Your Leadership Team Is Solving Problems Too Fast

What if one of the reasons your leadership team keeps dealing with the same problems is because you're actually too good at solving problems?
Somebody brings up an issue, three people immediately have an answer, somebody says, here's what we need to do.

Everybody agrees, you assign an action item, and you move on.
That feels like great leadership, but what if you just solved the wrong problem?

Because I think one of the most valuable skills a leadership team can develop is something we don't talk about nearly enough, and that is curiosity.

And if your team is really good at giving answers, but not very good at asking questions, you may be creating a company full of solutions that never actually solve the problem.

All of this is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are.

Today we're getting into something that I think could legitimately change your next leadership team meeting.

And when I say I think it can, let me just say I know it can. I am positive this can change every leadership team meeting you have.

And the crazy thing is that it is stupid simple. What is it? Stop solving so fast.

Now, I recently spent several days with the leadership team working through some pretty significant business problems.

And there was a moment when we stop and I basically asked, Hey, why has this conversation been so productive?
Because we'd had plenty of conversations and many of them weren't so productive, if you will.

And the answers were, well, because we had gotten somewhere.
Not fake somewhere, not, hey guys, great meeting, not 15 action items nobody remembers three weeks from now.

We uncovered things. We changed our minds about things.

How Leaders Lose Curiosity Over Time (02:16)

We found assumptions people were operating under that weren't even accurate, and we realized things that the company had done for years might actually be working against what they were trying to accomplish.

So again, how did we get here? That was the question I asked.

And the answers were phenomenal. We asked questions, we gained perspective, we didn't jump to conclusions, we didn't jump to solutions.

People were vulnerable enough to admit that. I don't know what the answer is.

They challenged assumptions. They kept digging. And somebody eventually said the magic word curiosity.

Folks, that is it. We stayed curious long enough to find the actual problem.

And folks, this is something that I want you to put on a post it note. Put it on your computer, I don't care. Put it on your mirror when you get up in the morning.

Curiosity is something that every leader and every leadership team must have.
The problem is the better you get at leadership, the easier it is to lose curiosity.

I know this is a weird problem, but when you're a brand new leader, you don't know anything.
So you ask, what does this mean? Why do we do it that way? What happens if we change this?

I remember when I first got into traditional ministry back in the mid 90s.
And it was my first time. I had gone through scripture without doctrine, without theology.

And so as I got into ministry, I'm pushing back on things. Well, that's not what the Bible says. Well, how come we do it this way? How come this?

And the crazy thing is I was super curious. And I will say that I didn't love the answers and to this day don't agree with a lot of the answers.

But it showed me that because I didn't know what I was doing at the time, I was brand spanking new. It was 30 years ago.

I needed to know more. I was super curious. That's what happens when we start out in leadership. We're curious.

Then you get experience. Then you solve some problems. Then you build a company. You've seen this movie before.

And slowly questions get replaced by conclusions. Someone starts explaining a problem, and 10 seconds in, you're already thinking, I know what the solution is. I got this.

And maybe you do, but maybe you don't.

And that's the danger. You see, we put so much emphasis on having an answer. We put so much worth on having an answer.

Give an answer. Or maybe we're all sitting in a meeting looking at our watch, going, I have got 4,000 different things to do. Here's your simple answer.

If you will just do this, this solves the problem. Here's your answer on this, or here's why this is happening, or here's what you need to do with that team member.

And all of those things are lacking curiosity. We are so quick to give an answer to something that we don't even know if it's the real problem.

And what is the problem with us? What is the shortcut that experience builds? Experience builds a shortcut of I've seen something like this before, therefore I know what this is.

And the two things, folks, just are not the same.

How does it show up? Well, someone says, sales are down. Immediate answer becomes we need more leads.

Well, do we? How do we know? How do we know that leads are the problem? Do we have any metrics on the leads?

Do we know how many we're getting? Are they good leads? Are they great leads? Are they terrible leads?

Do we have a ton and we're not getting to all the leads? Are we doing any follow up?

