problem solving skills for leaders

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Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders in Any Industry

Business man leading team in problem-solving exercise with white board

17 Jan 2023

Any organization offering a product or service is in the business of solving problems.

Whether providing medical care to address health issues or quick convenience to those hungry for dinner, a business’s purpose is to satisfy customer needs .

In addition to solving customers’ problems, you’ll undoubtedly encounter challenges within your organization as it evolves to meet customer needs. You’re likely to experience growing pains in the form of missed targets, unattained goals, and team disagreements.

Yet, the ubiquity of problems doesn’t have to be discouraging; with the right frameworks and tools, you can build the skills to solve consumers' and your organization’s most challenging issues.

Here’s a primer on problem-solving in business, why it’s important, the skills you need, and how to build them.

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What Is Problem-Solving in Business?

Problem-solving is the process of systematically removing barriers that prevent you or others from reaching goals.

Your business removes obstacles in customers’ lives through its products or services, just as you can remove obstacles that keep your team from achieving business goals.

Design Thinking

Design thinking , as described by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , is a human-centered , solutions-based approach to problem-solving and innovation. Originally created for product design, design thinking’s use case has evolved . It’s now used to solve internal business problems, too.

The design thinking process has four stages :

Clarify: Clarify a problem through research and feedback from those impacted.
Ideate: Armed with new insights, generate as many solutions as possible.
Develop: Combine and cull your ideas into a short list of viable, feasible, and desirable options before building prototypes (if making physical products) and creating a plan of action (if solving an intangible problem).
Implement: Execute the strongest idea, ensuring clear communication with all stakeholders about its potential value and deliberate reasoning.

Using this framework, you can generate innovative ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise.

Creative Problem-Solving

Another, less structured approach to challenges is creative problem-solving , which employs a series of exercises to explore open-ended solutions and develop new perspectives. This is especially useful when a problem’s root cause has yet to be defined.

You can use creative problem-solving tools in design thinking’s “ideate” stage, which include:

Brainstorming: Instruct everyone to develop as many ideas as possible in an allotted time frame without passing judgment.
Divergent thinking exercises: Rather than arriving at the same conclusion (convergent thinking), instruct everyone to come up with a unique idea for a given prompt (divergent thinking). This type of exercise helps avoid the tendency to agree with others’ ideas without considering alternatives.
Alternate worlds: Ask your team to consider how various personas would manage the problem. For instance, how would a pilot approach it? What about a young child? What about a seasoned engineer?

It can be tempting to fall back on how problems have been solved before, especially if they worked well. However, if you’re striving for innovation, relying on existing systems can stunt your company’s growth.

Related: How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

Why Is Problem-Solving Important for Leaders?

While obstacles’ specifics vary between industries, strong problem-solving skills are crucial for leaders in any field.

Whether building a new product or dealing with internal issues, you’re bound to come up against challenges. Having frameworks and tools at your disposal when they arise can turn issues into opportunities.

As a leader, it’s rarely your responsibility to solve a problem single-handedly, so it’s crucial to know how to empower employees to work together to find the best solution.

Your job is to guide them through each step of the framework and set the parameters and prompts within which they can be creative. Then, you can develop a list of ideas together, test the best ones, and implement the chosen solution.

Related: 5 Design Thinking Skills for Business Professionals

4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need

1. problem framing.

One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you’re trying to solve.

“Before you begin to generate solutions for your problem, you must always think hard about how you’re going to frame that problem,” Datar says in the course.

For instance, imagine you work for a company that sells children’s sneakers, and sales have plummeted. When framing the problem, consider:

What is the children’s sneaker market like right now?
Should we improve the quality of our sneakers?
Should we assess all children’s footwear?
Is this a marketing issue for children’s sneakers specifically?
Is this a bigger issue that impacts how we should market or produce all footwear?

While there’s no one right way to frame a problem, how you do can impact the solutions you generate. It’s imperative to accurately frame problems to align with organizational priorities and ensure your team generates useful ideas for your firm.

To solve a problem, you need to empathize with those impacted by it. Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and experiences. While many believe empathy is a fixed trait, it’s a skill you can strengthen through practice.

When confronted with a problem, consider whom it impacts. Returning to the children’s sneaker example, think of who’s affected:

Your organization’s employees, because sales are down
The customers who typically buy your sneakers
The children who typically wear your sneakers

Empathy is required to get to the problem’s root and consider each group’s perspective. Assuming someone’s perspective often isn’t accurate, so the best way to get that information is by collecting user feedback.

For instance, if you asked customers who typically buy your children’s sneakers why they’ve stopped, they could say, “A new brand of children’s sneakers came onto the market that have soles with more traction. I want my child to be as safe as possible, so I bought those instead.”

When someone shares their feelings and experiences, you have an opportunity to empathize with them. This can yield solutions to their problem that directly address its root and shows you care. In this case, you may design a new line of children’s sneakers with extremely grippy soles for added safety, knowing that’s what your customers care most about.

Related: 3 Effective Methods for Assessing Customer Needs

3. Breaking Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind in which you examine situations through the lens of past experiences. This locks you into one mindset rather than allowing you to consider alternative possibilities.

For instance, your cognitive fixedness may make you think rubber is the only material for sneaker treads. What else could you use? Is there a grippier alternative you haven’t considered?

Problem-solving is all about overcoming cognitive fixedness. You not only need to foster this skill in yourself but among your team.

4. Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

As a leader, it’s your job to create an environment conducive to problem-solving. In a psychologically safe environment, all team members feel comfortable bringing ideas to the table, which are likely influenced by their personal opinions and experiences.

If employees are penalized for “bad” ideas or chastised for questioning long-held procedures and systems, innovation has no place to take root.

By employing the design thinking framework and creative problem-solving exercises, you can foster a setting in which your team feels comfortable sharing ideas and new, innovative solutions can grow.

Design Thinking and Innovation | Uncover creative solutions to your business problems | Learn More

How to Build Problem-Solving Skills

The most obvious answer to how to build your problem-solving skills is perhaps the most intimidating: You must practice.

Again and again, you’ll encounter challenges, use creative problem-solving tools and design thinking frameworks, and assess results to learn what to do differently next time.

While most of your practice will occur within your organization, you can learn in a lower-stakes setting by taking an online course, such as Design Thinking and Innovation . Datar guides you through each tool and framework, presenting real-world business examples to help you envision how you would approach the same types of problems in your organization.

Are you interested in uncovering innovative solutions for your organization’s business problems? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation —one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses —to learn how to leverage proven frameworks and tools to solve challenges. Not sure which course is right for you? Download our free flowchart .

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Problem-solving in Leadership: How to Master the 5 Key Skills

The role of problem-solving in enhancing team morale, the right approach to problem-solving in leadership, developing problem-solving skills in leadership, leadership problem-solving examples.

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What’s the Role of Problem-solving in Leadership?

Getting to the root of the issue: First, Sarah starts by looking at the numbers for the past few months. She identifies the products for which sales are falling. She then attempts to correlate it with the seasonal nature of consumption or if there is any other cause hiding behind the numbers.
Identifying the sources of the problem: In the next step, Sarah attempts to understand why sales are falling. Is it the entry of a new competitor in the next neighborhood, or have consumption preferences changed over time? She asks some of her present and past customers for feedback to get more ideas.
Putting facts on the table: Next up, Sarah talks to her sales team to understand their issues. They could be lacking training or facing heavy workloads, impacting their productivity. Together, they come up with a few ideas to improve sales.
Selection and application: Finally, Sarah and her team pick up a few ideas to work on after analyzing their costs and benefits. They ensure adequate resources, and Sarah provides support by guiding them wherever needed during the planning and execution stage.
Identifying the root cause of the problem.
Brainstorming possible solutions.
Evaluating those solutions to select the best one.
Implementing it.

Analytical thinking: Analytical thinking skills refer to a leader’s abilities that help them analyze, study, and understand complex problems. It allows them to dive deeper into the issues impacting their teams and ensures that they can identify the causes accurately.
Critical Thinking: Critical thinking skills ensure leaders can think beyond the obvious. They enable leaders to question assumptions, break free from biases, and analyze situations and facts for accuracy.
Creativity: Problems are often not solved straightaway. Leaders need to think out of the box and traverse unconventional routes. Creativity lies at the center of this idea of thinking outside the box and creating pathways where none are apparent.
Decision-making: Cool, you have three ways to go. But where to head? That’s where decision-making comes into play – fine-tuning analysis and making the choices after weighing the pros and cons well.
Effective Communication: Last but not at the end lies effective communication that brings together multiple stakeholders to solve a problem. It is an essential skill to collaborate with all the parties in any issue. Leaders need communication skills to share their ideas and gain support for them.

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The Power of Leaders Who Focus on Solving Problems

Deborah Ancona
Hal Gregersen

Can you get people excited about the problems that excite you?

There’s a new kind of leadership taking hold in organizations. Strikingly, these new leaders don’t like to be called leaders, and none has any expectation that they will attract “followers” personally — by dint of their charisma, status in a hierarchy, or access to resources. Instead, their method is to get others excited about whatever problem they have identified as ripe for a novel solution. Having fallen in love with a problem, they step up to leadership — but only reluctantly and only as necessary to get it solved. Leadership becomes an intermittent activity as people with enthusiasm and expertise step up as needed, and readily step aside when, based on the needs of the project, another team member’s strengths are more central. Rather than being pure generalists, leaders pursue their own deep expertise, while gaining enough familiarity with other knowledge realms to make the necessary connections. They expect to be involved in a series of initiatives with contributors fluidly assembling and disassembling.

In front of a packed room of MIT students and alumni, Vivienne Ming is holding forth in a style all her own. “Embrace cyborgs,” she calls out, as she clicks to a slide that raises eyebrows even in this tech-smitten crowd. “ Really . Fifteen to 25 years from now, cognitive neuroprosthetics will fundamentally change the definition of what it means to be human.”

Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the founder of the MIT Leadership Center.
Hal Gregersen is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership and Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management , a globally recognized expert in navigating rapid change, and a Thinkers50 ranked management thinker. He is the author of Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life and the coauthor of The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators .

Problem-solving skills in leadership

Do you find yourself fighting fires on a daily basis it’s time to sharpen your problem-solving skills to become a more effective leader..

What is problem solving in leadership?

To explain how problem solving relates to leadership, it’s best to begin with a basic definition. The Oxford English Dictionary describes problem solving as “the action of finding solutions to difficult or complex issues”.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) adds a little more color to this. It defines a problem as “the distance between how things currently are and the way they should be. Problem solving forms the ‘bridge’ between these two elements. In order to close the gap, you need to understand the way things are (problem) and the way they ought to be (solution).”

In the workplace, problem solving means dealing with issues or challenges that arise in the course of everyday operations. This could be anything from production delays and customer complaints to skills shortages and employee conflict .

For leaders, the objective is to bring clarity and purpose to problem solving in a way that makes sense for the organization. While the leader has the final say, finding solutions is a collaborative effort that should involve key stakeholders, including employees.

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The process of fixing problems

Problem solving leadership should follow these four steps:

Identify the root cause of the problem – do this through fact-finding and getting feedback from those involved.

Brainstorm possible solutions – get ideas from as many people as you can to get a range of perspectives.

Evaluate solutions – draw up a shortlist of workable options and choose the best one.

Implement and evaluate your plan of action – communicate your solution with all stakeholders and explain your reasoning.

