problem solving leadership strategies

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

• 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.

Access your free e-book today.

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.

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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6 Strategies for Leading Through Uncertainty

• Rebecca Zucker
• Darin Rowell

Start by embracing the discomfort of not knowing.

It seems that any given week provides ample reminders that leaders cannot control the degree of change, uncertainty, and complexity we face. The authors offer six strategies to improve a leader’s ability to learn, grow, and more effectively navigate the increasing complexity of our world. The first step is to embrace the discomfort as an expected and normal part of the learning process. As described by Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, leaders must shift from a “know it all” to “learn it all” mindset. This shift in mindset can, itself, help ease the discomfort by taking the pressure off of you to have all the answers.

If there was ever any doubt about the importance of a leader’s ability to navigate change, uncertainty, and disruption, the emergence of the global pandemic in 2020 made this necessity abundantly clear. And while we all hope to avoid future pandemics, one thing is certain — we cannot avoid ever-increasing complexity.

• Rebecca Zucker is an executive coach and a founding partner at Next Step Partners , a leadership development firm. Her clients have included Amazon, Clorox, Morrison Foerster, Norwest Venture Partners, The James Irvine Foundation, and high-growth technology companies like DocuSign and Dropbox. You can follow her on LinkedIn .
• Darin Rowell , EdD, is a senior advisor and executive coach who helps individuals and teams thrive in high-demand environments. His clients range from CEOs of high-growth companies to Division I head coaches. In addition to his advisory work, Darin is an active researcher in the area of executive performance and resilience.

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10 Problem-solving strategies to turn challenges on their head

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What is an example of problem-solving?

What are the 5 steps to problem-solving, 10 effective problem-solving strategies, what skills do efficient problem solvers have, how to improve your problem-solving skills.

Problems come in all shapes and sizes — from workplace conflict to budget cuts.

Creative problem-solving is one of the most in-demand skills in all roles and industries. It can boost an organization’s human capital and give it a competitive edge. 

Problem-solving strategies are ways of approaching problems that can help you look beyond the obvious answers and find the best solution to your problem . 

Let’s take a look at a five-step problem-solving process and how to combine it with proven problem-solving strategies. This will give you the tools and skills to solve even your most complex problems.

Good problem-solving is an essential part of the decision-making process . To see what a problem-solving process might look like in real life, let’s take a common problem for SaaS brands — decreasing customer churn rates.

To solve this problem, the company must first identify it. In this case, the problem is that the churn rate is too high. 

Next, they need to identify the root causes of the problem. This could be anything from their customer service experience to their email marketing campaigns. If there are several problems, they will need a separate problem-solving process for each one. 

Let’s say the problem is with email marketing — they’re not nurturing existing customers. Now that they’ve identified the problem, they can start using problem-solving strategies to look for solutions. 

This might look like coming up with special offers, discounts, or bonuses for existing customers. They need to find ways to remind them to use their products and services while providing added value. This will encourage customers to keep paying their monthly subscriptions.

They might also want to add incentives, such as access to a premium service at no extra cost after 12 months of membership. They could publish blog posts that help their customers solve common problems and share them as an email newsletter.

The company should set targets and a time frame in which to achieve them. This will allow leaders to measure progress and identify which actions yield the best results.

Perhaps you’ve got a problem you need to tackle. Or maybe you want to be prepared the next time one arises. Either way, it’s a good idea to get familiar with the five steps of problem-solving. 

Use this step-by-step problem-solving method with the strategies in the following section to find possible solutions to your problem.

1. Identify the problem

The first step is to know which problem you need to solve. Then, you need to find the root cause of the problem. 

The best course of action is to gather as much data as possible, speak to the people involved, and separate facts from opinions. 

Once this is done, formulate a statement that describes the problem. Use rational persuasion to make sure your team agrees .

2. Break the problem down 

Identifying the problem allows you to see which steps need to be taken to solve it. 

First, break the problem down into achievable blocks. Then, use strategic planning to set a time frame in which to solve the problem and establish a timeline for the completion of each stage.

3. Generate potential solutions

At this stage, the aim isn’t to evaluate possible solutions but to generate as many ideas as possible. 

Encourage your team to use creative thinking and be patient — the best solution may not be the first or most obvious one.

Use one or more of the different strategies in the following section to help come up with solutions — the more creative, the better.

4. Evaluate the possible solutions

Once you’ve generated potential solutions, narrow them down to a shortlist. Then, evaluate the options on your shortlist. 

There are usually many factors to consider. So when evaluating a solution, ask yourself the following questions:

• Will my team be on board with the proposition?
• Does the solution align with organizational goals ?
• Is the solution likely to achieve the desired outcomes?
• Is the solution realistic and possible with current resources and constraints?
• Will the solution solve the problem without causing additional unintended problems?