How do we know that that's the problem? How do we know it's not a product problem? How do we know it's not a service issue? How do we know it's not a delivery problem?

How do we know it's not our brand is getting hammered because we've messed up accounts? How do we know any of this? We don't until we dig in.

And there are questions that nobody asked. Are leads actually down or is conversion down? Are we attracting the wrong leads?

Did something change in the sales process? Was it possibly the pricing, the market? Are we going through a horrible time like COVID?

Do we have plenty of opportunity and lousy follow up? Is our best salesperson doing something completely different from everybody else?

If the most dominant person in the room says we need more leads and everybody goes yep, congratulations, you now have a marketing problem even if you never had one.

Fires, Symptoms, and the Danger of "I Already Know" (07:06)

Folks, curiosity keeps you from solving the symptom. This is where leaders lose unbelievable amounts of time.

We're constantly fixing fires, putting out fires. And I want you to think about the language, putting out fires. That's reactive.

The thing is already burning, so yes, put it out. But then what? Because if you put out the same fire every three months, you don't have a fire problem. You have something creating fires.

The reactive leader would say, well, how do we fix this? That's always the first place that any reactive leader goes, right?

The curious leader, the successful leader, asks different questions. Why does this keep happening? What changed? When did this start? What was happening before this started? Who owns this?

And does everybody believe the same person owns it? Are we all on the same page? What outcome are we actually trying to create? Why are we doing it this way? What assumptions are we making? What would have been true for this to work?

That is where curiosity gets you.

One of the things that I say as we go into an event like this, a strat plan, something like that, I say, hey guys, I'm going to ask you the question why so many times that you're just going to hate it.

You're going to hate the question why. And the reason is simple, because the more you press on having the answer immediately, without gaining any curiosity, without digging in and gaining quality perspective, then that's going to prove to me that you don't have the actual answer or you don't know what the current problem is.

Now keep in mind, we're not talking about simple problems like we're out of coffee, right? We're talking about a leadership team working through deep, difficult stuff.

So you know the answer usually is not going to be the very first thing that comes out of somebody's mouth. We have to dig, we have to ask questions, we have to gain perspective.

Another thing that I share with the team all the time, whichever team I'm working with, if you're being self-centered and selfish, you can't possibly gain quality perspective.

If you already know the answer, you have no desire to gain questions. You have no desire to ask questions. You have no desire to be curious. You already know the answer, or at least that's what you believe.

Curiosity isn't asking questions to sound smart. It's asking enough questions that you stop solving the obvious thing and start understanding the real thing.

Now, let me share with you the most dangerous phrase in leadership. I already know. I already have the answer. I've got this.

Listen for this in yourself. Somebody's talking, and internally you're saying, I know, I've got it. Yep, I know, I hear him. I'll let this person finish out, but I've got the answer.

I already understand the situation, and maybe you do. But there's a massive difference between recognizing information and understanding someone's perspective.

Now I will tell you, perspective really means nothing more than points of view. But for us, we believe something super important. The more points of view you have, the better perspective you have.

And if all you have is yours, that's all you got. And you may be really smart and you may be great at solving problems.

But what I have discovered over decades and decades of running businesses and teaching people and leading business owners and teaching entrepreneurs, there's one thing that I have really learned.

Never assume you have the answer. Always ask questions. Always dig further.

Curiosity, Communication, and Accountability (11:58)

There's times that people will ask me a question, Chris, what's the answer to this? And I'll give an answer and then ask a question afterwards.

Like, well, you asked a pretty simple question. What kind of coffee do you drink? Well, I drink this non-toxic, mold-free coffee.

So I'm answering the question, but almost always I will follow up with, now, why did you ask that question? What led you to that place?

Because I'm sure there's something deeper than just wanting to know what kind of coffee I drink, right? There's something else there.

And as I dig in, it'll be, well, I hear you teach on health stuff and I hear you teach on this. And so I'm figuring you're probably drinking a healthier version and I'm just wanting to find something for myself.