As businesses face increasingly complex challenges, some leaders are embracing what the MIT Sloan School of Management calls ‘problem-led leadership’. Instead of concentrating on managing their people, they inspire others through their enthusiasm to solve ‘cool’ problems. While this leadership style won’t be right for every situation, it can work well where innovation and entrepreneurship are needed.

Leaders who problem-solve effectively can improve efficiency , reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction and achieve their strategic goals. If left unresolved, however, problems can spiral and ultimately affect the overall health and performance of your business.

Why is problem solving important in leadership?

The importance of leadership problem-solving skills shouldn’t be underestimated. When you think about it, businesses are beset by processes and interactions that don’t work as well as they could. Having the knowhow – not to mention determination – to overcome such obstacles is vital to make workplaces better for everyone. In fact, a 2022 survey shows that problem solving is among the top five skills UK employees look for in a leader.

Learning how to solve problems proficiently can benefit your organization in many ways. It can help you:

Make better decisions

Being able to solve complex problems with clarity and a rational mindset helps with decision-making. It gives you the confidence to weigh up the pros and cons of each decision before making a final call, without jumping to the wrong conclusion. This ensures the choices you make are right for your team and organization as a whole.

Overcome challenges

No matter how tight a ship you run, you’re always going to come up against obstacles. Challenges are a way of life for businesses, however successful they are.

A leader with good problem-solving skills is able to anticipate issues and have measures in place to deal with them if and when they arise. But they also have the ability to think on their feet and adapt their strategies if needed.

Inspire creativity and innovation

Creativity is useful when trying to solve problems, particularly ones you haven’t experienced before. Leaders who think differently can be great innovators . But they also empower their teams to think outside the box too by creating a safe, non-judgmental environment where all ideas are welcome.

Encourage collaboration

A problem shared is a problem halved, so the saying goes. Successful leaders recognize that problem solving alone is less beneficial than problem solving with a team. This inspires a culture of collaboration , not just between leaders and their team members but between colleagues working together on projects.

Build trust

When your team members know they can rely on you to identify and resolve issues quickly and effectively, it builds trust. They’re also more likely to feel comfortable talking to you if they have a problem of their own that they’re struggling with.

If they’re worried about repercussions, they may avoid sharing it with you. Lack of trust is still an issue in many organizations, with 40% of frontline staff saying they don’t have faith in their leadership, according to Qualtrics .

Reduce risk

Being able to anticipate potential risks and put measures in place to mitigate them makes you better equipped to protect your organization from harm. Having good problem-solving skills in leadership allows you to make informed decisions and avoid costly mistakes, even in times of uncertainty.

Boost morale

Leaders who approach problem solving with positivity and calmness are crucial to keeping team morale high . No one wants a leader who panics at the first sign of trouble. Workers want to feel reassured that they have someone capable in charge who can steer them through times of crisis.

What problems do leaders face?

As a leader, you’re likely to face all manner of setbacks and challenges. In fact, you probably find that hardly a day goes by without some kind of issue cropping up.

Common problems faced by leaders often involve communication barriers, team disagreements, production delays and missed financial targets. To give you an example, below are three common scenarios you might face in the workplace and how to tackle them.

Conflicts between team members

Problem: Cliques have developed and tensions are affecting communication so your team isn’t working as effectively as it could be.

Solution: Settle disputes by encouraging open and honest communication among all team members. Establish roles where each person’s responsibilities and expectations are clearly defined, and hold regular team building sessions to promote unity and togetherness.

Outdated technology hampering production

Problem: Hybrid and remote staff don’t have the right tools to do their job properly, and can’t keep track of who’s working on what, when and from where.

Solution: Evaluate your existing technology and upgrade to newer software and devices, getting feedback from your employees on what they need (52% of workers say the software related to their job is dated and difficult to use). Use a platform with apps that allow teams to collaborate and securely access work information from anywhere.

Customer service complaints

Problem: Customer response times are too slow – your team is taking too long to answer the phone and respond to emails, causing a rise in complaints.

Solution: Establish standard practice for what to do from the moment a customer query is received. Automate repetitive tasks and enable your customers to reach you via multiple channels including email, web chat, phone, social media and text.

What problem-solving skills do leaders need?

Problem solving is something we learn through experience, often by getting it wrong the first time. It requires continual learning, curiosity and agility so you develop a good instinct for what to do when things go wrong. Time is a great teacher, but leadership problem-solving skills can also be honed through workshops, mentoring and training programs.

Some of the key skills leaders need to solve problems include:

Effective communication

Problems can cause anxiety, but it’s vital to stay calm so you don’t transmit a feeling of panic to others. It’s important to establish the facts before clearly relaying the problem to key stakeholders. You’ll also need to inspire the people who are working on the solution to remain focused on the task in hand until it’s resolved. Sometimes, this may involve giving critical feedback and making team members more accountable.

Transparency is key here. When you don’t have open and honest communication across your organization, you develop silos – which can generate more issues than need fixing.

Analytical insight

Your objective should be to find the root cause of the problem. That way, you can find a permanent solution rather than simply papering over the cracks. You’ll need to assess to what extent the issue has affected the overall business by analyzing data, speaking to those involved and looking for distinct patterns of behavior.

Analytical thinking is also important when proposing solutions and taking what you believe to be the right course of action.

Promoting a culture of psychological safety

It’s a leader’s responsibility to create an environment conducive to problem solving. In a safe, open and inclusive workplace, all team members feel comfortable bringing their ideas to the table. No one feels judged or ridiculed for their contributions. Nor do they feel dismissed for questioning the effectiveness of long-established processes and systems.

Not playing the blame game

Mistakes happen.They’re a normal part of growth and development. Instead of pointing fingers when things go wrong, see it as a learning opportunity.

Although you need to identify the cause of an error or problem to solve it effectively – and give feedback where needed – it’s not the same as placing blame. Instead, work towards a solution that ensures the same mistakes don’t keep being repeated.

Emotional intelligence

One of the most important problem-solving skills for leaders is emotional intelligence – the ability to understand emotions and empathize with others. This is crucial when recognizing employees’ problems. An EY Consulting survey found that 90% of US workers believe empathetic leadership leads to greater job satisfaction.

If you approach a problem with anger and frustration, you might make a rash decision or overlook important information. If, on the other hand, you stay calm and measured, you’ll be more inclined to seek feedback to get a broader view of the issue.

A flexible mindset

Problem solving works best when you keep an open mind and aren’t afraid to change direction. Sometimes you’ll need to find a better or more innovative approach to overcoming challenges. A leader with a flexible mindset is always receptive to new ideas and other viewpoints.

It’s clear that problem solving is an essential skill for any leader to have in their armory. So, the next time you face a challenge, take a breath and embrace the opportunity to put your problem-solving leadership abilities to the test.

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Problem Solving Ability

Definition: anticipating, analyzing, diagnosing, and resolving problems..

Leaders with an aptitude for problem-solving have the ability to analyze, diagnose and deal with problems effectively. Whether the problem is linear and “tame,” or nonlinear and “wicked,” adept problem solvers have a natural propensity to discover and help lead others to solutions. The leaders of tomorrow must learn to be collaborative problem-solving facilitators, instead of solitary master problem-solvers. Problem-solving ability is a multi-faceted competency that uses other skills discussed throughout the Leaders Are Clear Thinkers section, including conceptual thinking, planning and organization, and creativity. In this section you’ll discover resources and activities to sharpen your problem-solving skills.

Join our community to learn more about problem-solving skills, and to access resources and activities to help you along the way.

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6 Problem Solving Skills That All Leaders Should Work On

Anouare Abdou
January 3, 2023

Chances are, if you are a leader, you are also a pretty good problem-solver . You have come this far because you are proactive about finding solutions. You know how to think critically, strategize and execute. You foster collaboration in your team and make the most of the strengths of each team member. You lean on your communication skills to overcome challenges.

If you want to take your ability to solve complex problems to the next level, however, you’ll need to actively work on the specific problem-solving skills that differentiate great leaders from excellent ones.

“More than ever, leaders are facing highly complex, challenging situations that don’t have simple solutions. These include the intersection of employee mental health, diversity and equity expectations, supply chain issues, societal crises, and more,” according to Dr. Mira Brancu , award-winning leader, author, and consulting psychologist. “Employees and customers are expecting more from companies, and therefore the leaders that are needed today are those who have more than just technical expertise in their field – they also have the ability to solve complex problems.”

On that note, here are six problem-solving skills that all leaders should work on these days.

1. Calculating the critical path

Every leader should know how to calculate the critical path in a project, according to Christina Wallace , senior lecturer of Entrepreneurial Management at Harvard Business School, angel investor, and author of “The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build A Life Bigger Than Your Business Card .”

Wondering what that even means? In project management, the critical path is the longest sequence of activities that must be completed to ensure a project is finished. Every project has a set of tasks and sub-tasks. Some of them can happen concurrently, while others need to happen in a certain sequence. Identifying all those activities and the dependencies between them allows you to calculate the critical path that leads to the project end date – in simple words, it lets you forecast how long it will take to wrap up your project while anticipating bottlenecks.

“If you’ve ever been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic while three lanes winnow down to one, you are familiar with the idea of a bottleneck and its frustrations. It’s the moment when too many things (cars, deadlines) are demanding the same resources at once (roadway, time on your calendar), creating congestion in the system,” says Wallace. Calculating the critical path helps prevent bottlenecks before they happen. Use a Gantt chart , a graphic that displays activities against time, to visualize the critical path of a project – most project-management platforms offer the option to create one. “Visualizing the bottlenecks gives you the opportunity to move things around, add in buffers or simplify processes to ensure your plan is not only feasible but also realistic,” adds Wallace

2. Sensitivity analysis

If you manage a budget, you’ll also want to know how to run a sensitivity analysis – a technique that tests how robust your predictions are.

“If the economy suddenly hits a recession, will that affect the demand for your work or the pricing power you have over your rates? Are there expenses that could see a sizable change, like the cost of living significantly increasing in a fast-growing city? What about one-off costs that you don’t regularly budget for? According to Wallace, ” do you have a plan to mitigate them?” are questions to ask yourself about your financial planning. The idea of a sensitivity analysis is to consider the assumptions built into your financial model – say, assuming that your team is going to hit certain targets– and assess the likelihood of those assumptions being wrong.

“A sensitivity analysis gives you the ability to consider multiple scenarios and understand how your financial plans may need to change if the future looks different than you anticipate,” says Wallace. No need to be a CFO to do this either – if you have a budget, you should unpack the assumptions involved in your plan.

3. Critical thinking

Speaking of assumptions, how often do you challenge your own biases and seek to look at problems in a variety of ways? It’s a crucial aspect of critical thinking – and critical thinking is a crucial aspect of solving problems. To flex your critical thinking muscles, you’ll want to look at issues from different perspectives.

“Critical thinking involves seeing an issue from many angles, zooming out to the big picture and zooming into the details and back, and being able to imagine the impact of making different decisions on multiple stakeholders before making a final decision,” says Brancu.

Practice this with every problem you solve and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised at the solutions that you come up with and the opportunities that open up as a result.

4. Data gathering

Data gathering is another important problem-solving skill to work on. Knowing how to gather both qualitative and quantitative data to solve problems is key, according to Brancu.