5. Implement and monitor the solutions

Once you’ve identified your solution and got buy-in from your team, it’s time to implement it. 

But the work doesn’t stop there. You need to monitor your solution to see whether it actually solves your problem. 

Request regular feedback from the team members involved and have a monitoring and evaluation plan in place to measure progress.

If the solution doesn’t achieve your desired results, start this step-by-step process again.

There are many different ways to approach problem-solving. Each is suitable for different types of problems. 

The most appropriate problem-solving techniques will depend on your specific problem. You may need to experiment with several strategies before you find a workable solution.

Here are 10 effective problem-solving strategies for you to try:

• Use a solution that worked before
• Brainstorming
• Work backward
• Use the Kipling method
• Draw the problem
• Use trial and error
• Sleep on it
• Get advice from your peers
• Use the Pareto principle
• Add successful solutions to your toolkit

Let’s break each of these down.

1. Use a solution that worked before

It might seem obvious, but if you’ve faced similar problems in the past, look back to what worked then. See if any of the solutions could apply to your current situation and, if so, replicate them.

2. Brainstorming

The more people you enlist to help solve the problem, the more potential solutions you can come up with.

Use different brainstorming techniques to workshop potential solutions with your team. They’ll likely bring something you haven’t thought of to the table.

3. Work backward

Working backward is a way to reverse engineer your problem. Imagine your problem has been solved, and make that the starting point.

Then, retrace your steps back to where you are now. This can help you see which course of action may be most effective.

4. Use the Kipling method

This is a method that poses six questions based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “ I Keep Six Honest Serving Men .” 

• What is the problem?
• Why is the problem important?
• When did the problem arise, and when does it need to be solved?
• How did the problem happen?
• Where is the problem occurring?
• Who does the problem affect?

Answering these questions can help you identify possible solutions.

5. Draw the problem

Sometimes it can be difficult to visualize all the components and moving parts of a problem and its solution. Drawing a diagram can help.

This technique is particularly helpful for solving process-related problems. For example, a product development team might want to decrease the time they take to fix bugs and create new iterations. Drawing the processes involved can help you see where improvements can be made.

6. Use trial-and-error

A trial-and-error approach can be useful when you have several possible solutions and want to test them to see which one works best.

7. Sleep on it

Finding the best solution to a problem is a process. Remember to take breaks and get enough rest . Sometimes, a walk around the block can bring inspiration, but you should sleep on it if possible.

A good night’s sleep helps us find creative solutions to problems. This is because when you sleep, your brain sorts through the day’s events and stores them as memories. This enables you to process your ideas at a subconscious level. 

If possible, give yourself a few days to develop and analyze possible solutions. You may find you have greater clarity after sleeping on it. Your mind will also be fresh, so you’ll be able to make better decisions.

8. Get advice from your peers

Getting input from a group of people can help you find solutions you may not have thought of on your own. 

For solo entrepreneurs or freelancers, this might look like hiring a coach or mentor or joining a mastermind group. 

For leaders , it might be consulting other members of the leadership team or working with a business coach .

It’s important to recognize you might not have all the skills, experience, or knowledge necessary to find a solution alone. 

9. Use the Pareto principle

The Pareto principle — also known as the 80/20 rule — can help you identify possible root causes and potential solutions for your problems.

Although it’s not a mathematical law, it’s a principle found throughout many aspects of business and life. For example, 20% of the sales reps in a company might close 80% of the sales. 

You may be able to narrow down the causes of your problem by applying the Pareto principle. This can also help you identify the most appropriate solutions.

10. Add successful solutions to your toolkit

Every situation is different, and the same solutions might not always work. But by keeping a record of successful problem-solving strategies, you can build up a solutions toolkit. 

These solutions may be applicable to future problems. Even if not, they may save you some of the time and work needed to come up with a new solution.

Improving problem-solving skills is essential for professional development — both yours and your team’s. Here are some of the key skills of effective problem solvers:

• Critical thinking and analytical skills
• Communication skills , including active listening
• Decision-making
• Planning and prioritization
• Emotional intelligence , including empathy and emotional regulation
• Time management
• Data analysis
• Research skills
• Project management

And they see problems as opportunities. Everyone is born with problem-solving skills. But accessing these abilities depends on how we view problems. Effective problem-solvers see problems as opportunities to learn and improve.

Ready to work on your problem-solving abilities? Get started with these seven tips.

1. Build your problem-solving skills

One of the best ways to improve your problem-solving skills is to learn from experts. Consider enrolling in organizational training , shadowing a mentor , or working with a coach .

2. Practice

Practice using your new problem-solving skills by applying them to smaller problems you might encounter in your daily life. 

Alternatively, imagine problematic scenarios that might arise at work and use problem-solving strategies to find hypothetical solutions.

3. Don’t try to find a solution right away

Often, the first solution you think of to solve a problem isn’t the most appropriate or effective.

