more uncomfortable in the moment, but in the long run, actually, yes, it helps you as a leader. But one of the big messages I hear from you is it actually is better for the team too. It’s better for employees if you’re doing this. And you have some wonderful invitations you make in your writing on how to do this. And there’s five questions that you found work really well in, in actually going down this path and starting this, especially if you haven’t done a lot of it before. And I thought we’d look at each one of them, and some of the insight and even the power behind these questions. And the first one is “What have you tried?” When someone comes to you asking for you to jump in and to solve a problem, the what have you tried? Question. What is it that makes that question work?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
There’s a couple of layers beneath this question that make it so effective. The first is, in the question is an assumption that employees have the ability to act, right? If I’m asking what have you tried? Baked into that is, you and I share belief that you can do things in this organization, right? You don’t need to come to me to make progress. Also, in that question is a, how should I phrase this? In the question is an invitation to say “nothing”. And I think that’s really important if you are new onto this, prompting your employees to solve their own problems journey. It’s not a 180. And as a leader, the more you can give space or I haven’t tried anything yet.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Oh, I thought about this, but I wanted to run it by you. Or I’m not sure what we should do, right? We’re opening the door to a conversation as opposed to, “only come to me with the solution”. So I think that question is sort of the softball entry point to build in belief that you have authority, you can do things. I believe in you to make progress. And also, it’s okay if you haven’t yet. Let’s tackle it together.

Dave Stachowiak:
I’ve had a number of our members over the years that we have tried a question, either this exact question or a question like it. And, intellectually, they’re all bought in, like, oh, I should be asking that question more: what have you tried? And you alluded to this a moment ago, that something that I see them run into pretty quickly is they’ll ask this question and their employee sort of looks at them strangely, and it’s super awkward, especially the first couple of times. And, they often will come back to me or some of our other members working with say, “oh, this is not feeling right at all because I’m getting like, I’m asking people, and it’s super awkward”. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, is it?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
An awkward blank stare is not a sign you shouldn’t be asking this question. It is reinforcement that you should be asking that question. Because beneath that blank stare is often people assuming that they don’t have permission to act, people feeling a sense of disempowerment, people feeling like they need their handhold, that making a move is too risky. So if you are being met with this, I don’t know, this is awkward. That is your sign that something needs to change, and you should be asking the question more frequently, even though it’s awkward, which it will become less so over time, instead of avoiding the question.

Dave Stachowiak:
And of course, people, if this dynamic has emerged in your organization where you’re jumping in and solving problems, people are used to you doing that, right?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Yeah. You teach people how to treat you. Yeah. It happens in an individual sense. A leader who’s constantly running around solving problems for their team. And it also happens culturally on an entire organizational level, where middle management bears the brunt of all these problems. And that’s just how it goes.

Dave Stachowiak:
When you see someone who hears this advice and gets it like, okay, I recognize as a leader, I am jumping in, I’m doing too much rescuing, they ask this question, they run into that awkwardness. When you see someone kind of go through those early stages of of course, their team often doesn’t know that they’re shifting. They are shifting, but their team doesn’t know that yet. Have you found something that’s helpful to kind of like get through that initial awkward phase, not only for the leader, but also for the employees? Or is it just a matter of like, hey, you just gotta go through it.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
To some degree, I think you gotta go through it. But a lot of times what can help is following that “what have you tried” question, if the answer is “nothing”, with a, “what can we try together”, and move us into a place of joint action instead of leader-only action. And from there, we can go further into a place of employee action. But that middle ground is viable, and recognizing that, in kind of a meta moment here, like short-term price for long-term gain, we are going to have some uncomfortable moments as leaders. Our employees are going to have some uncomfortable moments being led by us, but everyone will be better off in the long run with more independent problem-solving.

Dave Stachowiak:
The second question is: What or who is getting in the way of tackling this? And I really like a distinction you highlight about this question, which is rather than you jumping in and solving the problem for them, your work as a leader is more about helping to remove the obstacle. What’s significant about that distinction?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
What I saw in my coaching practice is, two challenges leaders run into. One, they end up with a lot of the same problem, just like different flavors of the same core issue. And number two, is they take on a giant hairball when they could have only untangled a little piece and given the rest to their employee. So what I hope to do with that question, was provide space for leaders to identify some thematic challenges, right? Is it always another department? Is it always this vendor? And those things are easy to miss in the cadence of day-to-day business, right?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
We’re firefighting, there’s thing after thing after thing. We miss the pattern. But when we open the floor to our employee, to identify, hey, this little piece of it seems to come up again and again. We save ourselves a lot of time in the long run. So, it’s easy to identify when the space is open., and leaders are often surprised how quickly their teams are able to say, “it’s always this vendor, it’s always this other department, or it’s always these two systems that don’t talk nicely to each other”. And when the leader can solve that, they remove the hundred different flavors of that problem that would have come into their office for the next quarter.

