Is Your Team Solving Problems, or Just Identifying Them?

Some teams are really good at spotting potential problems. When colleagues present new ideas or propose new initiatives, team members readily ask tough questions and point out possible risks. But team members ought to provide constructive feedback as well. How can you, the manager, help change the culture on your team from one that’s focused on identifying problems to one that fixes them? How can you set new norms that engender a positive tone? And what’s the best way to reward employees for thinking critically while also making helpful suggestions?

What the Experts Say

Having a team that’s quick to identify problems and voice potential obstacles is not necessarily a bad thing. “Intellectually honest resistance” to a new idea is worth airing, according to Liane Davey, professional speaker and author of the book The Good Fight. But when your team is overly focused on finding problems instead of solving them, it can be detrimental to productivity and morale. “Talent is attracted to possibility, opportunity, and agency,” she says. “You will lose great people if your team is always talking about why it can’t, rather than about how it can.” And yet, says Heidi Grant, social psychologist and author of the book Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You, the best teams balance the two. As the manager, your job is to “create an environment that allows for both creativity and analytical thinking” in order to come up with solutions that are informed by reality. Here’s how.

Recognize underlying issues.

For starters, you need to appreciate that your team’s tendencies are not unusual. There are several deep-rooted dynamics at work, according to Grant. When faced with a new challenge or idea, many of us react by “getting into the details and focusing on obstacles,” she says. “We ruminate on the problem and its many facets rather than thinking of ways around it.” This predisposition “gets compounded when we work with other people — there’s a social element” that often exacerbates a group’s inclination to think in negative terms. This social aspect is more or less evident depending on the personalities that compose your team.

Hierarchy also plays a role. “Managers and people in power think about the ‘why’ — the vision,” Grant says. “The less power you have, the more you tend to think about the details.” (Perhaps it’s because those people are often the ones who need to deal with the nitty-gritty in the execution stage.) Understanding these dynamics will help you map out the process of changing your team’s culture.

Reflect on your goal.

You need to be clear about the changes you’re looking for from your team. “You want your team to be more ‘solutions-focused,’ which is a bit like saying you want your team to be more innovative or more agile,” says Grant. Many managers aspire to those things, “but it’s not obvious how to get from here to there.” Consider how your team currently responds to new ideas and proposals. What, or who, are the sources of opposition? Where does your team get stuck? Which details cause the most agita? Then, think about what you’d like your team to do differently. This will help you define the specific behaviors you seek.

Reflect, too, on why you wish to change your team’s culture, says Davey. “As a leader, you need to make sure you’re devoting time and energy to things on the horizon and the bigger picture,” she says. “You can’t spend all of your time on today. You need to keep time and mindshare reserved for tomorrow.”

Talk to your team.

Next, Grant recommends talking with your team about your observations and what you’d like to see them do differently. Explain that you want the team to do a better job of “looking for alternate routes,” rather than dwelling on the details of a problem. Ask team members for their take on what stands in the way of that and then listen carefully to how they respond. You might hear, for instance, that team members believe they’re under a lot of time pressure, or perhaps they feel that new ideas aren’t welcome.

Maybe the team fixates on problems because people feel overwhelmed, says Davey. They might resent you asking them to focus on solutions when they’re already overstretched. “They’re thinking, ‘I can’t cope with the status quo, how am I going to manage tomorrow?’” If that’s the case, you need to think about how to “solve the bandwidth question”; otherwise, “you’re not going to get buy-in.” Ask what you can do to help. What tasks can you remove from their plates? “You need to be constantly pruning the workload,” she says. “Retire old ways of working so that you have room for new ones.”

Set new norms.

Changing your team’s culture requires getting people on board with new ways of thinking and speaking, according to Grant. To accomplish this, you need to set new norms “that deliberately lift up other ways of working.” Norms are powerful because we’re heavily influenced by other people’s behavior, she says. Simple things like “beginning each meeting with a positive reflection” or creating “a trigger word to remind people to be solutions-oriented” can make a big difference, she says. That way, if the conversation veers off course, colleagues can help get it back on track.