“This involves taking the time to speak with critical stakeholders, and business data, and garnering other information to ensure that you are not missing anything important before making a decision. It helps you address your own blind spots,” she says. Gathering information about a challenge before making a move is not time wasted – it’s time gained down the line.

5. Leveraging advisors

Wallace says that leaders should build their own personal “board of directors” to solve problems more effectively. Leveraging your relationships in that way is an underrated but powerful problem-solving ability.

Your advisors should include a collection of folks that you go to for advice, introductions, a fresh perspective, or some hard truth, says Wallace. “They bring their experience, judgment, and network to the table, providing counsel, access, and feedback. Rather than looking for one mentor who can be all things for an indefinite period of time, you can seek out directors who may do a rotation on your board for a few years, maybe more, maybe less.”

To be clear, you don’t need to officially ask them to be part of your “board.” You simply have to make a point of connecting with them on a regular basis because you appreciate their experience and trust their advice. According to Wallace, you should seek to cover five key roles: a coach, a negotiator, a connector, a cheerleader, and a truth-teller. Turn to them when you’re unsure about how to move forward.

6. Change-management skills

Every leader should possess change-management skills when solving problems in this day and age. “Any decision that is made to address a problem needs to consider both the actual change that is required, as well as the people who would be affected. Most leaders overlook the impact and reactions of the people who are affected by any change, or they spend insufficient time considering how to involve different groups of people at different phases of a change process,” according to Brancu.

“As a result, the problem might get worse because the leader didn’t get buy-in, didn’t communicate the concern or plan sufficiently or didn’t sufficiently address concerns raised,” she adds.

If you become adept at change management, you’ll solve issues before they even happen. Talk about a useful problem-solving skill.

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4 Effective Problem-Solving Strategies and Skills for the Workplace

Regardless of how many tools and processes are in place, there will come a time when a leader must deal with unexpected problems in the workplace. It’s important that a leader focuses on building problem-solving skills within their team to enact change in the organisation. Without problem solving, businesses operate inefficiently and are unable to match organisational strategy.

In this article we’ll discuss the problem-solving process and the problem-solving skills leaders require for success.

What is problem-solving?

Problem-solving is the process of finding solutions to meet a goal by overcoming obstacles. It involves identifying problems and taking time developing and implementing solutions to them. In the workplace, this means dealing with issues such as project deadlines, changing variables and other business-related topics that can affect the performance and health of your organisation.

Importance of problem-solving skills in leadership

In leadership, problem-solving is about reducing risk and pushing your team to meet organisational outcomes. When things go wrong, it’s up to leaders to fix them—and be strategic about it.

This means ensuring the solution leads to long-lasting change in the workplace. Adjusting processes so that you won’t fall into the same trap next time, facilitating the development of problem-solving skills in team members, or setting up a clear foundational strategy to use as a basis for problem-solving activities in the future. It’s all about minimising the impact a future problem will have on the business, thereby making the problem-solving process more efficient.

In terms of meeting organisational outcomes, you want to meet your business goals, not meander from the path. It’s up to leaders to make sure that whatever solution is chosen and implemented, it will set your business on a trajectory towards organisational values and priorities.

This is why we’ve created the first performance learning management system (PLMS) here at Acorn. It’s a dynamic AI-powered platform for that synchronises L&D experience with business performance, by guiding learners step-by-step to master the role-specific capabilities that accelerate organisational performance.

The problem-solving process

Sometimes, you come across a tough problem to solve, and finding possible solutions for it can feel overwhelming, especially when there’s a lot at stake. Enter: The problem-solving process .

In simple terms, the problem-solving process is broken into four separate stages, which we’ll get into in more detail below.

Identify the problem

Generate possible solutions
Select a solution
Implement and evaluate.

When problems arise they can take many forms, which is why you need to be sure that what you’re identifying is the cause of the problem and not just symptoms. Ask questions to find the root cause.

Who is involved with or most affected by the problem?
What is happening?
When did it happen? Is it urgent?
Where did it happen, and does it affect anything else?
Why is the issue impacting workflows and team members?
How is it impacting workflows and team members?

Asking these questions will probably reveal a lot of smaller issues which will help you define the real problem. Plus, having an overview of all the smaller issues affecting the course of productivity in your organisation paints a clear picture of what problems need to be addressed.

Generate alternatives

Brainstorm multiple ideas. If you immediately lock in on the first solution you come up with you might be depriving your organisation of a better fix. The best thing to do here is not to analyse the best course of action as you go—rather, wait until you have a selection of alternative solutions first before you weigh the merits of each one.

It’s also important to remember who you identified in the first step as being involved or affected by the problem. These people are stakeholders in the process and should be consulted to discuss potential courses of action, thanks to their unique perspectives.

The solutions you brainstorm should be in line with your business strategy, regardless of whether those solutions are long- or short-term.

Select an alternative

To determine which solution is best, you should consider the following questions:

Will this solution fix the problem better than other alternatives?
Will all your stakeholders agree with using this alternative?
Does your organisation have the capacity to implement it?
Is implementation of the solution likely to happen?

You need to make sure you examine all potential alternatives without bias to find the most effective solution for your specific problem. Rushing to select a solution without proper evaluation could result in more problems arising.

Implement solutions and follow up

Work with the people most affected by the problem before bringing in others to implement your solution. This is an important step towards gaining buy-in for the implementation process, ensuring a better and more efficient roll-out.

After that, you need to evaluate and gather feedback. Communication should be open during implementation so you can course-correct any issues that arise during the process. Working on improving your solution as you go is effective problem solving at its best. And evaluating the efficacy of your solutions is a good habit for maintaining a healthy workplace .

The 4 most effective ways leaders can solve problems

By default, great leaders should be great problem solvers. They have good problem-solving skills with the right tools and focus to guide their teams through problems to specific solutions.

There are four effective problem-solving techniques leaders use to solve problems:

Transparent communication
Maintaining open-mindedness
Refrain from the blame-game
Connecting the dots.

The 4 effective problem-solving techniques leaders use

Maintain transparent communication

Problem solving works best when people feel comfortable sharing their opinions and feedback. Fact-finding is essential to understanding complex problems and solving them. When you don’t have effective and transparent communication across your organisation you develop silos, and silos breed more issues that need fixing.

Transparent communication isn’t just about being able to share ideas with direct managers and vice versa. It’s about breaking down the boundaries within an organisation that create silos, allowing the flow of information. This way, employees will be able to roam freely and share creative thinking with a wider range of people across the business. Without open channels of communication, your siloed teams will become inefficient and less productive due to the lack of collaboration and shared knowledge and procedures.

Encourage open-mindedness

Of course, there will always be people who make it difficult to solve problems in the workplace. The best course of action is to search for the people within teams who lift others up and look beyond the most obvious details and facts on a daily basis. These are defining characteristics of problem solvers.

A person who has these characteristics is innovative and shows initiative when it comes to solving problems. They take risks and use problem solving failures as learning opportunities and resources for growth. You should nurture this open-mindedness and treat failure as a tool to learn from to become stronger at problem solving.

Stop the blame-game

A team needs to work together, and there’s no better way to teach that than to lead by example. Problem solving is ineffective when everyone is pointing fingers at each other for every little problem that comes to light.

Of course, you need to identify the cause of a problem if you want it to be solved, but that’s not the same as placing blame. Instead, work towards defining a solution to solve the problem (as well as ensuring history won’t repeat itself).

Connect the dots

Solving a problem is one thing, but creating widespread change that sticks is another. If you work to tackle problems without defining problem-solving strategies first, you’ll essentially be starting the process from scratch every time. But, with a foundational strategy in place you can streamline the journey to a solution.

Having a strategy gives you the benefits of knowing which tools and resources to bring in to find answers and when. This could be anything from which people to involve, budgeting and pre-existing knowledge and expertise. A problem-solving leader should be able to utilise strategies while also leading long-term change to prevent the same problem from recurring over and over again.

Key takeaways

Problem solving is an essential element of leadership, team work, workplace culture and overall business health, allowing the organisation to run smoothly and meet its desired business outcomes. By possessing and encouraging problem solving techniques in team members, they will work efficiently together to evaluate alternative solutions and define lasting change that benefits the whole organisation.

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5 Problem-Solving Qualities Every Leader Must Have

by Helena Escalante | Accountability , Creativity , Growth , Leadership , Mindset , Wellbeing

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 20 seconds.

TODAY’S IDEA: 5 Problem-Solving Qualities Every Leader Must Have

— From The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow by John C. Maxwell

Whenever we read about leaders’ lives and accomplishments—whether contemporary or throughout history—one underlying common stands out: their problem-solving ability.

“No matter what field a leader is in, he will face problems,” says John C. Maxwell , author of The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader . “[Problems] are inevitable for three reasons. First, we live in a world of growing complexity and diversity. Second, we interact with people. And third, we cannot control all the situations we face.”

Thus, as a leader, Maxwell suggests cultivating these five problem-solving qualities, because “you can’t let your problems be a problem.”

1. Leaders anticipate problems. “Since problems are inevitable, good leaders anticipate them. Anyone who expects the road to be easy will continually find himself in trouble… If you keep your attitude positive but plan for the worst, you’ll find yourself in a good position to solve problems that come your way.”

2. Leaders accept the truth. “People respond to problems in these ways: they refuse to accept them; they accept them and then put up with them; or they accept them and try to make things better. Leaders must always do the latter. […] No leader can simultaneously have his head in the sand and navigate [his/her] people through troubled waters. Effective leaders face up to the reality of a situation.”

3. Leaders see the big picture. “Leaders must continually see the big picture. They cannot afford to be overwhelmed by emotion. Nor can they allow themselves to get so bogged down in the details that they lose sight of what’s important.”

4. Leaders handle one thing at a time. The author shares this great quote from Richard Sloma , management guru: Never try to solve all the problems at once—make them line up for you one-by-one. Then Maxwell goes on to say, “The leaders who get in trouble most often are the ones who are overwhelmed by the sheer size or volume of their troubles and then dabble at problem-solving. If you’re faced with lots of problems, make sure you really solve the one you’re working on before moving on to the next one.”

5. Leaders don’t give up a major goal when they’re down. “Effective leaders understand the peak-to-peak principle. They make major decisions when they are experiencing a positive swing in their leadership, not during dark times.”

After reading all this, you’re probably wondering how you can improve on your problem-solving skills. Well, I have good news and not-so-good news…

First, the not so good news: “The ability to solve problems effectively comes from experience facing and overcoming obstacles,” says Maxwell. There’s no way around it. Experience is the best teacher indeed: “if you never try, fail, and try again, you’ll never get good at it.”

Now, for the good news: “Each time you solve another problem, you get a little better at the process.” And this is something that builds on itself, giving you more experience and tools every time.

And here’s the happy ending: you can (and definitely should) always write a great last chapter . It’s the best way to come out better, stronger, and with the gift of having learned something, than prior to the problem.

TODAY: To flex your problem-solving muscles, Maxwell suggests going out looking for trouble. “Find situations that need fixing, come up with several viable solutions, and then take them to a leader with good problem-solving experience. You’ll learn from [his/her] decisions how he thinks when handling difficulties.”

FUTURE: When faced with problems in the future, Maxwell offers the following TEACH approach to problem-solving:

T ime: Spend time to discover the real issue. E xposure: Find out what others have done. A ssistance: Have your team [or get a group together to] study all angles. C reativity: Brainstorm multiple solutions. H it it: Implement the best solution.

