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How You Can Get Your Team to Think for Themselves

By Mark Johnson - Whilst your team remains dependant upon you for answers you will be continually interrupted and held back from doing the real tasks you are required to perform.

Tuesday 15 June 2010


Unless you are a control freak and support the credo “information is power” then as a leader you would probably like to be in a position where your team members use their initiative and make decisions (within boundaries of course).  Continual interruptions and multiple messages left on your mobile when you’re at a meeting or in training, point to the fact that your people are not thinking for themselves and are not a good indicator for them or you.

So as a leader,manager or supervisor, what can you do? The answer is to respond to questions with a question.  This may sound like you’re trying to avoid the answer (and may be suited to a career in politics) but your efforts needs to be focused on developing people’s thought processes.

In short you need to get people to use the same thought processes you would in answering their questions.

For example, if one of your team come to you and ask “how should I respond to ABC’s request for a change in payment terms”, rather than giving them the answer you could respond with “What are your options? What’s the policy say on that?  What criteria would you use to make that decision? Where can you find out the policy on that?” and so on.  Use lots of open questions – who, what, when,where, why, how, tell me more . . . .

They should almost be able to predict the questions you are going to ask them and if they can do this then they should be able to find answers before they come to see you or at least come with a number of options.

 

(A note of caution in overusing this technique.  Sometimes we all just want someone to bounce some ideas off and not be interrogated).

Of course developingothers takes time, however you need to get people to think for themselves.  Whilst your team remains dependant upon you for answers you will be continually interrupted and held back from doing the real tasks you are required to perform. In addition the more you develop your people the greater their level of satisfaction and productivity.


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