In that spirit, Grant recommends empowering employees to hold others on the team accountable and speak up if someone is “being too problem-focused.” She acknowledges that encouraging employees to call out colleagues will be hard. “It doesn’t come naturally.” But ultimately, it’s worthwhile because “it will help speed up the shift in how people work together.”

Role model.

In order to inspire your team to think more creatively about solving problems, “others need to see you doing it,” says Grant. “You need to put your ideas out there.” Be direct and straightforward. “Say, ‘We’re going to talk about solutions now; I don’t want to hear about obstacles just yet. And I am going to get us started.’” Be disarming. Make sure team members know that their ideas don’t need to be perfect. “When people are afraid of making a mistake or they’re worried about being evaluated negatively, they get risk averse.” The implicit message ought to be: This is a safe place to propose new ideas. Use “your body language, tone, and words to invite others into the conversation.”

Bring in new information.

Davey recommends “using external information to trigger creative conversations.” For instance, at your next team meeting, you might say, “I read an interesting article about a trend in our industry. How do you think this will affect us? What opportunities does this trend create? If this trend continues, what might we need to pay attention to? What hard choices might we need to make?” Asking questions takes the pressure off team members to have specific answers, says Davey. “There’s no need to be prescriptive.” It spurs “people to think about how they respond to how the world is changing,” she says.

Including outside voices can also be effective. Invite a consultant or someone from the accounting or legal department to attend a team brainstorming session, Davey says. “They have data and credibility to contribute” and might spark new strands of conversation.

Deal with challenges productively.

When you encounter resistance to a new idea, it’s important to listen — but also to make sure that team members’ fault-finding does not monopolize the conversation, says Davey. Say, for instance, your colleague discounts a possible new strategy because “the company tried it once decades ago and it didn’t work.” First, you must “validate their feelings and their perspective.” Say something like, “‘You’re concerned that we tried it before, and it wasn’t successful. That’s a good point.’” If you fail to acknowledge your colleague’s objection, “the other person might feel bruised and not heard.”

Second, you need to figure out a way to address the resistance in a productive way. You could either create a so-called “parking lot” where you place concerns (writing them on a white board that you’ll return to later in the meeting, for example). Or, even better, start a dialog to explore possible solutions. “Ask questions to continue the conversation.” Davey suggests: “‘Hypothetically, if we could do it again, what would it look like? How could risks be mitigated? What would we have to solve for?’” The goal, she says, is to combat “lazy cynicism” by ensuring that there’s “fact-based rigor” behind any concerns.

Reward positive behaviors.

When you observe team members seeking to solve problems productively, you need to “publicly affirm that they’re doing the right thing,” says Grant. “New habits don’t form unless they’re rewarded.” Acknowledge great ideas and creative thinking. Be genuine. “Say the positive thing you’re thinking out loud” in order to “increase the sense that norms are shifting.” Other team members will take notice of the boss’s support and approval. “Social affirmation is powerful for changing group behavior.” Davey agrees. “There’s a certain amount of pride” that employees feel when their manager says, “‘This is what we’re looking for.’”

Principles to Remember

Do

• Reflect on how you can create an environment that allows for both creativity and critical thinking.
• Practice what you preach. Role model the problem-solving behaviors and attitude you would like to see in your team.
• Create a trigger word to remind team members to focus on solutions. That way, when conversations veer off course, colleagues can help get it back on track.

Don’t

• Ignore or discount resistance to an obstacle. Instead, explore possible solutions by asking questions.
• Go it alone. Invite a consultant or a member of a different department to attend a team meeting. They might spark new strands of conversation.
• Be stingy with compliments. Publicly acknowledging team members’ creative thinking helps increase the sense that norms are shifting.

Advice in Practice

Case Study #1: Stimulate new ways of thinking by role modeling and setting solutions-oriented norms.

Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore, a midsize Canadian ad tech company, says that years ago, his team was overly focused on identifying problems, rather than remedying them.