Know someone who is a whiz at problem-solving? Or someone who is going through hell and could use some help? Please share this post: Email , Facebook or Twitter.

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Introduction

Solving problems is a quintessential aspect of the role of an educational leader. In particular, building leaders, such as principals, assistant principals, and deans of students, are frequently beset by situations that are complex, unique, and open-ended. There are often many possible pathways to resolve the situations, and an astute educational leader needs to consider many factors and constituencies before determining a plan of action. The realm of problem solving might include student misconduct, personnel matters, parental complaints, school culture, instructional leadership, as well as many other aspects of educational administration. Much consideration has been given to the development of problem-solving skills for educational leaders. This study was designed to answer the following research question: “How do aspiring educational leaders’ problem solving skills, as well as perceptions of their problem-solving skills, develop during a year-long graduate course sequence focused on school-level leadership that includes the presentation of real-world scenarios?” This mixed-methods study extends research about the development of problem-solving skills conducted with acting administrators (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992, 1995).

The Nature of Problems

Before examining how educational leaders can process and solve problems effectively, it is worth considering the nature of problems. Allison (1996) posited simply that problems are situations that require thought and/or actions. Further, there are different types of problems presented to educational leaders. First, there are well-structured problems , which can be defined as those with clear goals and relatively prescribed resolution pathways, including an easy way of determining whether goals were met (Allison, 1996).

Conversely, ill-structured problems are those with more open-ended profiles, whereby the goals, resolution pathways, or evidence of success are not necessarily clear. These types of problems could also be considered unstructured (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995) or open-design (Allison, 1996). Many of the problems presented to educational leaders are unstructured problems. For example, a principal must decide how to discipline children who misbehave, taking into consideration their disciplinary history, rules and protocols of the school, and other contextual factors; determine how best to raise student achievement (Duke, 2014); and resolve personnel disputes among staff members. None of these problems point to singular solutions that can be identified as “right” or “wrong.” Surely there are responses that are less desirable than others (i.e. suspension or recommendation for expulsion for minor infractions), but, with justification and context, many possible solutions exist.

Problem-Solving Perspectives and Models

Various authors have shared perspectives about effective problem solving. Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) outlined the “21 Responsibilities of the School Leader.” These responsibilities are highly correlated with student achievement based upon the authors’ meta- analysis of 69 studies about leadership’s effect on student achievement. The most highly correlated of the responsibilities was situational awareness , which refers to understanding the school deeply enough to anticipate what might go wrong from day-to-day, navigate the individuals and groups within the school, and recognize issues that might surface at a later time (Marzano et al., 2005). Though the authors discuss the utility of situational awareness for long- term, large-scale decision making, in order for an educational leader to effectively solve the daily problems that come her way, she must again have a sense of situational awareness, lest she make seemingly smaller-scale decisions that will lead to large-scale problems later.

Other authors have focused on problems that can be considered more aligned with the daily work of educational leaders. Considering the problem-type classification dichotomies of Allison (1996) and Leithwood and Steinbach (1995), problems that educational leaders face on a daily basis can be identified as either well-structured or unstructured. Various authors have developed problem-solving models focused on unstructured problems (Bolman & Deal, 2008; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995; Simon, 1993), and these models will be explored next.

Simon (1993) outlined three phases of the decision-making process. The first is to find problems that need attention. Though many problems of educational leaders are presented directly to them via, for example, an adult referring a child for discipline, a parent registering a complaint about a staff member, or a staff member describing a grievance with a colleague, there is a corollary skill of identifying what problems—of the many that come across one’s desk— require immediate attention, or ultimately, any attention, at all. Second, Simon identified “designing possible courses of action” (p. 395). Finally, educational leaders must evaluate the quality of their decisions. From this point of having selected a viable and positively evaluated potential solution pathway, implementation takes place.

Bolman and Deal (2008) outlined a model of reframing problems using four different frames, through which problems of practice can be viewed. These frames provide leaders with a more complete set of perspectives than they would likely utilize on their own. The structural frame represents the procedural and systems-oriented aspects of an organization. Within this frame, a leader might ask whether there is a supervisory relationship involved in a problem, if a protocol exists to solve such a problem, or what efficiencies or logical processes can help steer a leader toward a resolution that meets organizational goals. The human resource frame refers to the needs of individuals within the organization. A leader might try to solve a problem of practice with the needs of constituents in mind, considering the development of employees and the balance between their satisfaction and intellectual stimulation and the organization’s needs. The political frame includes the often competing interests among individuals and groups within the organization, whereby alliances and negotiations are needed to navigate the potential minefield of many groups’ overlapping aims. From the political frame, a leader could consider what the interpersonal costs will be for the leader and organization among different constituent groups, based upon which alternatives are selected. Last, the symbolic frame includes elements of meaning within an organization, such as traditions, unspoken rules, and myths. A leader may need to consider this frame when proposing a solution that might interfere with a long-standing organizational tradition.

Bolman and Deal (2008) identified the political and symbolic frames as weaknesses in most leaders’ consideration of problems of practice, and the weakness in recognizing political aspects of decision making for educational leaders was corroborated by Johnson and Kruse (2009). An implication for leadership preparation is to instruct students in the considerations of these frames and promote their utility when examining problems.

Authors have noted that experts use different processes than novice problem solvers (Simon, 1993; VanLehn, 1991). An application of this would be Simon’s (1993) assertion that experts can rely on their extensive experience to remember solutions to many problems, without having to rely on an extensive analytical process. Further, they may not even consider a “problem” identified by a novice a problem, at all. With respect to educational leaders, Leithwood and Steinbach (1992, 1995) outlined a set of competencies possessed by expert principals, when compared to their typical counterparts. Expert principals were better at identifying the nature of problems; possessing a sense of priority, difficulty, how to proceed, and connectedness to prior situations; setting meaningful goals for problem solving, such as seeking goals that are student-centered and knowledge-focused; using guiding principles and long-term purposes when determining the best courses of action; seeing fewer obstacles and constraints when presented with problems; outlining detailed plans for action that include gathering extensive information to inform decisions along the plan’s pathway; and responding with confidence and calm to problem solving. Next, I will examine how problem-solving skills are developed.

Preparation for Educational Leadership Problem Solving

How can the preparation of leaders move candidates toward the competencies of expert principals? After all, leading a school has been shown to be a remarkably complex enterprise (Hallinger & McCary, 1990; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992), especially if the school is one where student achievement is below expectations (Duke, 2014), and the framing of problems by educational leaders has been espoused as a critically important enterprise (Bolman & Deal, 2008; Dimmock, 1996; Johnson & Kruse, 2009; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992, 1995; Myran & Sutherland, 2016). In other disciplines, such as business management, simulations and case studies are used to foster problem-solving skills for aspiring leaders (Rochford & Borchert, 2011; Salas, Wildman, & Piccolo, 2009), and attention to problem-solving skills has been identified as an essential curricular component in the training of journalism and mass communication students (Bronstein & Fitzpatrick, 2015). Could such real-world problem solving methodologies be effective in the preparation of educational leaders? In a seminal study about problem solving for educational leaders, Leithwood and Steinbach (1992, 1995) sought to determine if effective problem-solving expertise could be explicitly taught, and, if so, could teaching problem- processing expertise be helpful in moving novices toward expert competence? Over the course of four months and four separate learning sessions, participants in the control group were explicitly taught subskills within six problem-solving components: interpretation of the problem for priority, perceived difficulty, data needed for further action, and anecdotes of prior experience that can inform action; goals for solving the problem; large-scale principles that guide decision making; barriers or obstacles that need to be overcome; possible courses of action; and the confidence of the leader to solve the problem. The authors asserted that providing conditions to participants that included models of effective problem-solving, feedback, increasingly complex problem-solving demands, frequent opportunities for practice, group problem-solving, individual reflection, authentic problems, and help to stimulate metacognition and reflection would result in educational leaders improving their problem-solving skills.

The authors used two experts’ ratings of participants’ problem-solving for both process (their methods of attacking the problem) and product (their solutions) using a 0-3 scale in a pretest-posttest design. They found significant increases in some problem-solving skills (problem interpretation, goal setting, and identification of barriers or obstacles that need to be overcome) after explicit instruction (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992, 1995). They recommended conducting more research on the preparation of educational leaders, with particular respect to approaches that would improve the aspiring leaders’ problem-solving skills.

Solving problems for practicing principals could be described as constructivist, since most principals do solve problems within a social context of other stakeholders, such as teachers, parents, and students (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992). Thus, some authors have examined providing opportunities for novice or aspiring leaders to construct meaning from novel scenarios using the benefits of, for example, others’ point of view, expert modeling, simulations, and prior knowledge (Duke, 2014; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992, 1995; Myran & Sutherland, 2016; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2015). Such collaborative inquiry has been effective for teachers, as well (DeLuca, Bolden, & Chan, 2017). Such learning can be considered consistent with the ideas of other social constructivist theorists (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Vygotsky, 1978) as well, since individuals are working together to construct meaning, and they are pushing into areas of uncertainty and lack of expertise.

Shapira-Lishchinsky (2015) added some intriguing findings and recommendations to those of Leithwood and Steinbach (1992, 1995). In this study, 50 teachers with various leadership roles in their schools were presented regularly with ethical dilemmas during their coursework. Participants either interacted with the dilemmas as members of a role play or by observing those chosen. When the role play was completed, the entire group debriefed and discussed the ethical dilemmas and role-playing participants’ treatment of the issues. This method was shown, through qualitative analysis of participants’ discussions during the simulations, to produce rich dialogue and allow for a safe and controlled treatment of difficult issues. As such, the use of simulations was presented as a viable means through which to prepare aspiring educational leaders. Further, the author suggested the use of further studies with simulation-based learning that seek to gain information about aspiring leaders’ self-efficacy and psychological empowerment. A notable example of project-based scenarios in a virtual collaboration environment to prepare educational leaders is the work of Howard, McClannon, and Wallace (2014). Shapira-Lishchinsky (2015) also recommended similar research in other developed countries to observe the utility of the approaches of simulation and social constructivism to examine them for a wider and diverse aspiring administrator candidate pool.

Further, in an extensive review of prior research studies on the subject, Hallinger and Bridges (2017) noted that Problem-Based Learning (PBL), though applied successfully in other professions and written about extensively (Hallinger & Bridges, 1993, 2017; Stentoft, 2017), was relatively unheralded in the preparation of educational leaders. According to the authors, characteristics of PBL included problems replacing theory as the organization of course content, student-led group work, creation of simulated products by students, increased student ownership over learning, and feedback along the way from professors. Their review noted that PBL had positive aspects for participants, such as increased motivation, real-world connections, and positive pressure that resulted from working with a team. However, participants also expressed concerns about time constraints, lack of structure, and interpersonal dynamics within their teams. There were positive effects found on aspiring leaders’ problem-solving skill development with PBL (Copland, 2000; Hallinger & Bridges, 2017). Though PBL is much more prescribed than the scenarios strategy described in the Methods section below, the applicability of real-world problems to the preparation of educational leaders is summarized well by Copland (2000):

[I]nstructional practices that activate prior knowledge and situate learning in contexts similar to those encountered in practice are associated with the development of students’ ability to understand and frame problems. Moreover, the incorporation of debriefing techniques that encourage students’ elaboration of knowledge and reflection on learning appear to help students solidify a way of thinking about problems. (p. 604)

This study involved a one-group pretest-posttest design. No control group was assigned, as the pedagogical strategy in question—the use of real-world scenarios to build problem-solving skill for aspiring educational leaders—is integral to the school’s curriculum that prepares leaders, and, therefore, it is unethical to deny to student participants (Gay & Airasian, 2003). Thus, all participants were provided instruction with the use of real-world scenarios.