Instead of thinking on the spot, give yourself time and use one or more of the problem-solving strategies above to activate your creative thinking. 

4. Ask for feedback

Receiving feedback is always important for learning and growth. Your perception of your problem-solving skills may be different from that of your colleagues. They can provide insights that help you improve. 

5. Learn new approaches and methodologies

There are entire books written about problem-solving methodologies if you want to take a deep dive into the subject. 

We recommend starting with “ Fixed — How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving ” by Amy E. Herman. 

6. Experiment

Tried-and-tested problem-solving techniques can be useful. However, they don’t teach you how to innovate and develop your own problem-solving approaches. 

Sometimes, an unconventional approach can lead to the development of a brilliant new idea or strategy. So don’t be afraid to suggest your most “out there” ideas.

7. Analyze the success of your competitors

Do you have competitors who have already solved the problem you’re facing? Look at what they did, and work backward to solve your own problem. 

For example, Netflix started in the 1990s as a DVD mail-rental company. Its main competitor at the time was Blockbuster. 

But when streaming became the norm in the early 2000s, both companies faced a crisis. Netflix innovated, unveiling its streaming service in 2007. 

If Blockbuster had followed Netflix’s example, it might have survived. Instead, it declared bankruptcy in 2010.

Use problem-solving strategies to uplevel your business

When facing a problem, it’s worth taking the time to find the right solution. 

Otherwise, we risk either running away from our problems or headlong into solutions. When we do this, we might miss out on other, better options.

Use the problem-solving strategies outlined above to find innovative solutions to your business’ most perplexing problems.

If you’re ready to take problem-solving to the next level, request a demo with BetterUp . Our expert coaches specialize in helping teams develop and implement strategies that work.

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Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

8 creative solutions to your most challenging problems

5 problem-solving questions to prepare you for your next interview, what are metacognitive skills examples in everyday life, 31 examples of problem solving performance review phrases, what is lateral thinking 7 techniques to encourage creative ideas, leadership activities that encourage employee engagement, learn what process mapping is and how to create one (+ examples), how much do distractions cost 8 effects of lack of focus, can dreams help you solve problems 6 ways to try, similar articles, the pareto principle: how the 80/20 rule can help you do more with less, thinking outside the box: 8 ways to become a creative problem solver, experimentation brings innovation: create an experimental workplace, effective problem statements have these 5 components, contingency planning: 4 steps to prepare for the unexpected, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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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.

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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Six Leadership Strategies To Problem-Solve

by Terri Klass | Apr 18, 2021 | Collaborative Leadership , Conflict Resolution , Leadership Development , Open-Minded , Problem Solving , Teams , Uncategorized | 2 comments

Partnering with a team recently to find a solution to a complicated challenge was no simple task. At first, it seemed that there was an obvious resolution but as with most complex problems, there was way more involved. Different perspectives and suggestions were proposed with heated discussions. The disagreements kept growing and before we knew it, we hit a dead end. To sum it up, there appeared no way out of our mess. Some of the comments that were shared were:

“I think you’re totally off-base with your thinking.”

“I am taking all of my emotions out of this decision.”

“You’re asking for more trouble going down that road.”

“I just don’t see any way to solve this problem.”

Although teams continually face glitches that can often require a great deal of unpacking, the way they approach problem solving is key to a meaningful outcome. There are definitely best practices that teams can use to tackle their problems straight on which will result in solutions that all team members can live with.

Six leadership strategies to problem-solve:

1. define the real problem.

In order to end up with the most impactful solution to a challenge teams must clearly identify the real issue at hand. Even though this may seem like common sense, it doesn’t always play out that way. For example, if a team decides the problem with a deliverable is due to delayed work being shared but the problem is actually the process being used then the solution will never resolve the issue. Some helpful questions to ask to get to the real problem might include:

• Why is this a problem?
• Who does this problem impact?
• What isn’t the problem?
• What are the different elements of the problem?

2. Brainstorm A List Of Possible Solutions

Once defined and written out in a statement, it is time for a team to attempt to identify possible solutions. The most effective way to begin this process is by brainstorming. What is brainstorming ? Simply put: Throwing out as many ideas as possible without using any judgement or discounting any. For some team members this can be difficult if they are unable to refrain from sharing their comments. This step is all about quantity, not quality.

3. Include All Stakeholders

During this process of brainstorming, it is essential to include all the team members so that everyone feels buy-in with the end result. This is essential because when people see themselves as part of the problem-solving process they will keep sharing their important ideas. How do you include all team members?

• Ask each team member about their thoughts of how they would go about resolving the issue. Help them to keep their emotions at bay.
• Validate suggestions and opinions being shared.
• Think about stakeholders who may not be part of the team but may be helpful in resolving the issue. Their insights may lead to a more inclusive solution.