Dave Stachowiak:
And it’s the kind of thing that the leader is often more suited to because of position and role to actually have influence on. And it makes the entire system better, versus I’m just jumping in and trying to help with this particular task or project. I like the word use, their “theme” I’d like, it’s really thinking about the bigger picture of this. It’s at the elevation, the altitude level.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Absolutely. Which is so easy to miss. And oftentimes those frontline employees are more aware of it than the leader is themselves. Because they’ve had to do the emotional labor of carving out time on the leader’s calendar to get their micro problem addressed, and a lot of the times are thinking, if this one thing wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have to be constantly raising my hand for problem solving.

Dave Stachowiak:
One of the other questions that caught my attention is the third question, and it’s a question that’s similar to a question that I’ve asked, and we’ve talked about on the show before. And the question that I’ve used previously is: What support do you need from me? And you invite us to change that question slightly and drop the last two words. Rather than saying, what support do you need from me? What support do you need? What’s the benefit of, of taking away the “from me” part of the question?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
What I’ve seen with the “from me” part of the question is leaders assume a level of responsibility that doesn’t necessarily need to be theirs. And when we drop the from me and say, what support do you need? Support can come from a lot of places, not just that single leader. It could come from a fellow teammate. It could come from an adjacent department. It could come from some external resource, some support avenue. Dropping that “from me” removes the burden of the problem from the leader’s shoulders, and it puts it in the center of the table. And the employee is able to Identify what support they need that maybe the leader themselves can’t even do to actually solve the problem. So, instead of grabbing that entire problem and saying, how can I solve this for you? We’re putting the problem in the center of the table and asking the employee: What do you need to solve this?

Dave Stachowiak:
It’s less a like, am I going to do this? Are you going to do this? It’s more of, let’s look at this. I love that image of like, putting on the center of the table. We’re having a conversation about how do we resolve this? It’s not just like who’s doing what, whose task is whose. And the other thing that I think is really nice about this, and I’m going to change when I ask this question, is when you add in the “for me”, there’s a tendency, if you’re not careful, to just all of a sudden get right back into where you started, which is someone says, oh, I need you to jump in and do this, like that’s what I need from you. And all of a sudden, you come out of the conversation thinking, well, I tried to ask this question, and yet, I’m back doing the rescuing people from their problems just like I was before.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Absolutely. And again, we’re not closing ourselves off as leaders to being supportive. If there is something that they need from you, that question still opens the door for them to say it. But it’s less assumptive that it’s going to be you doing the solving and you being the sole source of support.

Dave Stachowiak:
Fourth question: What would you do if you were in my seat? And you write on this one: Asking this question prompts your employee to carry some of the intellectual load of problem-solving. You’re asking for their insights and inviting them into the decision-making process. And I was thinking about what you wrote on that, that, oftentimes we get very caught up in the moment of the task or the project, and we’re not thinking about the altitude, we’re not thinking about the succession planning, the development opportunities. Asking a question like this, what would you do if you were in my seat? It prompts a little bit more of that higher-level decision-making, and even if someone hasn’t thought about that before, it at least raises the awareness of like, okay, there’s a bigger picture to this, versus just the task that’s at hand.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Right. Intellectual load is a thing, and problem-solving takes time. So I’ll tell you where this question first came to me. I was coaching a customer success leader who was really burnt out underwater working 10-12 hour days, back to back, on pretty low level customer escalations because their team was stuck in this pattern of, the second a customer has a problem, which is like a lot of the time, and customer success, despite the name, that problem gets lobbed to the customer success leader. So the customer success leader was experiencing problem after problem after problem and doing their best to solve all of them because they cared about their team. They didn’t want their team to be underwater. But because they were so overwhelmed, the problem-solving took time. And their team was starting to get frustrated. They felt like, I passed my boss this customer escalation two days ago.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Nothing has been done on it, the customer is still in my ear. So, employees became resentful despite the best noble intentions of their leader to solve all the problems. And what I saw in that is, a lack of appreciation for the leader. Employees had no idea what it was taking to solve these customer complaints, how many cross-departmental communications were involved, the politics, the red tape, the sign off. And, they had no pathway to do that themselves, because problem-solving was happening in isolation. The leader was doing it alone. And, despite everyone’s good intentions, became really frustrated with each other. And what I hope to do with that question, “what would you do if you were in my seat?”, was get out ahead of some of that. To show individual teammates that, hey, problem-solving is a thing.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
I’ll help you do it, but I want you to see it from my perspective and see how much it takes so you can do it again next time. And that question, what would you do if you were in my seat? Removes the option to disengage from the intellectual load that is problem-solving. It forces strategic thinking, by nature of the question.