Participants. Graduate students at a regional, comprehensive public university in the Northeast obtaining a 6 th -year degree (equivalent to a second master’s degree) in educational leadership and preparing for certification as educational administrators served as participants. Specifically, students in three sections of the same full-year, two-course sequence, entitled “School Leadership I and II” were invited to participate. This particular course was selected from the degree course sequence, as it deals most directly with the problem-solving nature and daily work of school administrators. Some key outcomes of the course include students using data to drive school improvement action plans, communicating effectively with a variety of stakeholders, creating a safe and caring school climate, creating and maintaining a strategic and viable school budget, articulating all the steps in a hiring process for teachers and administrators, and leading with cultural proficiency.

The three sections were taught by two different professors. The professors used real- world scenarios in at least half of their class meetings throughout the year, or in approximately 15 classes throughout the year. During these classes, students were presented with realistic situations that have occurred, or could occur, in actual public schools. Students worked with their classmates to determine potential solutions to the problems and then discussed their responses as a whole class under the direction of their professor, a master practitioner. Both professors were active school administrators, with more than 25 years combined educational leadership experience in public schools. It should be noted that the scenario presentation and discussions took place during the class sessions, only. These were not presented for homework or in online forums.

Of the 44 students in these three sections, 37 volunteered to participate at some point in the data collection sequence, but not all students in the pretest session attended the posttest session months later and vice versa. As a result, only 20 students’ data were used for the matched pairs analysis. All 37 participants were certified professional educators in public schools in Connecticut. The participants’ professional roles varied and included classroom teachers, instructional coaches, related service personnel, unified arts teachers, as well as other non- administrative educational roles. Characteristics of participants in the overall and matched pairs groups can be found in Table 1.

Table 1 Participant Characteristics

Procedure. Participants’ data were compared between a fall of 2016 baseline data collection period and a spring of 2017 posttest data collection period. During the fall data collection period, participants were randomly assigned one of two versions of a Google Forms survey. After items about participant characteristics, the survey consisted of 11 items designed to elicit quantitative and qualitative data about participants’ perceptions of their problem-solving abilities, as well as their ability to address real-world problems faced by educational leaders. The participants were asked to rate their perception of their situational awareness, flexibility, and problem solving ability on a 10-point (1-10) Likert scale, following operational definitions of the terms (Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005; Winter, 1982). They were asked, for each construct, to write open-ended responses to justify their numerical rating. They were then asked to write what they perceived they still needed to improve their problem-solving skills. The final four items included two real-world, unstructured, problem-based scenarios for which participants were asked to create plans of action. They were also asked to rate their problem-solving confidence with respect to their proposed action plans for each scenario on a 4-point (0-3) Likert scale.

During the spring data collection period, participants accessed the opposite version of the Google Forms survey from the one they completed in the fall. All items were identical on the two survey versions, except the scenarios, which were different on each survey version. The use of two versions was to ensure that any differences in perceived or actual difficulty among the four scenarios provided would not alter results based upon the timing of participant access (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995). In order to link participants’ fall and spring data in a confidential manner, participants created a unique, six-digit alphanumeric code.

A focus group interview followed each spring data collection session. The interviews were recorded to allow for accurate transcription. The list of standard interview questions can be found in Table 2. This interview protocol was designed to elicit qualitative data with respect to aspiring educational leaders’ perceptions about their developing problem-solving abilities.

Table 2 Focus Group Interview Questions ___________________________________________________________________________________________

Please describe the development of your problem-solving skills as an aspiring educational leader over the course of this school year. In what ways have you improved your skills? Be as specific as you can.

What has been helpful to you (i.e. coursework, readings, experiences, etc.) in this development of your problem-solving skills? Why?

What do you believe you still need for the development in your problem-solving skills as an aspiring educational leader?

Discuss your perception of your ability to problem solve as an aspiring educational leader. How has this changed from the beginning of this school year? Why?

Please add anything else you perceive is relevant to this conversation about the development of your problem-solving skills as an aspiring educational leader.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Data Analysis.

Quantitative data . Data were obtained from participants’ responses to Likert-scale items relating to their confidence levels with respect to aspects of problem solving, as well as from the rating of participants’ responses to the given scenarios against a rubric. The educational leadership problem-solving rubric chosen (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995) was used with permission, and it reflects the authors’ work with explicitly teaching practicing educational leaders components of problem solving. The adapted rubric can be found in Figure 1. Through the use of this rubric, each individual response by a participant to a presented scenario was assigned a score from 0-15. It should be noted that affect data (representing the final 3 possible points on the 18-point rubric) were obtained via participants’ self-reporting their confidence with respect to their proposed plans of action. To align with the rubric, participants self-assessed their confidence through this item with a 0-3 scale.

0 = No Use of the Subskill 1 = There is Some Indication of Use of the Subskill 2 = The Subskill is Present to Some Degree 3 = The Subskill is Present to a Marked Degree; This is a Fine Example of this Subskill

Figure 1. Problem-solving model for unstructured problems. Adapted from “Expert Problem Solving: Evidence from School and District Leaders,” by K. Leithwood and R. Steinbach, pp. 284-285. Copyright 1995 by the State University of New York Press.

I compared Likert-scale items and rubric scores via descriptive statistics and rubric scores also via a paired sample t -test and Cohen’s d , all using the software program IBM SPSS. I did not compare the Likert-scale items about situational awareness, flexibility, and problem solving ability with t -tests or Cohen’s d , since these items did not represent a validated instrument. They were only single items based upon participants’ ratings compared to literature-based definitions. However, the value of the comparison of means from fall to spring was triangulated with qualitative results to provide meaning. For example, to say that participants’ self-assessment ratings for perceived problem-solving abilities increased, I examined both the mean difference for items from fall to spring and what participants shared throughout the qualitative survey items and focus group interviews.

Prior to scoring participants’ responses to the scenarios using the rubric, and in an effort to maximize the content validity of the rubric scores, I calibrated my use of the rubric with two experts from the field. Two celebrated principals, representing more than 45 combined years of experience in school-level administration, collaboratively and comparatively scored participant responses. Prior to scoring, the team worked collaboratively to construct appropriate and comprehensive exemplar responses to the four problem-solving scenarios. Then the team blindly scored fall pretest scenario responses using the Leithwood and Steinbach (1995) rubric, and upon comparing scores, the interrater reliability correlation coefficient was .941, indicating a high degree of agreement throughout the team.

Qualitative data. These data were obtained from open-ended items on the survey, including participants’ responses to the given scenarios, as well as the focus group interview transcripts. I analyzed qualitative data consistent with the grounded theory principles of Strauss and Corbin (1998) and the constant comparative methods of Glaser (1965), including a period of open coding of results, leading to axial coding to determine the codes’ dimensions and relationships between categories and their subcategories, and selective coding to arrive at themes. Throughout the entire data analysis process, I repeatedly returned to raw data to determine the applicability of emergent codes to previously analyzed data. Some categorical codes based upon the review of literature were included in the initial coding process. These codes were derived from the existing theoretical problem-solving models of Bolman and Deal (2008) and Leithwood and Steinbach (1995). These codes included modeling , relationships , and best for kids . Open codes that emerged from the participants’ responses included experience , personality traits , current job/role , and team . Axial coding revealed, for example, that current jobs or roles cited, intuitively, provided both sufficient building-wide perspective and situational memory (i.e. for special education teachers and school counselors) and insufficient experiences (i.e. for classroom teachers) to solve the given problems with confidence. From such understandings of the codes, categories, and their dimensions, themes were developed.

Quantitative Results. First, participants’ overall, aggregate responses (not matched pairs) were compared from the fall to spring, descriptively. These findings are outlined in Table 3. As is seen in the table, each item saw a modest increase over the course of the year. Participant perceptions of their problem-solving abilities across the three constructs presented (situational awareness, flexibility, and problem solving) did increase over the course of the year, as did the average group score for the problem-solving scenarios. However, due to participant differences in the two data collection periods, these aggregate averages do not represent a matched-pair dataset.

Table 3 Fall to Spring Comparison of Likert-Scale and Rubric-Scored Items

a These problem-solving dimensions from literature were rated by participants on a scale from 1- 10. b Participants received a rubric score for each scenario between 0-18. Participants’ two scenario scores for each data collection period (fall, spring) were averaged to arrive at the scores represented here.

In order to determine the statistical significance of the increase in participants’ problem- solving rubric scores, a paired-samples t -test was applied to the fall ( M = 9.15; SD = 2.1) and spring ( M = 9.25; SD = 2.3) averages. Recall that 20 participants had valid surveys for both the fall and spring. The t -test ( t = -.153; df = 19; p = .880) revealed no statistically significant change from fall to spring, despite the minor increase (0.10). I applied Cohen’s d to calculate the effect size. The small sample size ( n = 20) for the paired-sample t -test may have contributed to the lack of statistical significance. However, standard deviations were also relatively small, so the question of effect size was of particular importance. Cohen’s d was 0.05, which is also very small, indicating that little change—really no improvement, from a statistical standpoint—in participants’ ability to create viable action plans to solve real-world problems occurred throughout the year. However, the participants’ perceptions of their problem-solving abilities did increase, as evidenced by the increases in the paired-samples perception means shown in Table 3, though these data were only examined descriptively (from a quantitative perspective) due to the fact that these questions were individual items that are not part of a validated instrument.

Qualitative Results. Participant responses to open-ended items on the questionnaire, responses to the scenarios, and oral responses to focus group interview questions served as sources of qualitative data. Since the responses to the scenarios were focused on participant competence with problem solving, as measured by the aforementioned rubric (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995), these data were examined separately from data collected from the other two sources.

Responses to scenarios. As noted, participants’ rubric ratings for the scenarios did not display a statistically significant increase from fall to spring. As such, this outline will not focus upon changes in responses from fall to spring. Rather, I examined the responses, overall, through the lens of the Leithwood and Steinbach (1995) problem-solving framework indicators against which they were rated. Participants typically had outlined reasonable, appropriate, and logical solution processes. For example, in a potential bullying case scenario, two different participants offered, “I would speak to the other [students] individually if they have said or done anything mean to other student [ sic ] and be clear that it is not tolerable and will result in major consequences” and “I would initiate an investigation into the situation beginning with [an] interview with the four girls.” These responses reflect actions that the consulted experts anticipated from participants and deemed as logical and needed interventions. However, these two participants omitted other needed steps, such as addressing the bullied student’s mental health needs, based upon her mother’s report of suicidal ideations. Accordingly, participants earned points for reasonable and logical responses very consistently, yet, few full-credit responses were observed.

Problem interpretation scores were much more varied. For this indicator, some participants were able to identify many, if not all, the major issues in the scenarios that needed attention. For example, for a scenario where two teachers were not interacting professionally toward each other, many participants correctly identified that this particular scenario could include elements of sexual harassment, professionalism, teaching competence, and personality conflict. However, many other participants missed at least two of these key elements of the problem, leaving their solution processes incomplete. The categories of (a) goals and (b) principles and values also displayed a similarly wide distribution of response ratings.