“Team members would bring up issues without any recommendations for how to fix them,” he recalls. “When I tried to get people to think about solutions, people weren’t willing to engage, or they would just give me a list of reasons why an idea wouldn’t work.”

This mindset dented productivity. “It prevented problems from being solved quickly,” he says. “In fact, many would linger, causing much more damage than necessary.”

Kean knew that he had to make a change. First, he reflected on the challenge. He thought about things he wanted the team to do differently and specific behaviors he wanted to see from employees. He adjusted the company’s culture doc to reflect a renewed “focus on being solutions-oriented.”

Then he talked to his team about it. “I told people that we were going to try a new approach and we, as a team, needed a new mentality,” he says. “I said, ‘From now on, we can’t complain about problems without providing a possible solution.’”

Kean knew that he needed to model this new orientation and be ready with fresh ideas and solutions. “It’s important that I’m the best example of the culture we want to exhibit,” he says. “I am naturally a solutions-oriented person, and I’ve made even more of a point to focus on an actionable solution as quickly as possible.”

He also worked on setting new norms and even created a special term to encourage his employees to think differently. For instance, he calls discussing problems without a fix a “dead-end.” And he encourages team members to hold one another accountable. “During meetings, if we hear someone only mention a problem, we remind them to not give us dead-ends,” he says. “We ask instead for that person to suggest a solution so that they take ownership of the process to make sure it gets solved.”

Kean makes sure to publicly acknowledge and appreciate team members’ creativity. “It’s important to be positive, especially when you’re trying to change group behavior,” he says. “A lot of that is just saying, ‘Great idea,’ or, ‘I like where you’re going with that.’”

Eventually, with practice, most employees have shifted their mindset. “Now it’s second nature,” he says. “Our new culture is solutions-oriented, and employees tend to have a high locus of control. They are now proactive about problem solving and feel more empowered to come up with solutions on their own.” 

Case Study #2: Ask probing questions and encourage team members to take ownership of solutions.

Declan Edwards, founder and CEO of BU Coaching, an Australian consulting startup that focuses on employee emotional well-being, says his team could once be described as a group of “people searching for fires but with no tools to put them out.”

“They were great at identifying issues, but they had never been encouraged to solve anything for themselves,” he says. “As a result, they kept bringing all the problems to me and my co-founder. Before we knew it, we were spending more time fighting fires than actually building the company.”

Declan felt burnt out and resentful. “I remember attending a team meeting where there was a whole range of problems being brought forward, and no one was taking responsibility for solving them.”

He realized he needed to change the culture. He wanted his team both to think more creatively and to take more ownership for solving problems. “When people have a hand in creating the solution, they are instantly more invested in making it work.”

To encourage new ways of thinking, Declan made his expectation clear. “I said to the team, ‘For every problem you bring to the table, you must also bring one proposed solution,’” he recalls.

Declan says that he was wary of putting undue pressure on his team. “So, I highlighted that it didn’t have to be a perfect solution, but it had to be something that would at least get the ball rolling.”

At first, employees needed guidance. But over time, they adapted to a new way of thinking and acting. Today, when an employee presents a problem, Declan encourages the team to have a short discussion about it — but he makes sure the conversation never devolves into a complaining session. “Confirming that the problem is real validates people’s perspectives,” he says.

Next, Declan asks a series of probing questions. What needs to be done? What are our options? What opportunities and risks are there? What is your recommendation? What resources do you need? What are the next steps you’re taking to implement this solution?

To spark new ideas, Declan often relies on outside sources. They offer fresh perspectives and new information, he says. “We have a team of consultants and business advisors supporting us, and we regularly use resources such as podcasts, articles, and more formal training programs to ensure our entire team is at the top of our game,” he says.

Today, employees arrive at meetings with solutions and ideas to share. “Culture change takes time, so there are definitely still fires to be put out; however, now it doesn’t feel as if all of that is set on my shoulders,” he says. “It now feels as though we have a united front that is creative, collaborative, and solves problems together.”