Staff Keep Dumping Their Problems in My Lap

Staff Keep Dumping Their Problems in My Lap.

Staff keep dumping their problems in my lap and I’m really getting annoyed of having to solve their problems. Even though I’m a manager and its my job to solve problems, I have enough of my own without others giving me their problems as well.

It’s very time consuming and emotionally draining fighting other people’s battles.

David is a newly appointed manager and never thought it was going to be this tough. He thought the job was challenging enough without fixing other people’s problems.

I’m not a psychologist or a coach so how the hell am I going to navigate this challenge?

Sometimes we don’t have to do anything, or very little!

Sometimes we could be making the situation worse than it is by jumping in and attempting to solve other people’s problems.

You know what it like when the wife comes home from work and she has had a challenging day. You can see it on her face as she enters the house and you almost want to run for cover.

She starts to tell you about her day. How this person said such and such and they said that. She’s angry and frustrated telling you how unfair it is.

The husband jumps in and tries to solve his wife’s problems which makes the situation even worse.

In this case the husband just needs to listen and keep his mouth shut. Listen and support his wife by acknowledging and saying nothing or very little.

The wife just needs to let off steam, talk it out, to process her day. If there is any solution needed she would have already thought it out before she opened her mouth.

In this case its good for the husband to do nothing other than support by listening.

Staff Keep Dumping Their Problems in My Lap.

Now back to staff keep dumping their problems in my lap. In this case you can test out this 3 stage process that will empower your staff to sort out their own problems.

When you master this process, you will have less stress, more time, and staff that can manage their own challenges.

Empowering staff to resolve their own problems:

1) Have staff member to sit down and tell you all about the problem. Let them get everything out. Just listen without trying to offer any solution. Acknowledge (not necessarily agree) what they are saying. By doing this you satisfy their need to be heard. They now have got it all out, which will start to make them feel better, by releasing the emotion. That’s all the negative stuff been dumped.
2) Now, after they have exhausted themselves of the problem / negativity you can ask them a very simple question. What is the outcome you would like to achieve in this situation? Now we are starting to focus their mind on the solution and away from the problem. We are directing their mind in a positive and forward direction.
3) Have the staff member to create 3 possible strategies to achieve the outcome they just mentioned. Then choose the best one and implement it.

Now they own the outcome and solution and will be more empowered to implement as it is their creation.

When you follow this 3 step process you will be teaching your staff to be 100% responsible for their own experiences. Once they get better at solving their own challenges they will be empowered and you will be left alone to follow the same process with your own challenges.

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