Listen, I get it.
You want to encourage your employees to take ownership in problem-solving. You want to help them feel empowered in making things better. You want to discourage pointless bitching that doesn’t accomplish anything. You want to say something really pithy that can be found on a plaque at Hobby Lobby and hung in your office. And so when your junior creative leans into your office and says, “Hey, I have a problem,” you lean back in your chair and sagely tell them:
“Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.”
… Yeah, stop doing that.
I know you mean well. (Okay, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you mean well.) You’re not trying to make your employees feel like you don’t care about their needs. You’re not trying to make them think you’re lazy and don’t want to do any work to help them. You’re not trying to send the message that their actual, real workplace concerns are on the same level to you as pissy little complaints about uncomfy chairs or something. Regardless, that’s what you’re doing. You open your mouth to say, “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions,” but here’s what comes out:
“I’m not terribly concerned about the overall health of my department.”
If you see a fire and can yell, “Grab the fire extinguisher from under the sink!” that’s great. But if you see a fire and don’t know where there’s a fire extinguisher, or if there is a fire extinguisher, or you’re kind of in a panic and can’t articulate much more than “HOLY SHIT, FIRE,” that’s still important information to impart. Your employees shouldn’t feel discouraged from bringing important things to your attention just because they don’t have a solution for them already in mind. The assembly line cut-off button at the Mercedes plant doesn’t have a “Hit this button if you have a solution” sign next to it — sometimes, hitting the button is the solution.
“I’m only interested in the lower-hanging of solutional fruit.”
If you’re the boss and they’re coming to you, chances are, you have more experience, knowledge, connections, and authority than they do. Their ability to solve their problem is limited, relative to yours, by the fact that there are probably some problem-solving options out there that they haven’t yet been exposed to. They might be able to come to you with good solutions, but even better solutions — more effective, easier to execute, avoiding potential pitfalls your employee doesn’t know enough to consider — could still be out there. Y’know, if you put your heads together on it, instead of just telling them to do it themselves.
“It’s not important to me that your problems get solved.”
It would be great if we all learned problem-solving skills in our early development, and theoretically, an adult in a professional environment has developed some. But not everyone has strong ones, and employees early in their career haven’t had a chance to really hone theirs in a real-world setting. “Bring me solutions” excludes people who aren’t that good yet at finding solutions — even if they really want to. Even if they’re willing to put a lot of work into it, if they’re given a little bit of direction. And it tells them that you’re not particularly invested in doing anything about that.
“If I’m the problem, I don’t want to know about it.”
It’s hard enough to come to your boss with a problem. It’s doubly hard when your problem is something your boss is doing. An employee who knows they’re going to have to walk into their boss’s office and say, “Hey, I have a solution, and it’s that… you stop doing this thing” is very likely to just keep their mouth shut instead.
“I might be kind of out of touch about what you do.”
Yup. You’re sending a message that you aren’t 100-percent up on what they do, what they need, and what they’re empowered to do, because unless you run a department full of slack-asses, chances are good your employee in need has already tried at least a couple of the things they feel empowered to do. And that last part is important, because regardless of what they are empowered to do, if they don’t feel empowered to do it, it isn’t going to make it into their solution set. And you’re not going to find out your employee doesn’t feel empowered to do something they’re empowered to do — or that they’re not actually empowered to do something they should be empowered to do — because they never came to you about it in the first place, because you told them not to.
Try this instead: “I want you to come up with two possible solutions, even if they’re lousy, and then let’s talk about it.”
(See? I’d never dare think of coming to you with a complaint if I didn’t have a solution all ready for you.)
As advertising creatives, we work in possibly the most collaborative industry that isn’t indoor volleyball. As part of our regular workday, we sit down together and squish our brains together and open up and share and come up with ideas with the understanding that 1) we’re each contributing something unique based on our own experience and perspective, and 2) the stuff we come up with together is almost always better than the stuff we come up with on our own.
That kind of culture actually makes us better equipped than some of the more business-y types out there to solve workplace problems. Don’t squander that by pivoting to some outdated advice that’s been passed down through the generations totally unquestioned. Problem-solving is just another creative challenge, so have your employee concept a couple of solutions, making it clear from the beginning that they don’t have be perfect or complete, and then sit down with them to come up with something that’s better than either of you would have come up with alone.
Yes, it takes more work than just having them walk into your office with a problem that’s all but solved already. Congratulations. It’s called being a manager. In exchange for doing that little bit of extra work, you get employees who trust you and feel comfortable coming to you with their vulnerabilities, more visibility into the health of your department when you’re not in the room, and, oh yeah, SOLVED PROBLEMS. And sure, you’re probably not going to find I want you to come up with two possible solutions even if they’re lousy and then let’s talk about it on a plaque at Hobby Lobby, but I bet you can get a couple of your art directors to design one for you, now that they have time to do it and don’t think you’re a dick. Everybody wins!