4. Weigh The Pros And Cons Of The Solutions

When all solutions are on the table and all the stakeholders consulted, then it is time to analyze the solutions. It is at this point that a back and forth discussion of the positives and negatives of each solution be considered. In my case, some of the possible solutions could possibly lead to further challenges. Just take the time to look at all sides of each possible outcome. Be honest with one another and also openminded to different alternatives.

5. Clearly Identify The Best Outcome

Once the evaluation of all the solutions is complete, choose the best one and go with it. That means making sure to be clear on the decision and what that might entail for the rest of the team and organization. A professional report should be designed that includes:

• The clearly defined problem.
• The stakeholders involved in the solution reached.
• The process undertaken to arrive at the decision.
• Concise and purposeful stated solution to the problem.

6. Present The Solution With Intent

Finally, choose which stakeholders should share the solution. Those team members should carefully prepare an impactful presentation that maps out how the problem was resolved and why that alternative was selected. When we present our solution it should be with conviction and clarity. Not always easy but well worth the time to gain as much support as possible.

What additional problem-solving strategies have worked for you and your team?

(Image Credit: Pixabay)

Great article, Terri. I love all of your points but the one that resonated with me the most was “define the real problem.” I’ve been in many situations where too much energy was spent finding a solution to a problem that no one had taken the time to define with clarity. Sure, we came up with stop-gap measures but since the real problem hadn’t been addressed, they were nothing more than bandaids that wasted leadership’s valuable time.

To solve a problem and reach the best solution teams must have total clarity on defining the problem accurately. There are many techniques to drilling down to the real problem. Sometimes it is important to understand what isn’t the problem in order to have a clearer vision of what the problem doesn’t impact. Rewriting the problem in different ways can also be so helpful in reaching the best definition. Thanks LaRae!

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35 problem-solving techniques and methods for solving complex problems

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All teams and organizations encounter challenges as they grow. There are problems that might occur for teams when it comes to miscommunication or resolving business-critical issues . You may face challenges around growth , design , user engagement, and even team culture and happiness. In short, problem-solving techniques should be part of every team’s skillset.

Problem-solving methods are primarily designed to help a group or team through a process of first identifying problems and challenges , ideating possible solutions , and then evaluating the most suitable .

Finding effective solutions to complex problems isn’t easy, but by using the right process and techniques, you can help your team be more efficient in the process.

So how do you develop strategies that are engaging, and empower your team to solve problems effectively?

In this blog post, we share a series of problem-solving tools you can use in your next workshop or team meeting. You’ll also find some tips for facilitating the process and how to enable others to solve complex problems.

Let’s get started! 

How do you identify problems?

How do you identify the right solution.

• Tips for more effective problem-solving

Complete problem-solving methods

• Problem-solving techniques to identify and analyze problems
• Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

Problem-solving warm-up activities

Closing activities for a problem-solving process.

Before you can move towards finding the right solution for a given problem, you first need to identify and define the problem you wish to solve. 

Here, you want to clearly articulate what the problem is and allow your group to do the same. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives and alignment is necessary in order to help the group move forward. 

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Be sure to try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions.

Remember that problem analysis and further discussion are also important. Not taking the time to fully analyze and discuss a challenge can result in the development of solutions that are not fit for purpose or do not address the underlying issue.

Successfully identifying and then analyzing a problem means facilitating a group through activities designed to help them clearly and honestly articulate their thoughts and produce usable insight.

With this data, you might then produce a problem statement that clearly describes the problem you wish to be addressed and also state the goal of any process you undertake to tackle this issue.  

Finding solutions is the end goal of any process. Complex organizational challenges can only be solved with an appropriate solution but discovering them requires using the right problem-solving tool.

After you’ve explored a problem and discussed ideas, you need to help a team discuss and choose the right solution. Consensus tools and methods such as those below help a group explore possible solutions before then voting for the best. They’re a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of the group for great results!

Remember that the process is often iterative. Great problem solvers often roadtest a viable solution in a measured way to see what works too. While you might not get the right solution on your first try, the methods below help teams land on the most likely to succeed solution while also holding space for improvement.

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . A well-structured workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Tips for more effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.  

Try different approaches  

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally 

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator 

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

• Six Thinking Hats
• Lightning Decision Jam
• Problem Definition Process
• Discovery & Action Dialogue

Design Sprint 2.0

• Open Space Technology

1. Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

2. Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. 

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages. 

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

3. Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design. 

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition   #problem solving   #idea generation   #creativity   #online   #remote-friendly   A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

4. The 5 Whys 

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges. 

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results. 

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

The 5 Whys   #hyperisland   #innovation   This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

5. World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold. 

World Cafe   #hyperisland   #innovation   #issue analysis   World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

6. Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #action   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

7. Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

8. Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology   #action plan   #idea generation   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #large group   #online   #remote-friendly   Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

• The Creativity Dice
• Fishbone Analysis
• Problem Tree
• SWOT Analysis
• Agreement-Certainty Matrix
• The Journalistic Six
• LEGO Challenge
• What, So What, Now What?
• Journalists

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. 