Okay, well, then that totally makes sense why you're asking what seems like a silly question. What kind of coffee do I drink? Why do you even care? What does it even matter?

Now I know. Now I understand.

Now multiply that into incredibly difficult business decisions. Multiply that into fires that are happening throughout your business. Multiply that into the number of difficult decisions or tough conversations that have to be made.

Now all of a sudden you see something way more important. If understanding why you're asking me a question about something, using the coffee analogy, if I understand that, then I'm going to give you the best answer I can possibly give you.

If I just think it's a silly question, I'm just going to maybe not answer it fully, not help you out, maybe not find out why you're struggling with something.

Put that in the same type of setting when it comes to business. If I have a team member who's asking me a question and I just answer the question, sales are down, well, it's a lead problem, get more leads.

Okay, well, we'll go spend more money on leads. And I didn't ask the question, how many leads are we getting? Well, we're getting 400 leads a month. How many leads can our sales team actually process through in a month? 250.

Are the leads good? The leads appear to be good, so we're costing ourselves. Well, we're definitely not getting to all of them a month. We don't have a lead problem. We have a different problem.

And then we've got to dig in even further. Are they hitting the wrong leads? Are there some leads in there that we can find out faster if they're good or bad? Whatever it is, the curiosity must kick in.

Now, I've taught for years that communication isn't me successfully getting words out of my mouth. Communication is helping you to understand what I'm trying to communicate. And that's very different, it's not the same thing.

Most people communicate what they want to communicate. What I want people to understand is it's my job as somebody who's communicating to make sure that you understand what I'm saying.

I can tell a team member the same thing three times and they could still not understand it. Does that mean that they're stupid? No.

It could mean that their personality style is considerably different than mine. It could be that I haven't communicated in a way that leans in their direction. It could be that I've not given them the information that causes them to go, aha, now that makes sense.

Is it possible that maybe they are the problem? Yeah, absolutely, sure. And there eventually has to be accountability. I'm all about that.

But where you should start before you get to accountability, and by the way, curiosity is a way that helps you get to accountability.

So what should I be doing in that situation? Well, I should be asking things like, hey, walk me through what you think I'm asking you to do, or explain to me what winning looks like in this situation to you, or help me to understand why you're doing the thing that we've talked about the way that you're doing it.

Why are you doing it that way? Or what part of this thing that we've discussed isn't clear? What information are you missing? Anything that helps me to understand the other person's situation.

And I will tell you, I even go steps deeper than this. I will ask things like, hey, are you nervous in answering this question right now? Are you worried that I'm judging you, or thinking you're going to sound stupid by answering any of these questions?

Many times I'll watch the person and see, are they struggling emotionally? And if so, then I will speak into it in a way that frees them up to go, you know what, yeah, I am struggling.

Don't worry about it. I'm trying to set you up for success. This is about you, not me. This is about making you successful, not me.

So once you've done this and you've asked these types of questions, you can tell what the problem is. What kind of problem is it? Is it a communication problem? Is it a training problem? Is it a clarity problem? Is it a competency problem?

Which, by the way, you very well may run into it being a competency problem, right? Is it an accountability problem? And I will tell you, there's probably a really good chance it's an accountability issue.

But whatever it is, every single one of those situations I just listed out, they all require very different solutions. So instead of just telling somebody, I've told you three times, or I've told you once, you should know this, get in, dig in, find out what is not clear, find out what the struggle is.

A leader who is not curious looks at the struggle that the team member is experiencing and says they're not doing their job. Folks, let me tell you that that is dangerous.

Way too many times I've seen leaders make assumptions about team members not doing their job, and even losing a great team member only to find out that they were wrong about that team member.

They didn't realize that communication wasn't clear. They didn't realize that person wasn't set up for success. And had that person been set up, they would have been one of their champions.

Curiosity is not the opposite of accountability. Somebody's hearing this and thinking, Chris, at some point people just need to do their freaking job. Yes, I absolutely agree.

That's not what we're talking about. Curiosity does not mean endless grace with no accountability. It doesn't mean that every failure gets met with another two hour conversation about feelings.

