The other day (OK, it was quite a while ago), I was stuck in anger and frustration. Things were happening to me at work that I didn’t like. The project lead would talk about what was wrong with the project – never talked about the progress we made or the breakthroughs we had. Progress was reported as “the slipping schedule.” This project lead would insist on things going her way. She would yell at us when we didn’t agree, and cross her arms and pout. And every time I made even a minor mistake, it was broadcast to management. It was horrible.
My story above looks pretty hopeless. We hear stories like this all the time, where we just focus on the problem. And when we focus on the problem, it quickly starts to look hopeless.
I wish I knew back then what I knew today because back then I didn’t cope well in the situation. Like many people I see, I was focused on the problem.
The answer is to not focus on the problem, but to instead focus on the solution. I’ll say it again. Don’t focus on the problem. Focus on the solution.
Back then, while I was focused on the problem, I was stuck determining how I should react to the situation. When we instead start to focus on solutions, a whole lot of options start to open up. I could have done a number of things different. Here are just a few:
- I could have begun by asking, “I wonder what is in me that is causing her to act that way?” Back then I was too caught up in the idea of blame to even ask the question. I bet, that because I was so good at my job and self-confident, she was intimidated by me. I did find out later that she felt very insecure in her abilities. I bet that if I started to open up and been a bit more vulnerable with her, she would have calmed down. Instead of trying to impress, I could have just been more real.
- Instead of focusing on her negative qualities, I could have complimented her on her good qualities.
- I could have initiated sending out a joke of the day email to lighten the mood.
- I could have shared how I feel when all that’s talked about is how we’re messing up. And I could have shared that this diminishes productivity and produces more of the negative results we don’t want.
- I could have mentioned to the whole team (including the project lead) that it appears that no one is really thinking about team culture and the team dynamics. I could suggest that we could just decide on the kind of team culture we want, and then together we could just create it.
Probably some of the above ideas wouldn’t have ended up working, and the problems wouldn’t be completely solved. But something would eventually work and it would make the problems much easier to deal with. And who knows, maybe over time, the problems would shrink to a level where they wouldn’t matter any more.
What about you? Share a time when you had a problem solving breakthrough. What did you learn from that experience?