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.  

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It!   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

10. The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed. 

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable. 

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

11. Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around. 

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish. 

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis   #problem solving   ##root cause analysis   #decision making   #online facilitation   A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

12. Problem Tree 

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them. 

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree   #define intentions   #create   #design   #issue analysis   A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

13. SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward. 

SWOT analysis   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   #meeting facilitation   The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

14. Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results. 

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #problem solving   You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic .  A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.  It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.  A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.  Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.  A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”  The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process. 

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID   #gamestorming   #project planning   #issue analysis   #problem solving   When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

16. Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!   

Speed Boat   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

17. The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How   #idea generation   #issue analysis   #problem solving   #online   #creative thinking   #remote-friendly   A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

18. LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills. 

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO! 

LEGO Challenge   #hyperisland   #team   A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

19. What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems. 

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken. 

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

20. Journalists  

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists   #vision   #big picture   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to narrow down to the correct solution.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team find consensus, compare possible solutions, and move towards taking action on a particular problem.

• Improved Solutions
• Four-Step Sketch
• 15% Solutions
• How-Now-Wow matrix
• Impact Effort Matrix

21. Mindspin  

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly. 

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation. 

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. 

MindSpin   #teampedia   #idea generation   #problem solving   #action   A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

22. Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result. 

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution. 

Improved Solutions   #creativity   #thiagi   #problem solving   #action   #team   You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

23. Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged. 

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

24. 15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change. 

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.   

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change. 

15% Solutions   #action   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference.  15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.  With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

25. How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process. 

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud. 

How-Now-Wow Matrix   #gamestorming   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

26. Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them. 

Impact and Effort Matrix   #gamestorming   #decision making   #action   #remote-friendly   In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

27. Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? 

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus. 

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively. 

Dotmocracy   #action   #decision making   #group prioritization   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

• Check-in/Check-out
• Doodling Together
• Show and Tell
• Constellations
• Draw a Tree

28. Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out   #team   #opening   #closing   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

29. Doodling Together  

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. 

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. 

Doodling Together   #collaboration   #creativity   #teamwork   #fun   #team   #visual methods   #energiser   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

30. Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team! 

Show and Tell   #gamestorming   #action   #opening   #meeting facilitation   Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

31. Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible. 

Constellations   #trust   #connection   #opening   #coaching   #patterns   #system   Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

32. Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic. 

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree   #thiagi   #opening   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

• One Breath Feedback
• Who What When Matrix
• Response Cards

How do I conclude a problem-solving process?

All good things must come to an end. With the bulk of the work done, it can be tempting to conclude your workshop swiftly and without a moment to debrief and align. This can be problematic in that it doesn’t allow your team to fully process the results or reflect on the process.

At the end of an effective session, your team will have gone through a process that, while productive, can be exhausting. It’s important to give your group a moment to take a breath, ensure that they are clear on future actions, and provide short feedback before leaving the space. 

The primary purpose of any problem-solving method is to generate solutions and then implement them. Be sure to take the opportunity to ensure everyone is aligned and ready to effectively implement the solutions you produced in the workshop.

Remember that every process can be improved and by giving a short moment to collect feedback in the session, you can further refine your problem-solving methods and see further success in the future too.

33. One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round. 

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them. 

One breath feedback   #closing   #feedback   #action   This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

34. Who What When Matrix 

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward. 

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved. 

Who/What/When Matrix   #gamestorming   #action   #project planning   With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

35. Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out! 

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised. 

Response Cards   #debriefing   #closing   #structured sharing   #questions and answers   #thiagi   #action   It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Save time and effort discovering the right solutions

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks  to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session  timing   adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore  how to use SessionLab  to design effective problem solving workshops or  watch this five minute video  to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of creative exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you! 

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

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• Leadership Essentials: Problem Solving

Leaders demonstrate ownership by being solution focused

• Dimensions of Leadership
• Problem Solving
• 4 out of 5 • 1 rating

"A problem occurs when there is a gap between what we want to happen and what is actually happening; something differs from normal or something goes wrong. Problems at work vary in size, complexity and severity.  Defining the problem accurately is an essential first step to a solution." (Kepner, and Tregoe, 2013)

Defining the Problem

It is easy to overlook or misunderstand the true nature and cause of problems at work. This can often lead to:

• The wrong problem being dealt with
• The symptom is removed but not the cause of the underlying problem
• Missed learning opportunities

Defining the problem is the most important step of problem-solving. To do this, you need to diagnose the situation properly so that the real problem is accurately identified, and not its symptoms. If you identify and describe your problems well, you will make them easier and less costly to solve. The way your problem is defined and understood has a major impact on the number, quality, innovativeness and type of solutions that are proposed. You need to define:

Involving your team in doing this by asking insightful questions can help you to get a deeper understanding of the issue and its impact:

• What is the problem?
• What is the gap between ‘What is’ and ‘What should be?’
• What can you see, hear, feel, taste that tells you there is a problem?
• When was this first observed? When is it not observed? When could it have happened but did not?
• How big is it? How many are there? How many could there be but are not? Who does it affect? Who does it not affect? How many could have it but do not?