The goal here is clarity. Once we've established that the person understands the outcome, they understand why it matters, that they understand what's expected.

They have the resources to accomplish it. They've explained it back to you as a leader. You've agreed on the accountability and they still don't do it. Here's where we have an accountability issue.

That's when you dig in. That's when you say, okay, they have all the information, they have the resources, we've removed leadership's responsibility, we've covered every possible leadership issue.

And now they're still not doing it. Now we have a team member problem. Let's dig in and find out what that is.

But folks, I want you to understand what great team members want. They want to know what winning looks like. They want to know where the target is.

They want you to tell them what we're trying to accomplish and then let them try and go hit it. That is what a great team member wants.

So if you're not giving enough of that information, if you're not making sure that they're clear, then you can't be surprised that they're not hitting it.

Now, I'm not holding somebody accountable for something I assumed they understood. I'm holding them accountable to something we both know they understood. That is a key caveat, right?

Putting Curiosity Into Practice (19:06)

So here's what I want you to try at your next leadership team meeting, right? And hopefully you're having leadership team meetings.

When somebody presents a significant problem, don't solve it for them in five minutes. Right? No solutions yet. For the first five minutes, you're only allowed to ask questions.

Trust me on this, you will get better at this. It's going to be odd at first, but think of the questions you want to ask.

What do we actually want to know? What are we assuming in this situation? Why do we think this is happening? When did it start? Who is closest to the problem, and what do they think about it?

You might even have a problem in the room, and the person who's closest to it is not in the room and you're not getting their perspective.

What have we already tried? What outcome are we actually trying to create? What would happen if we did nothing? What's the problem underneath the problem? Keep digging, keep digging, keep digging.

And my favorite question for you to ask in this situation is, what are we not asking? Then and only then, start solving.

I would be fascinated to see how many times the solution you would have given in the very beginning is actually different than the one you get to 15 minutes later, than just answering quickly.

Why do I say that? Because I know it. This is what we do all the time in leadership discussions, leadership team meetings, strat plans, whatever it is, we get there all the time, and it's always a different answer.

Never do we ask a question and the first answer was the same answer 15 minutes later. Why? Because you can tell the difference of somebody who's just answering quickly and the difference of somebody who's being curious.

And if you're sitting there right now thinking, Chris, I'd love my team to slow down and get curious, but every real decision still ends up on my desk, that's exactly where I'd start.

Because maybe your leadership team can't work a problem without you in the room. Maybe nothing moves until you weigh in. Maybe you're the one who has to find the answer every single time.

The question is, does it have to stay that way? We've created a free owner dependency assessment that'll help you see how dependent your business really is on you and where that dependency is coming from.

It only takes a few minutes, and the link is right there in the description. So take the assessment and look at your results, honestly.

Because a leadership team that can think without you starts with a business that can function without your constant involvement.

Business owners, listen to me. Your leadership team probably doesn't need more smart people. You've probably got plenty of intelligence around the table, and you may not even need more ideas.

What you might desperately need is enough humility to become curious again, to stop assuming, to stop defending, to stop answering questions that nobody actually investigated yet.

To ask one more why in the process, to say, help me to understand when you're digging in, to challenge the thing that everybody in the room has just accepted as true.

Sometimes the biggest breakthrough doesn't come when somebody finally gives you the right answer. It comes when somebody finally asks the right question.

And if your leadership team has been dealing with the same issues over and over and over again, before you schedule another meeting to solve them, try getting curious enough to discover whether you've actually understood them.

Because you cannot solve what you don't understand. And you may discover that the leadership skill your team has been missing isn't knowing more, it's asking better questions.

So here's your challenge this week. In your next leadership team meeting, don't be the person with the fastest answer. Be the person who asks the question that makes everybody stop and think.

And if you lead a team, send this episode to them before your next leadership team meeting and tell them, hey, we're trying this. Five minutes, no solutions, questions only, then see what happens.

Well, folks, that's all the time that we have for today. I hope this has helped you immensely.

As always, take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.