One category, constraints, presented consistent difficulty for the participants. Ratings were routinely 0 and 1. Participants could not consistently report what barriers or obstacles would need addressing prior to success with their proposed solutions. To be clear, it was not a matter of participants listing invalid or unrealistic barriers or obstacles; rather, the participants were typically omitting constraints altogether from their responses. For example, for a scenario involving staff members arriving late and unprepared to data team meetings, many participants did not identify that a school culture of not valuing data-driven decision making or lack of norms for data team work could be constraints that the principal could likely face prior to reaching a successful resolution.

Responses to open-ended items. When asked for rationale regarding their ratings for situational awareness, flexibility, and problem solving, participants provided open-ended responses. These responses revealed patterns worth considering, and, again, this discussion will consider, in aggregate, responses made in both the pre- and post- data collection periods, again due to the similarities in responses between the two data collection periods. The most frequently observed code (112 incidences) was experience . Closely related were the codes current job/role (50 incidences). Together, these codes typically represented a theme that participants were linking their confidence with respect to problem solving with their exposure (or lack thereof) in their professional work. For example, a participant reported, “As a school counselor, I have a lot of contact with many stakeholders in the school -admin [ sic ], parents, teachers, staff, etc. I feel that I have a pretty good handle on the systemic issues.” This example is one of many where individuals working in counseling, instructional coaching, special education, and other support roles expressed their advanced levels of perspective based upon their regular contact with many stakeholders, including administrators. Thus, they felt they had more prior knowledge and situational memory about problems in their schools.

However, this category of codes also included those, mostly classroom or unified arts teachers, who expressed that their relative lack of experiences outside their own classrooms limited their perspective for larger-scale problem solving. One teacher succinctly summarized this sentiment, “I have limited experience in being part of situations outside of my classroom.” Another focused on the general problem solving skill in her classroom not necessarily translating to confidence with problem solving at the school level: “I feel that I have a high situational awareness as a teacher in the classroom, but as I move through these leadership programs I find that I struggle to take the perspective of a leader.” These experiences were presented in opposition to their book learning or university training. There were a number of instances (65 combined) of references to the value of readings, class discussions, group work, scenarios presented, research, and coursework in the spring survey. When asked what the participants need more, again, experience was referenced often. One participant summarized this concept, “I think that I, personally, need more experience in the day-to-day . . . setting.” Another specifically separated experiences from scenario work, “[T]here is [ sic ] some things you can not [ sic ] learn from merely discussing a ‘what if” scenario. A seasoned administrator learns problem solving skills on the job.”

Another frequently cited code was personality traits (63 incidences), which involved participants linking elements of their own personalities to their perceived abilities to process problems, almost exclusively from an assets perspective. Examples of traits identified by participants as potentially helpful in problem solving included: open-mindedness, affinity for working with others, not being judgmental, approachability, listening skills, and flexibility. One teacher exemplified this general approach by indicating, “I feel that I am a good listener in regards to inviting opinions. I enjoy learning through cooperation and am always willing to adapt my teaching to fit needs of the learners.” However, rare statements of personality traits interfering with problem solving included, “I find it hard to trust others [ sic ] abilities” and “my personal thoughts and biases.”

Another important category of the participant responses involved connections with others. First, there were many references to relationships (27 incidences), mostly from the perspective that building positive relationships leads to greater problem-solving ability, as the aspiring leader knows stakeholders better and can rely on them due to the history of positive interactions. One participant framed this idea from a deficit perspective, “Not knowing all the outlying relationships among staff members makes situational awareness difficult.” Another identified that established positive relationships are already helpful to an aspiring leader, “I have strong rapport with fellow staff members and administrators in my building.” In a related way, many instances of the code team were identified (29). These references overwhelmingly identified that solving problems within a team context is helpful. One participant stated, “I often team with people to discuss possible solutions,” while another elaborated,

I recognize that sometimes problems may arise for which I am not the most qualified or may not have the best answer. I realize that I may need to rely on others or seek out help/opinions to ensure that I make the appropriate decision.

Overall, participants recognized that problem-solving for leaders does not typically occur in a vacuum.

Responses to focus group interview questions. As with the open-ended responses, patterns were evident in the interview responses, and many of these findings were supportive of the aforementioned themes. First, participants frequently referenced the power of group work to help build their understanding about problems and possible solutions. One participant stated, “hearing other people talk and realizing other concerns that you may not have thought of . . . even as a teacher sometimes, you look at it this way, and someone else says to see it this way.” Another added, “seeing it from a variety of persons [ sic ] point of views. How one person was looking at it, and how another person was looking at it was really helpful.” Also, the participants noted the quality of the discussion was a direct result of “professors who have had real-life experience” as practicing educational leaders, so they could add more realistic feedback and insight to the discussions.

Perhaps most notable in the participant responses during the focus groups was the emphasis on the value of real-world scenarios for the students. These were referenced, without prompting, in all three focus groups by many participants. Answers to the question about what has been most helpful in the development of their problem-solving skills included, “I think the real-world application we are doing,” “I think being presented with all the scenarios,” and “[the professor] brought a lot of real situations.”

With respect to what participants believed they still needed to become better and more confident problem solvers, two patterns emerged. First, students recognized that they have much more to learn, especially with respect to policy and law. It is noteworthy that, with few exceptions, these students had not taken the policy or law courses in the program, and they had not yet completed their administrative internships. Some students actually reported rating themselves as less capable problem solvers in the spring because they now understood more clearly what they lacked in knowledge. One student exemplified this sentiment, “I might have graded myself higher in the fall than I did now . . . [I now can] self identify areas I could improve in that I was not as aware of.” Less confidence in the spring was a minority opinion, however. In a more typical response, another participant stated, “I feel much more prepared for that than I did at the beginning of the year.”

Overall, the most frequently discussed future need identified was experience, either through the administrative internship or work as a formal school administrator. Several students summarized this idea, “That real-world experience to have to deal with it without being able to talk to 8 other people before having to deal with it . . . until you are the person . . . you don’t know” and “They tell you all they want. You don’t know it until you are in it.” Overall, most participants perceived themselves to have grown as problem solvers, but they overwhelmingly recognized that they needed more learning and experience to become confident and effective problem solvers.

This study continues a research pathway about the development of problem-solving skills for administrators by focusing on their preparation. The participants did not see a significant increase in their problem-solving skills over the year-long course in educational leadership.

Whereas, this finding is not consistent with the findings of others who focused on the development of problem-solving skills for school leaders (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2015), nor is it consistent with PBL research about the benefits of that approach for aspiring educational leaders (Copland, 2000; Hallinger & Bridges, 2017), it is important to note that the participants in this study were at a different point in their careers. First, they were aspirants, as opposed to practicing leaders. Also, the studied intervention (scenarios) was not the same or nearly as comprehensive as the prescriptive PBL approach. Further, unlike the participants in either the practicing leader or PBL studies, because these individuals had not yet had their internship experiences, they had no practical work as educational leaders. This theme of lacking practical experience was observed in both open-ended responses and focus group interviews, with participants pointing to their upcoming internship experiences, or even their eventual work as administrators, as a key missing piece of their preparation.

Despite the participants’ lack of real gains across the year of preparation in their problem- solving scores, the participants did, generally, report an increase in their confidence in problem solving, which they attributed to a number of factors. The first was the theme of real-world context. This finding was consistent with others who have advocated for teaching problem solving through real-world scenarios (Duke, 2014; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992, 1995; Myran & Sutherland, 2016; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2015). This study further adds to this conversation, not only a corroboration of the importance of this method (at least in aspiring leaders’ minds), but also that participants specifically recognized their professors’ experiences as school administrators as important for providing examples, context, and credibility to the work in the classroom.

In addition to the scenario approach, the participants also recognized the importance of learning from one another. In addition to the experiences of their practitioner-professors, many participants espoused the value of hearing the diverse perspectives of other students. The use of peer discussion was also an element of instruction in the referenced studies (Leithwood & Steinbach, 1995; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2015), corroborating the power of aspiring leaders learning from one another and supporting existing literature about the social nature of problem solving (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Leithwood & Steinbach, 1992; Vygotsky, 1978).

Finally, the ultimate theme identified through this study is the need for real-world experience in the field as an administrator or intern. It is simply not enough to learn about problem solving or learn the background knowledge needed to solve problems, even when the problems presented are real-world in nature. Scenarios are not enough for aspiring leaders to perceive their problem-solving abilities to be adequate or for their actual problem-solving abilities to improve. They need to be, as some of the participants reasoned, in positions of actual responsibility, where the weight of their decisions will have tangible impacts on stakeholders, including students.

The study of participants’ responses to the scenarios connected to the Four Frames model of Bolman and Deal (2008). The element for which participants received the consistently highest scores was identifying solution processes. This area might most logically be connected to the structural and human resource frames, as solutions typically involve working to meet individuals’ needs, as is necessary in the human resource frame, and attending to protocols and procedures, which is the essence of the structural frame. As identified above, the political and symbolic frames have been cited by the authors as the most underdeveloped by educational leaders, and this assertion is corroborated by the finding in this study that participants struggled the most with identifying constraints, which can sometimes arise from an understanding of the competing personal interests in an organization (political frame) and the underlying meaning behind aspects of an organization (symbolic frame), such as unspoken rules and traditions. The lack of success identifying constraints is also consistent with participants’ statements that they needed actual experiences in leadership roles, during which they would likely encounter, firsthand, the types of constraints they were unable to articulate for the given scenarios. Simply, they had not yet “lived” these types of obstacles.

The study includes several notable limitations. First, the study’s size is limited, particularly with only 20 participants’ data available for the matched pairs analysis. Further, this study was conducted at one university, within one particular certification program, and over three sections of one course, which represented about one-half of the time students spend in the program. It is likely that more gains in problem-solving ability and confidence would have been observed if this study was continued through the internship year. Also, the study did not include a control group. The lack of an experimental design limits the power of conclusions about causality. However, this limitation is mitigated by two factors. First, the results did not indicate a statistically significant improvement, so there is not a need to attribute a gain score to a particular variable (i.e. use of scenarios), anyway, and, second, the qualitative results did reveal the perceived value for participants in the use of scenarios, without any prompting of the researcher. Finally, the participant pool was not particularly diverse, though this fact is not particularly unusual for the selected university, in general, representing a contemporary challenge the university’s state is facing to educate its increasingly diverse student population, with a teaching and administrative workforce that is predominantly White.

The findings in this study invite further research. In addressing some of the limitations identified here, expanding this study to include aspiring administrators across other institutions representing different areas of the United States and other developed countries, would provide a more generalizable set of results. Further, studying the development of problem-solving skills during the administrative internship experience would also add to the work outlined here by considering the practical experience of participants.

In short, this study illustrates for those who prepare educational leaders the value of using scenarios in increasing aspiring leaders’ confidence and knowledge. However, intuitively, scenarios alone are not enough to engender significant change in their actual problem-solving abilities. Whereas, real-world context is important to the development of aspiring educational leaders’ problem-solving skills, the best context is likely to be the real work of administration.

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Author Biography

Dr. Jeremy Visone is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy, & Instructional Technology. Until 2016, he worked as an administrator at both the elementary and secondary levels, most recently at Anna Reynolds Elementary School, a National Blue Ribbon School in 2016. Dr. Visone can be reached at [email protected] .