Dave Stachowiak:
Yeah, and it’s so lovely because it’s not a “let’s sit down and talk about strategic thinking” kind of.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
We never have time for that.

Dave Stachowiak:
Right. And no one, like, sort of like, our eyes roll back in our head anytime someone says something like that, right? And especially if someone hasn’t had any experience with it. But it’s a really nice question because it sort of comes to that just like, in a very indirect way by asking a very relatable question of like, hey, what would you do if you were in my seat? It by nature of entering into that conversation, you start having a dialogue about the altitude, the bigger picture, the politics, the strategy pieces, without even having necessarily to say those words. And you’re helping the person who, by the way, may be in that seat someday, right. Start to see some of those dynamics if they’ve never Thought about those before. So I think it’s like, it’s a really lovely way to get there without using the big words and going down like the whole strategy path. It’s just, it’s so natural that way.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
What I love that you picked up on in that question, and what I tried to do with all of these questions, was lay this narrative of boss to employee conveying through questioning: I believe in you, I trust your judgment, you can do this, you have the skills to solve this problem. Without leaving them high and dry, like that, “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions” narrative tends to do to. Find that sweet spot of this isn’t going to be comfortable and easy for you all the time, but I’m right here with you through it.

Dave Stachowiak:
And to come all the way back to where we started, that really is compassion. Right? Like everything you just said, compassion is not really, “let me jump in and solve this problem for you”,. Like that feels nice in the moment, but real compassion is everything you just said of like, let me actually help you to grow the skill set and let’s work on this together as a team, to do this in partnership and to have a higher level conversation. And by asking these questions, you’re just more likely to get there.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Absolutely. And managers are burned out. You know, part of this five-question framework was born from wanting to see compassion stay in the workplace, but also recognizing that the path of leadership problem-solving that we are on in so many organizations is not sustainable. There was some new reporting from Gallup that says middle managers are declining the most rapid rate in terms of employee engagement. They are the most at risk for burnout, they are most at risk for a health problem related to their burnout. The volume of tasks on their plate has to decrease, and we need a pathway for that to happen that doesn’t involve abandoning compassion. And in the servant-driven leadership mindset that built so many amazing cultures.

Dave Stachowiak:
The final question: Is there anything else I should know? That is a really open-ended question. What do you get by asking it?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
What you get by asking, “Is there anything else I should know?” is, number one, information that may have been missed, but number two, a way for awareness and problem ownership to decouple. A lot of the times, and I’ve seen this time and time again, I’m guilty of doing it myself. An employee will bring a problem into their boss’s office because they don’t want the boss to be surprised by that problem. And the boss sees, “oh, okay, this is a big problem, I’ll solve it”, without any request from the employee to do the solving. So what I wanted to capture in that question was, an opportunity to say something without, “okay, I’ll solve the problem for you”, right? To decouple that, “you made me aware of this and now it’s mine”. Saying, is there anything else I should know? Validates that open line of communication that compassionate leaders always want. And, it leaves the active solutioning to the teammate.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
I will call out on this question, and I had a really thoughtful comment on this piece about it. If you ask this question first and you’re in a habit of reflexive problem-solving, people will assume that the problem is staying with you. So there’s a reason this question is number five, because building that muscle of what have you tried? Who or what is getting in the way of tackling this? What supports you need? That is the foundational level to debunk this assumption that the problem stays in the leader’s office.

Dave Stachowiak:
And the spirit of what you just said also reminds me that sometimes someone’s coming in with a situation or a complaint or a frustration, and they don’t want you to solve it. They’re not asking for help. They just need someone to hear them and, and be present with them. And like, this question really allows for that, if that is indeed the situation that they’re showing up with.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Absolutely, and we’ve all been in a personal situation, right? You go after work, you had a really frustrating day, to your spouse, your parent, your friend, whoever it is, and you describe your problems, and they start solutioning for you. And in your head, you’re annoyed because you’re like, I didn’t ask you to solve it, right? You’re not the best person to solve this. Maybe you don’t know how to solve it. Maybe you are the best person to solve it. But I’m not ready for that right now.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Opening that space for, “Thanks for keeping me in the loop, is there anything else I should know?” That can get out ahead of that.

