Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 772 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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"TAKE ACTION WITH A CLEAR VISION OF LONG-TERM IMPACT."– DON GULLEY Problems require action. But being solution-oriented means more than finding the quickest way to make a problem disappear. It means to ‘take action with a clear vision of the long-term impact.’
An astronaut once described the problem-solving mindset at NASA. If a lightbulb goes out on a spacecraft, they do not simply replace the bulb and consider the problem solved. They investigate why it failed. Was the bulb defective? Was there an electrical problem? Could the same failure occur somewhere else in the spacecraft? Ultimately, they validate all the electrical systems on all their active spacecraft.
Replacing the bulb fixes the immediate problem. Finding and correcting the cause creates a long-term solution.
The same principle applies to developing people.
When I was a young manager at American Agencies in Los Angeles, a pouch of legal documents arrived every Monday for the owner, Bob Cardella. Bob would sit at my desk for approximately ninety minutes, explain each document, tell me what needed to be done and, most importantly, explain why.
One day I said, "Bob, you could go through these documents yourself in ten minutes. Why do you spend an hour and a half going through them with me?"
He replied, "Craig, if I do them myself in ten minutes, I’ll be doing them every Monday for the next twenty years. If I teach you how to do them, I’ll never have to touch them again."
Bob could have handled each week’s transaction quickly. Instead, he invested time in a long-term solution. He was not merely processing documents. He was developing a person who could process them independently.
My friend Bernie Moreno discovered the same principle while operating his automobile dealerships. During a John Wooden training session, Bernie asked his managers how many of them spent more than half their time putting out fires. Every hand went up.
Bernie explained that he had once been "the Answer Man." Whenever someone brought him a problem, he quickly supplied the solution. That seemed efficient, but the long-term impact was dependence. His managers continued bringing every fire to him because he had not developed their ability to put out fires themselves.
Bernie changed his approach. When someone asked how to handle a situation, he responded, "What do you think?" He asked the person to analyze the problem, recommend a solution and explain the reasoning. Then they discussed it together.
Harry Friedman, a great trainer I worked with at Lamps Plus, used an exercise he also called "The Answer Man." For one month, managers recorded every question employees asked and every answer they supplied. The lesson was revealing: when people continually ask the same questions, the problem may not be their inability. It may be the manager’s failure to provide proper training.
Coach Wooden often shared this thought attributed to Abraham Lincoln:
"The worst thing you can do for those you love is the things they could and should do for themselves."
Solving someone’s immediate problem may feel helpful, but repeatedly rescuing people can prevent them from developing judgment, confidence and independence. The leader becomes indispensable while everyone else becomes dependent.
Coach Wooden warned:
"Do not mistake activity for achievement." Just giving answers is merely activity.
The purpose of correcting a problem is not simply to end the inconvenience. It is to help people improve so they can respond more effectively in the future.
A solution-oriented leader still acts promptly. But before jumping in with an answer, the leader considers the long-term impact: Why did this happen? Could it happen again? What needs to change? What can I teach? Who can I develop?
The fastest answer may solve today’s problem. The best answer also prepares someone to solve the problem they will face tomorrow.
If we: "Take action with a clear vision of long-term impact." we will help people develop Initiative, which Coach Wooden defined this way:
"Cultivate the ability to make decisions and think alone. Do not be afraid of failure, but learn from it."
Reflect on this idea of building Initiative in others. How are you doing? Write it down. Share it with someone on your team.
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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Hills
I never loved your plains, Arthur Guiterman (1871–1943)
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