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10 Leadership Conflict Management & Resolution Skills 2024

Being a leader in any organization is no easy task. Not only are leaders responsible for their actions, and the ramifications thereof, they are also responsible for the behavior and actions of their team members.

Running a team like a well-oiled machine is no easy task, as more often than not it doesn't run as well as a leader may like. There will be times that there will be conflict in the workplace, which could, if left unchecked, threaten to derail the productivity and profitability of the organization, and the morale of the team. This is where leadership conflict management and resolution skills for team leaders come to the fore.

They are qualities that set a good and a great leader apart. Success requires teamwork and clear communication. When leading a team, one of your primary responsibilities is making sure your team works well together and when it doesn't, you're able to resolve the conflict.

Often, individuals with varying personalities comprise these teams. The ability to recognize potential conflicts between individual team members and develop conflict resolution strategies to resolve them quickly is essential for projects to proceed successfully.

Leaders recognize that understanding conflict management can help them resolve issues before they occur or resolve existing conflicts in such a way that your team can still work together as a cohesive unit.

10 Leadership Conflict Management & Resolution Skills

1. communicate early and often .

To reduce misunderstandings and ambiguity, communicate your intentions and desires to not just one party, but rather every employee and as such all parties involved in the work environment. Ask what your colleagues need to work their best, and do your part to meet their needs or – at a minimum – avoid doing that which you know will cause harm. If you suspect conflict amongst team members, a leader must nip it in the bud quickly as problems will not just disappear, but rather linger if not. Failing to act as a leader when you spot a potential problem can create problems down the line.

2. Listen actively

Active listening is a proven leadership skill for conflict resolution, and involves developing a skill for listening to what is verbally and nonverbally communicated. Often, conflicts arise because two parties misunderstand or mishear what the other person is saying. Leaders know how to manage conflict and understand that active listening helps ensure that the sender and receiver understand one another and can more easily move towards a resolution. This is half the battle when it comes to being a mediator in resolving conflicts.

3. Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, manage, and control emotions not just in oneself, but also in others. Understanding, expressing, and effectively handling emotions are vital for conflict resolution. EI skills help improve communication and relationships and therefore is included in the vital skills for conflict resolution.

4. Problem solving

Problem-solving skills help leaders or parties in conflict recognize and address the root causes of conflicts by identifying the issues and exploring possible solutions. Leaders can apply the 5 problem-solving steps or 5 conflict management styles for conflict resolution: identify the problem, list possible solutions, evaluate the solutions, choose one solution, and implement it. People can find creative and equitable solutions to their conflicts by applying problem-solving skills.

5. Negotiation

Negotiation is trying to reach an agreement between two or more parties. It can be used to resolve disputes and every conflict and is integral to conflict resolution. Negotiation skills can be learned and practiced, and one can apply them in various situations. Therefore, it is vital to have effective negotiation skills to help achieve successful outcomes in any case. Negotiation is one of the powerful skills for conflict resolution, and it can help bring parties together to work toward a common goal.

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6. Observation

Observation is the key to effective conflict management. When a leader observes a conflict, one can understand it better and find solutions that work for both parties. You must also be able to keep track of your emotions and reactions to remain impartial. The skills required to be a practical observer will vary depending on the type of conflict you are dealing with.

7. Self-awareness

Self-awareness helps you understand your thoughts, feelings, and behavior, enabling you to identify the underlying causes of conflicts. Once you thoroughly understand the source of conflict, you can begin resolving it using other conflict management skills and techniques. This vital skill also helps you in identifying any biases you might have as a manager.

8. Team awareness

A conflict resolution team is especially important for effective conflict resolution, and must have the skills to work together effectively. One of the skills that are essential for conflict resolution is team awareness. This skill helps managers understand their team dynamics and how they interact with each other. In addition, it can help resolve conflict before it escalates into a severe issue. Conflict occurs through any disagreement and can cause rifts, so team awareness helps a manager to make their teams work through their differences and reach a consensus on a solution.

9. Patience

Conflict can mean different things to different people, but what is universal is that resolving conflict is a challenging but essential part of any relationship. It can be frustrating when an argument escalates quickly to the point of no return. But patience is critical to resolving conflict successfully. Effective leadership means that the best leaders need to take their time and not rush into a decision. When one is trying to resolve a conflict, it helps to circle back and understand the other person’s point of view to effectively manage things and develop a solution that works for both parties. By listening carefully and taking time to think about the situation, you can diffuse tense situations and build trust between you and the other person. All in all, patience can be one of the key skills for conflict resolution.

10. Impartiality

It is often difficult to stay impartial when you manage conflict, but in any conflict, a good manager should never take sides. Being impartial means that you can listen to both sides of the story and act accordingly. A problem at hand can't be resolved unless the historical issues are addressed. In this type of situation, it's best to separate the conflict from the people that are involved with it. Effective leaders understand that they shouldn't focus on people and their personal characteristics, instead, they should look at the problem and center their energy on finding a solution.

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Conclusion

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Being a true leader is no easy task, and nor too is managing interpersonal or interdepartmental conflict within an organization. When it comes to conflict, being cool, calm, collected, impartial and able to see the wood for the trees, are skills every leader/manager worth their salt must posses or face the consequences of lost productivity and other knock-on effects that may also affect the profitability of the company. Many leaders know that their role in solving workplace conflict is to help employees involved in the conflict to clarify their needs and guide them to a fair solution that both sides will accept. All conflict situations can lead to division, so as part of the conflict resolution, be sure to address all types of different conflict right away; however, don't rush when it comes to working out a resolution.

Whilst many say that leaders are born and not made, what is apparent is that modern leaders can be coached at a university like Nexford , that offers BBA and MBA programs, on how to spot conflict early and develop ways of managing conflict in the workplace before things spiral out of control. Nexford's Leadership Management and Teams course focuses on how to create a personal and shared vision and communicate effectively with teams, as a leader, a manager and a team member. On the course learners will develop a personal philosophy of leadership, management and membership in the global workplace through a personal inventory and assessment, as well as apply conflict management skills to a personal and organizational setting. Complimenting that, Nexford's Leadership and Organizational Development course examines individual and group interaction and helps learners gain a deeper understanding of how human behavior drives organizational behavior and development. On the course learners will apply various leadership styles, conflict management strategies, and change models to organizational situations to resolve conflict at hand.

Discover how you can acquire the most in-demand skills that can help with managing conflict within the workplace with our free report. Download the free report today!

What is conflict management?

Conflict management is an umbrella term for the way we identify and handle conflicts fairly and efficiently and is necessary for managing diverse teams. The goal is to minimize the potential negative impacts that are involved in a conflict and can arise from disagreements and increase the odds of a positive outcome.

What is a conflict management strategy?

Strategies for managing conflict are the ways a manager can engage with their employees productively when it seems like there is a risk of conflicts and arguments emerging. People naturally deal with conflicts in different ways, but some can be better than others when it comes to keeping everyone involved in the situation happy and productive. By combining your own natural conflict management style with any of the styles below, you can develop a range of responses to arguments and clashes in the workplace.

What types of conflict can occur in the workplace?

As no two days are ever the same, so too are the types of conflict that may occur in the office environment. Knowing how to spot them, and stop them early can help to resolve a conflict in double quick time. Experts maintain that there are 5 conflict types that occur in the workplace and they are leadership conflicts, work style conflicts, creative conflicts, personality conflicts, and task-based conflicts.

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Discover how you can acquire the most in-demand skills with our free report, and open the doors to a successful career.

Why is it crucial for a leader/employer to have conflict management skills?

Understanding conflict allows leaders to manage it more effectively and can provide a path to accomplishing positive outcomes. Conflict can lead to division, so every leader needs to understand that conflict management training can be an active force that will allow leaders grow healthy relationships within their organizations which can ultimately result in effective team work and productivity and make it easier to manage workplace disputes.

What does it take for a leader to resolve disputes in the workplace?

Depending on the situation, there are many skills and strategies leaders must look at for managing conflict and resolve disputes in the workplace. Leading from the front is just one and taking control of a situation before a molehill turns into a mountain. But if you had to put your finger on it, what exactly does it take for a leader to increase their resolution efforts and resolve disputes in the workplace? Experts would maintain that as a leader, even though you can initiate a constructive conversation, the effort always involves dialogue and discussion among the people involved. Conflict is inevitable, but by adopting a positive attitude toward the conflict, leaders find the best in people and in the situation, and maintain their sense of humor. Sounds easy enough, but more often than that it isn't necessarily so.

Looking to potentially take your career even further? Consider how an Online BBA or Online MBA can help you develop these skills and increase your earning potential.

Mark is a college graduate with Honours in Copywriting. He is the Content Marketing Manager at Nexford, creating engaging, thought-provoking, and action-oriented content.

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Importance of problem solving skills in leadership – make a difference and be successful.

Great leaders in U.S. history showed how you can make a difference and be successful. They are exemplars of the importance of problem solving skills in leadership:

George Washington led a ragtag army of colonial soldiers against the professional army of a world power. He overcame almost insurmountable problems as a military leader and as the first president of a new republic.
Abraham Lincoln was the president of a country coming apart at the seams. His determined leadership and overcoming problems, during a time when others gave up, preserved our republic through an unprecedented crisis.
Franklin D. Ro osevelt assumed office during the nation’s Great Depression. His administration was focused on solutions with the goal of restoring hope and confidence during a time of hardship and economic crisis.
Martin Luther King attacked the problems of racial discrimination and prejudice with fearless resolve and unparalleled leadership. His “I have a dream” speech is a classic call to solve lingering problems of unfulfilled promises of the American dream.

Table of Contents

How Recruiters Identify the Best Potential Leadership and Problem Solvers

The career path to the C-suite is paved by organizations that increasingly seek solid leadership skills when adding talent to their workforce.

According to Stephany Samuels , a senior vice president at an IT recruiting and staffing firm, “Companies thrive and grow when their workforce is comprised of leaders that instinctively explore creative solutions and bring out the best in their colleagues.”

What are the leadership traits and qualities recruiters should be looking for? According to this CNBC article , problem-solving ranks in the top three. Employers want to recruit talented people, “who are quick on their feet and comfortable resolving conflicts with unique solutions.”

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Why Problem Solving Skills are a Vital Ingredient in Your Leadership Tool Bag

Duke Ellington once observed that “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” If you leverage your problem-solving skills, you can encourage the best performance from your team.

Effective leaders are high-level thinkers and students of human behavior. They find answers to difficult questions because their approach is rooted in strong problem-solving skills. Your own workplace problems can result from conflict, competition for resources, or poor communication. You can harness that energy with dynamic problem-solving skills.

By adapting problem-led leadership styles to your work culture, you can identify and proactively solve complex problems in the leadership challenges of your business. You can excite your team and bring unity in the organization. That unity and team spirit taps into everyone’s expertise to solve problems.

Types of leadership problems and their solutions

As a leader, you will face several types of problems. Some examples are problems that:

were never faced before: e.g., the recent pandemic and new challenges faced by remote workers—productivity, network security, etc.
require multiple solutions to sometimes conflicting goals: e.g., a need to cut costs without having to lay off any employees.
are complex: e.g., a solution involving a large number of known or unknown factors—stake holders who have conflicting agendas and questionable loyalty to the entire organization.
are dynamic: e.g., a problem with a non-negotiable deadline for solving it

Problem solving can be learned through techniques that involve:

looking at the elements of the problem and understanding the dynamics affecting the situation
understanding the causes behind the problem
knowing how to leverage your advantage as well as understanding what difficulties you are facing
evaluating the strengths of your team and their ability to help in solving the problem

Read More: Life Of A Leader: What A Leader Does Everyday To Be Successful

How Leaders Solve Problems

Albert Einstein once said this about problem solving: “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” You cannot expect problems to go away on their own. Problem solving requires creative and proactive solutions and skills.