Dave Stachowiak:
Yeah, indeed. You’ve been developing these questions for a long time. You’ve used them in so many situations, invited people to be able to do this in order to develop others and, also to, by the way, take a little bit of the workload off the manager. So many managers are overwhelmed, that’s part of the reason. It’s not just for the development of the team. It’s also to be able to manage time better so the leader can stay at altitude. As you’ve gotten into the practice of inviting people to ask these questions, I’m curious, what have you changed your mind on?

Elizabeth Lotardo:
There’s an expression in publishing, you may have heard it. If you want to know what a writer struggles with, look at the title of their work. And that is certainly the case for me. I am a reflexive problem solver. I want the people around me, whether it’s the team who works for me, whether it’s my kid, whether it’s the people in my neighborhood, I don’t want them to experience discomfort. And early in my leadership journey, I thought the best way to support them was to remove that discomfort and take it on myself, and do it all. And I quickly realized in sort of every facet, that I was doing more harm than good.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Though my intentions were noble, my actions weren’t actually serving the people I cared so much about in the way they needed to be served. And the more I could inspire independent problem solving, the more I could create ownership, the more I could convey my belief that, “hey, you can do this” through questions, the better everyone would be, and the less overwhelmed I would be. So sort of seeing that phenomenon play out in so many different lanes led me to the path of this article of how leaders can hold on to compassion, validate the noble intent that they have, and coach their teams towards more independent problem solving.

Dave Stachowiak:
Elizabeth Lotardo is the author of Leading Yourself: Find More Joy, Meaning, and Opportunities in the Job You Already Have, and also author of the Harvard Business Review article “Stop Solving Your Team’s Problems for Them”. Elizabeth, thank you so much for sharing your work with us.

Elizabeth Lotardo:
Thanks for having me Dave.

Dave Stachowiak:
If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes I’d recommend: one of them is episode 284, The Way to Stop Rescuing People From Their Problems. Michael Bungay Stanier was my guest on that episode, author of the Coaching Habit. Michael and I talked about the drama triangle that many of us fall into in our work as leaders. And that conversation goes absolutely hand in hand with this conversation. So if you’re looking for more, I think they complement each other beautifully. Episode 284 would be a good next listen for you. Also recommended episode 650 Where Senior Leaders Can Better Support Middle Managers.

Dave Stachowiak:
Emily Field at McKinsey was my guest on that episode. We talked about the unique challenges that middle managers have. We talked a little bit about that in this conversation, episode 650 for a lot more there. And then finally, I’d recommend in episode 753, The Key Norm of a High Performing Team. Vanessa Druskat was my guest on that episode, and that key norm is belonging. So critical for team work team leadership, team culture and fits in so well with this conversation today too. All of those episodes you can find on the coachingforleaders.com website and I’m inviting you to go over there today because I just got a note from Spotify last couple weeks about some of the stats from our show, and one of the things they told me is that Coaching for Leaders has received more shares in the last year than 99% of other podcasts. One of the reasons for that, I know, is because of the library.

Dave Stachowiak:
I’ve been airing episodes since 2011 on so many topics that are beneficial for leaders. We have the entire catalog databased inside the website. You can find all the episodes of course on all the public apps, but you can’t always search by topic easily, so we’ve made that as easy as possible for you to be able to find exactly what you’re looking for. To do that, just go over to coachingforleaders.com, set up your free membership. When you do, you’ll get access to the entire episode library, searchable by topic, plus tons more resources inside, including all of our free audio courses, my personal notes, my personal library, and much more. Coachingforleeaders.com is where you can set that up. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroeger.

Dave Stachowiak:
And the name you are used to hearing in that place is Sierra Priest. Sierra is leaving us after many years of supporting us as our production assistant, both for Bonni and myself. We have known Sierra for, I don’t know how many years now. She was one of Bonni’s students years ago. She helped watch our kids when they were young. She has done a number of projects for us over the years, and our longest running project with her, her serving us as our production support assistant for all of these years.

Dave Stachowiak:
Sierra has done so much to help this show continue to air on time with the quality that you come to expect, and it is a huge loss for us to be having her transition away from us. But she is moving on to a new season in her career as an educator, as she’s been doing for a number of years and focusing time on family. We we are so excited for her. We will miss her. Sierra, we love you. Thank you for all you’ve done to support us and I know Carolina is going to do a fabulous job stepping into your big shoes. Next week on Monday, we’re back for the next new episode. Marty Dubin is joining with us on what may be holding you back as a leader.

Dave Stachowiak:
Join me for that conversation with Marty. Have a great week and see you back next Monday.