What do you do for work?
I hate being asked this question. I know there is usually a good reason for being asked, but it’s a MINEFIELD!
I’ve answered this question a lot recently; as a new patient at a medical clinic, on a passport application for my kids, at the foreign exchange kiosk, for a school enrolment form, at networking events, by my osteopath and more recently at a wine tasting dinner (never say you work in HR at a wine tasting dinner-immediate downer!).
Most of the time, I could say, “it depends”. But I’m not sure that would be appreciated by some more formal folk (like the ticket inspectors who confiscated my passport on a Krakow tram – another story for another day!).
Answering ‘Leadership Coach’ could discount people who need help in the culture and team space.
Answering ‘Culture Crafter’ might be confusing for people who don’t understand what culture looks like, or even is, in their organisation.
Responding ‘Strengths Practitioner’ might cause people to think I work in a gym. (Bahahah! Neverrrrr 💪 )
Consultant seems too broad.
Human Resources seems too narrow.
Coach could be a sporting role. 🎾
You see what I do varies according to what problem I’m solving.
For leaders, I see two challenges around problems solving;
- We are not clear on the problem we need to be solving
- We are not solving the problems we can’t directly see
The first challenge is that in an effort to be efficient and keep things moving, we jump in to solve the problem we THINK needs to be solved. We might fail to consult others, or have them name the challenges we identify. We might have seen this before, so we ‘rescue’ our people and give them the answers. We fail to get past the symptoms to the root cause. We don’t stay curious long enough, or ask enough questions, or afford the time to marinate in the problem long enough to understand it.
The second challenge is that if we can’t see a problem directly, but we know that something isn’t quite right, we don’t deal with it. These are the Sunday night feels about work the next day from our team (or perhaps ourselves?). They are the feelings of dread from your staff of coming into the office when we could be WFH, the feeling of having to be in yet another meeting that could have been an email. The undercurrent of tension in a team meeting. Or the person in a meeting who is challenging to the point of causing the whole team to be unproductive.
This is culture and leadership at the crossroads.
And what I often see when this happens is that instead of dealing with the unknowns or complex situations, leaders do the work we CAN do. We have meetings and communicate – a lot! We work at a task level, we cross off things from our To Do Lists, we prove value by being brilliant at our technical jobs. We solve problems to keep a project moving towards its milestones.
But we avoid the real issues. The real problems. The felt issues.
And this is where a manager becomes a leader.
Some questions to ask yourself…
- What are the ‘felt’ problems that you need to solve?
- Who are the influencers in your organisation that might be contributing to felt problems?
- What are you not acting on that requires your attention and priority?
- How can you stay curious just a little longer to ensure you are solving the right problems?
- What are you not saying that perhaps needs to be said in your team?
Keen to understand your approach to problem solving and leadership? Let’s chat about getting a 360 view of your leadership and impact with the Leadership Circle Profile, a 360 leadership assessment that gets to the core of leadership development.