How should problems be solved?

There are eight steps in the problem solving process:

• Define the problem Investigate exactly what has gone wrong; Do not be influenced by people with ready-made solutions; Getting the definition accurate is crucial so that you do not find that you are solving the wrong problem collecting possible answers to questions that have not been asked.A good ‘problem statement’ is a clear and precise description of the problem being addressed. It should focus on one problem only, and should not suggest a solution.
• Gather relevant information Gather detail on the people, activities, processes, equipment, systems, time-scales and conditions under which the problems occur.
• Identify possible causes Causes usually relate to people, systems or equipment. Be careful not to blame the computer when it could be that the operator is not trained. Asking ‘What has changed from the norm?’ helps to identify the cause.
• Identify a possible solution Work out a way to test exactly what it is you are looking for and how you will know if you are right. 
• Test the possible causes Go back over the information you have assembled in steps 1-4 to test it, on paper, if the cause finds a good match with how, where and when the problem occurs, to what extent it occurs, and who is affected by it.
• Work out the solution There may be a number of possible solutions (which may not be mutually exclusive) with some more appropriate than others.
• Making the decision Identify and assess all possible alternative solutions. See ‘Leadership Essentials No.33 Decision Making’ for further information.
• Monitor the results How well did your solution work? What have you learnt?

Gap Analysis

Gap analysis is a common procedure for determining needs and identifying problems before action planning.  It helps you to decide what steps you need to take in order to move from your current situation to a desired situation in the future.  It can help your team to:

• Identify specific problems to address
• Understand the situation causing the problem more clearly
• Ensure that the problem being solved is the right one
• Identify the way forward
• Take the most important step - determining the actions you think will help close the gap

There are three steps in a gap analysis:

• Assess your current situation – in factual, specific terms.
• Identify your desired future state – including objectives you need to achieve and time frame; the more clearly you define your desired future state, the better your end result will be.
• Identify and describe the gap - assess the factors that contribute to it; the distance that needs to be covered; how far and how fast do you need to go to achieve your goal (remove the gap)

Intuition in Problem Solving

Intuition is an ability to understand or know something immediately based on your feelings, not through rational processes such as facts and data.

There are two main problem-solving styles:

In analytical/ rational problem solving , you think about the problem, consider several alternative courses of action, and choose the one that best fits your objective. (Kepner & Tregoe, 2013)

In intuitive problem solving , you rely on your experience, judgment and instinct to assess a situation quickly and take action (Cholle, 2011). Intuitive problem solvers normally have skills such as:

• Recognising the early signs of problems or opportunities
• Sizing up situations rapidly and seeing the big picture
• Quickly assessing the likely outcome of each possible opportunity
• Decide and act without deliberate analysis

Intuition is particularly useful for generating and considering all possible alternative solutions to a problem.

Quality Circles

A ‘Quality Circle’ is a small group of employees who meet regularly to focus on problem-solving and taking corrective action to improve quality in their area. It is considered best practice for membership of a quality circle to be voluntary and for the ‘leader’ of the quality circle to be selected by the members themselves. 

Cholle, F. P. (2011). The Intuitive Compass Publ. Jossey-Bass, USAGigerenzer, G. (2008). Gut Feelings: Short Cuts to Better Decision Making Publ Penguin Books, USAGordon, B. and Berger, L (2017). Intelligent Memory: Exercise Your Mind and Make Yourself Smarter Publ. Penguin Books, USAKepner, C. H. and Tregoe, B. B (2013). The New Rational Manager: An Updated Edition for a New World Publ. Princeton Research Press, N.J, USA

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Spotlight on Problem Solving Tools and Techniques

19 February 2018

Spotlight on Using Intuition in Problem Solving

09 February 2018

Spotlight on Gap Analysis

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Introducing Problem Solving

29 October 2018

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Strategic Leadership

Senior level managers must tackle complex problems using creative problem-solving and a portfolio of skills and styles. Here’s a look at how being a strategic leader can move an organization—and your career—forward.

Pamela Reynolds

On any given day in a large organization, managers make dozens if not hundreds of decisions, both large and small. How many units are getting out the door? How well are employees performing? Are there supply chain issues or problems recruiting new hires? Is distribution functioning smoothly?

While some leaders spend their days immersed in these day-to-day, short-term operational issues, strategic leaders focus on the big picture — where the organization is going and how to best utilize talent to get there.