You can hone problem-solving skills with the sharp edges of a positive outlook. That approach is the opposite of the energy-draining commitment to unproductive struggle, which reinforces inertia.

When blame and repercussions and saying “oh, no!” poison your team, the classic movie Apollo 13 line “Houston, we have a problem” could be “Oh, no! Houston, we’re gonna die up here!”

In Apollo 13, the ground crew found solutions with only the material at hand. You can emulate that approach by saying “yes” to problems. Do that and you will employ, promote, and encourage an approach that focuses on strengths and opportunities. That approach includes:

1. Identifying the problem : Spend extra time defining problems and avoiding premature, inadequate solutions. The governing philosophy here is “A problem well stated is half solved.”

2. Evaluating the problem: You can get to the root cause of a problem by:

looking for common patterns
asking questions—what? who? where? when? and how?
avoiding assigning blame and engaging in negativity
seeking knowledge of every aspect of the issue in order to move forward

3. Backing up proposed solutions with data : By using data already accumulated over time, you can bring a persistent problem into perspective. Data analysis often connects the dots and leads to discoveries through common patterns.

4. Practicing honest communication and transparency. When you have a clear plan of action to resolve a problem, you can avoid the appearance of having a hidden agenda. The road to trust, respect and confidence from your team is through transparency. Transparency will keep the team invested and motivated in solving the problem.

5. Breaking down silos : With transparent communication, you also promote an organization without boundaries and the hidden agendas of silos. Silos prolong and support hidden agendas and can be the major cause of most workplace problems—turf wars, fear of speaking out, etc. In sum, silos are team-wrecking mechanisms that make it difficult to solve problems through isolation and blocking communication.

6. Making solutions actionable through testing : Following brainstorming sessions with those invested in the solution, you should encourage and assist the team to develop lists with logical actions, priorities, and timelines.

Your job as the leader is to assess the costs of those solutions in time and resources. Your next step is to communicate that information back to the team and do any tweaks and necessary adjustments.

7. Learning from mistakes: When mistakes and errors occur, you should incorporate the lessons learned as the foundation of further growth. Often, problem solving skills in leadership promote a culture of risk taking, where the results can be more than the sum of the risks.

You can practice positive problem-solving.

You know the value of saying “yes” to problems. That spills over into the value of acquiring positive problem-solving skills. That is where you shift the focus to the solution and away from the problem by:

Expecting the unexpected: You can deal with unexpected situations or unforeseen complications by anticipating the “what-ifs” and adding the “just in case” scenarios. It could be as simple as remaining composed when faced with the unfamiliar and adopting an attitude of concerned detachment.

Accepting the unexpected : Stuff happens, despite your best plans. Feeling frustrated is natural. As a leader, you need to stay positive and focus on the solution. When a leader gets angry, the team runs for cover and takes shelter in keeping their own counsel.

Staying optimistic : When things go awry in your problem-solving task, you should stifle your negative thoughts and bite your tongue when it comes to expressing feelings around others. Avoid comments like “This should have never happened” or “Who’s at fault here?”

Look for a learning experience in the setback. When you do that, you are showing the positive mental attitude that is expected from problem-solving leaders.

Consulting others : It is likely that some colleague or counterpart has gone through similar experiences in solving a difficult problem. You should check with your team, consult experts, or take advantage of professional social media like LinkedIn.

Don’t be afraid to ask for advice and consider multiple solutions and points of view. You are going for a wider perspective, and that perspective can expand your options and lead to solutions you may have overlooked.

Be a critical and creative thinker : The power of the mind is a wonderful and untapped tool. In its critical mode, it recognizes dissonance, inconsistency, and illogical conclusions.

In its creative mode, your mind goes deeper into an amazing subconscious process that generates and inspires options or innovative solutions. Then the mind explores those solutions in its critical role. The secret is to work on improving your critical thinking skills and trust the process.

Planning for results : When you find the successful solution, work backwards to discover the best way to make it happen. A problem manifests itself through a history of bad outcomes, which can be articulated and quantified. Focus on the problem, and you can cure the symptoms.

Never Give Up

Some problems defy your best efforts to find solutions. What you might need is fresh eyes and new approaches from unexpected sources. Perhaps some adjustments and compromises are required.

Don’t give up. Always remember the importance of problem solving skills in leadership. Next to your title in the company roster is the implied leadership role of “problem solver.”

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Founder of Eggcellentwork.com. With over 20 years of experience in HR and various roles in corporate world, Jenny shares tips and advice to help professionals advance in their careers. Her blog is a go-to resource for anyone looking to improve their skills, land their dream job, or make a career change.

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COMMENTS

Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders
4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need. 1. Problem Framing. One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you're trying to solve.
Problem-solving in Leadership: How to Master the 5 Key Skills
The Right Approach to Problem-Solving in Leadership. Leadership and problem-solving go hand in hand. Effective leaders possess problem-solving skills that allow them to analyze and resolve various challenges. Problem-solving in leadership is a multi-faceted competency that requires conceptual thinking, planning, creativity, and collaboration.
7 Problem-Solving Skills That Can Help You Be a More ...
Although problem-solving is a skill in its own right, a subset of seven skills can help make the process of problem-solving easier. These include analysis, communication, emotional intelligence, resilience, creativity, adaptability, and teamwork. 1. Analysis. As a manager, you'll solve each problem by assessing the situation first.
How To Solve A Problem Like A Leader
Leaders often employ many systematic and less planned tools and techniques to solve complex problems, such as using evidence-based and metricized approaches to solving known and unknown issues. In ...
The Power of Leaders Who Focus on Solving Problems
The Power of Leaders Who Focus on Solving Problems. Summary. There's a new kind of leadership taking hold in organizations. Strikingly, these new leaders don't like to be called leaders, and ...
Leadership Problem Solving Skills
One of the most important problem-solving skills for leaders is emotional intelligence - the ability to understand emotions and empathize with others. This is crucial when recognizing employees' problems. An EY Consulting survey found that 90% of US workers believe empathetic leadership leads to greater job satisfaction.
The 4 Most Effective Ways Leaders Solve Problems
Whether you are a leader for a large corporation or a small business owner, here are the four most effective ways to solve problems. 1. Transparent Communication. Problem solving requires ...
How to Boost Your Leadership and Problem-Solving Skills
4 Apply critical thinking and creativity. To solve problems effectively, you need to use both your logical and your creative thinking skills. Critical thinking helps you to analyze, evaluate, and ...
Problem Solving Ability
The leaders of tomorrow must learn to be collaborative problem-solving facilitators, instead of solitary master problem-solvers. Problem-solving ability is a multi-faceted competency that uses other skills discussed throughout the Leaders Are Clear Thinkers section, including conceptual thinking, planning and organization, and creativity. In ...
Transforming Leaders Through Creative Problem Solving
Shift into a new mindset. "First we embrace the mindset that everyone is creative, then we learn the tools that help bring it out until it becomes an innate skill that we use without thinking ...
Why is Problem Solving Important for Leaders
In a Harvard Business Review study about the skills that influence a leader's success, problem solving ranked third out of 16. As a leader, you need to approach problem solving as an opportunity, with a broad perspective and a calm demeanor. And, you'll want to arm yourself with a few critical approaches to hone your problem-solving skills.
Entry-Level Leaders: Show Problem-Solving Skills
6. Reflect and Learn. Be the first to add your personal experience. 7. Here's what else to consider. As an entry-level leader, showcasing your problem-solving skills is crucial for gaining the ...
What Are Leadership Skills, and Why Are They Important?
Problem-solving. Effective problem solvers in leadership have the ability to foresee issues in the workplace, define the problem, identify their causes, develop a plan to remedy the problem, and learn from the problem to avoid future issues. Problem-solving requires strong communication skills and respect for all parties involved.
6 Problem Solving Skills For Excellent Leaders
4. Data gathering. Data gathering is another important problem-solving skill to work on. Knowing how to gather both qualitative and quantitative data to solve problems is key, according to Brancu. "This involves taking the time to speak with critical stakeholders, and business data, and garnering other information to ensure that you are not ...
Effective Problem-Solving Strategies and Skills for Leaders
By default, great leaders should be great problem solvers. They have good problem-solving skills with the right tools and focus to guide their teams through problems to specific solutions. There are four effective problem-solving techniques leaders use to solve problems: Transparent communication. Maintaining open-mindedness.
LEADING OFF: Problem-solving skills a cornerstone of leadership
Problem-solving and critical thinking, the cornerstones of effective leadership, are not just skills but sources of empowerment. Problem-solving addresses immediate issues, while critical thinking ...
5 Problem-Solving Qualities Every Leader Must Have
First, we live in a world of growing complexity and diversity. Second, we interact with people. And third, we cannot control all the situations we face.". Thus, as a leader, Maxwell suggests cultivating these five problem-solving qualities, because "you can't let your problems be a problem.". 1. Leaders anticipate problems.
How to Help Leaders Improve Problem-Solving Skills
1 Assess their current skills. The first step is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your leaders in problem-solving. You can use various methods, such as feedback, observation, self ...
Leadership in the Workplace: 10 Skills To Develop (With FAQ)
Related: The Importance of Human Relations 8. Problem-solving Good leaders are skilled at problem-solving issues that arise on the job. Effective problem-solving often requires staying calm and identifying a step-by-step solution. Problem-solving skills can help leaders make quick decisions, resolve obstacles with their team and external teams alike, and ensure projects are finished on time ...
The Development of Problem-Solving Skills for Aspiring Educational Leaders
In other disciplines, such as business management, simulations and case studies are used to foster problem-solving skills for aspiring leaders (Rochford & Borchert, 2011; Salas, Wildman, & Piccolo, 2009), and attention to problem-solving skills has been identified as an essential curricular component in the training of journalism and mass ...
10 Leadership Conflict Management & Resolution Skills 2024
Problem-solving skills help leaders or parties in conflict recognize and address the root causes of conflicts by identifying the issues and exploring possible solutions. Leaders can apply the 5 problem-solving steps or 5 conflict management styles for conflict resolution: identify the problem, list possible solutions, evaluate the solutions ...
What Are Problem-Solving Skills? Definitions and Examples
When employers talk about problem-solving skills, they are often referring to the ability to handle difficult or unexpected situations in the workplace as well as complex business challenges. Organizations rely on people who can assess both kinds of situations and calmly identify solutions. Problem-solving skills are traits that enable you to ...
Importance Of Problem Solving Skills In Leadership
Why Problem Solving Skills are a Vital Ingredient in Your Leadership Tool Bag. Duke Ellington once observed that "A problem is a chance for you to do your best.". If you leverage your problem-solving skills, you can encourage the best performance from your team. Effective leaders are high-level thinkers and students of human behavior.
11 Essential Soft Skills In 2024 (With Examples)
Here are some examples of leadership skills: Problem-solving. Coaching and mentoring. Management. Strategic thinking. 3. Teamwork. Teamwork involves the ability to work with others toward a shared ...