In this blog, we’ll look at exactly what it means to be a strategic leader. We’ll examine the top skills and qualities associated with senior-level leadership, as well as how you can become a strategic leader in your own right. 

Defining Strategic Leadership

Strategic leadership is when managers use their creative problem-solving skills and strategic vision to help team members and an organization achieve long-term goals. 

More specifically, according to Margaret Andrews, instructor of Strategic Leadership , a Professional & Executive Development program in the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, strategic leadership is not so much a clear-cut leadership style as a mindset — “that you want to be strategic about your leadership.”

“ Strategic leadership is about understanding yourself and your goals,” she says. “It’s about understanding the situation, considering options, and deciding. It’s also about getting the best out of people, the best out of the situation, so that the organization does well. Leaders who lead strategically have done the inner work necessary to lead with integrity, vision, and purpose.” 

The concept of strategic leadership is not always straightforward . Leading strategically actually requires a manager to choose from among a variety of leadership styles depending on the situation and the people involved. Such leadership styles might include:

• Authoritarian leadership : when a leader imposes expectations and defines outcomes
• Participative leadership : when a leader involves team members in the decision-making process
• Delegative leadership : when a leader delegates tasks to other team members
• Transactional leadership : when a leader rewards or punishes team members in an effort to complete a task.
• Transformational leadership : when a leader uses a vision to inspire and motivate others
• Servant leadership : when a leader serves others by putting the needs of employees first, helping them develop to perform at higher levels

“It’s about using the leadership style that fits the situation at hand,” notes Andrews. 

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What Are the Top Skills and Qualities of Strategic Leaders?

Adept strategic leaders have cultivated a special skill set beyond the obvious ones—being trustworthy, developing a strategic plan, and delegating—often cited in business textbooks and blogs. 

Skills centered around emotional intelligence, the soft “people skills,” are the traits that allow strategic leaders to successfully adapt to an ever-changing economic and technological climate, remaining forward-looking and able to see industry trends and directions long before others in an organization do. 

Passion, purpose, and conviction are what make strategic leaders “visionary.”

Some of the most important characteristics of someone who leads strategically include: 

They Know Who They Are

“They really understand themselves, who they are and what matters,” says Andrews. “They know their values.”

They Are Interested in Others

Strategic leaders want to hear from team members, and they listen attentively as part of their leadership strategy. As a result, team members naturally feel more invested. Andrews references a famous quote of Theodore Roosevelt: “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” 

“There’s an element of truth in that,” she says. “People want direction. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to have their own ideas for how to achieve great things considered as well.”

They Are Good Communicators

It goes without saying that leaders who think strategically speak clearly in ways that others can easily understand. But there is an added dimension — good listening skills, the second trait in our list. Good communicators listen closely enough to hear the reservations of those wavering on the fence and are able to create buy-in by addressing those concerns. 

In addition, they are aware how their words, actions, and moods affect their teammates, and can calibrate their words and actions accordingly.

Because they’re good listeners, with a good dose of empathy and compassion included in the mix, they can be very effective at motivating team members. Engaged employees are more likely to do good work, persist through problems, innovate, and contribute to the overall strategy.

They Are Open-Minded 

Strategic leaders encourage and seek out diverse points of view.

“The easy problems are solved, and we’re left with the harder problems which need new ways of thinking, which often come from a diverse team,” says Andrews. “We need different points of view, which come from different vantage points, educational paths, and personal and professional experiences.”

Who Are Some Examples of Strategic Leaders?

Leaders who exemplify some of the qualities found in great strategic leadership abound. Below are four different types of leaders who demonstrate at least one of the traits of a strategic leader.

Oprah Winfrey @Oprah :The Great Communicator

Winfrey started off as the first black local news anchor at a Nashville television station, only to become one of the wealthiest businesswomen in the world as CEO of Harpo Inc. a multimedia production company. Although she has been hailed as the most powerful business woman in the world by Forbes thanks to her business acumen, she is best known in her more humble role as a day-time talk show host. In 25 seasons on the set of “Oprah,” she displayed a down-to-earth, relatable communication style that embodied attentive listening, empathy, compassion, and the ability to connect with people from radically different backgrounds. 

Howard Schultz @HowardSchultz : Knowing His Purpose

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, made the radical decision to offer benefits for workers at the end of his first year as CEO of the coffee chain. At the time, it was virtually unheard of in the fast-food industry. Schultz, however, had grown up with a truck driving father who had no health insurance after breaking an ankle. Schultz was able to use his passion and sense of mission to persuade the Starbucks board to offer health insurance to baristas, even those working part-time. 

Jacinda Ardern @jacindaardern : Interested in Others

Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, has been applauded around the world for her substantial leadership skills and steady hand during a crisis. She is often praised for her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which she was able to keep levels of infection in the country relatively low. According to industry professionals, she “focuses on ‘we’ not ‘I,’” listens to expert advice and acts on what she hears, and acknowledges both her strengths and weaknesses, engendering trust.

Jeff Bezos @jeffbezos : Open to Big Ideas

Chairman and former CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos was able to transform his online bookstore into the world’s largest internet company by revenue, and the largest provider of virtual assistants and cloud infrastructure services. His vision was indeed of Amazonian proportions and has consequently changed the world. His innovation mindset and willingness to embrace bold new ideas means that his empire continues to grow, from moving Amazon into providing streaming movies to taking on sub-orbital spaceflight with his company Blue Origin. 

How to Become a Strategic Leader

By now, it should be obvious that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to strategic leadership . 

People who lead strategically come in all shapes and sizes and can be found in every arena, from politics, to entertainment, to business, and beyond. 

But despite their variety of backgrounds, interests, and styles, there is one basic thing strategic leaders seem to know: “Leadership is the human side of business,” says Andrews. “That’s how we get things done, through other people, and that’s what leadership is about, since no two situations are alike.” 

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About the Author

Pamela Reynolds is a Boston-area feature writer and editor whose work appears in numerous publications. She is the author of “Revamp: A Memoir of Travel and Obsessive Renovation.”

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Empowering Leaders: The Imperative for Problem-Solving Training

• 4 mins to read
• March 22, 2024
• By Reagan Pannell

In the complex, swiftly evolving arena of business, the traditional model of leadership development is increasingly showing its cracks, failing to prepare leaders for the nuanced challenges they face daily. High on the agenda but often overlooked in training programmes are the indispensable skills of problem-solving and innovation. The ability to tackle the unexpected, to pivot and adapt in a rapidly changing landscape, is no longer an asset but a prerequisite for effective leadership.

Problem-Solving in Leadership

Consider a traditional model of a business school curriculum for aspiring leaders — an itinerary full of strategic planning, financial management, and team dynamics. While proficiency in these areas is undoubtedly essential, the quintessential skill of problem-solving cuts across and underlines all of them. Successful problem solvers have a unique ability to dissect issues, untangle complexity, and lead with clarity in high-pressure scenarios. This isn’t just a professional convenience; it’s the stress tolerance needed to stand at the helm of an enterprise in a dynamic marketplace. And leaders are facing decisions now more than ever due to the acceleration and uncertainty of global markets.

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Real-World Examples of Successful Problem-Solving Leadership

Leadership with an acute focus on problem-solving is often visible, but the process is less so. Take the example of Stephanie Cohen, the Chief Strategy Officer at Goldman Sachs, who led the bank’s ‘10,000 Women’ initiative, providing business education, access to capital, and mentorship to women entrepreneurs around the globe. Addressing the chasm in expertise for these rising entrepreneurs was no small task, requiring a sophisticated approach to challenges that spanned language, culture, and economic stability. Cohen’s leadership highlights the decisive role of problem-solving in navigating and leveraging complexity.

Problem-solving is a meta-skill that transcends the specific technical skills often prioritised in traditional leadership training. This ability is the foundation upon which other important skills are built and refined, including critical thinking, creativity, and resilience. It enables leaders to not only react to the challenges that arise but also anticipate future hurdles and prepare for them proactively. Effective problem-solving necessitates a blend of analytical thinking and innovative approaches, facilitating the development of efficient and novel strategies. In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, where the only constant is change, mastering the art of problem-solving is indispensable for leaders aiming to steer their organizations towards sustainable success.

Innovation as a Leadership Skill

Innovation, the catalyst for progress, is a multifaceted gem in the leader’s toolkit. It goes beyond inventive product development and extends to continuously rejuvenating organizational processes and structures. A leader’s ability to foster an environment where new ideas can bloom is essential for staying competitive and carving out new paths in the industry.

Fostering Innovation for Organisational Growth

The biographies of some of the most successful businesspeople often read like chronicles of a lifetime dedicated to problem-solving and innovation. In the case of Elon Musk, his ventures are characterized by an unrelenting appetite for innovation. Whether igniting the electrical vehicle revolution with Tesla or propelling space exploration as CEO of SpaceX, innovation is not just a by-product of Musk’s leadership; it’s a strategic underpinning. His example demonstrates how cultivating innovation as a leadership quality can drive organisational growth and success.

Challenges in Implementing Change

While the argument for problem-solving and innovation training is compelling, implementation faces many hurdles. The first is the inertia within traditional institutions, which is resistant to evolving the tried and tested. Shaking up the status quo requires a shift in mindset—from viewing leadership as a set of stable qualities to an agile set of skills to be constantly honed and adapted. The second challenge is the lack of structured approaches to instil these competencies among leaders.

Change is led from the top, but genuine transformation begins with the frontline teams who create value and directly impact your customers. Senior leadership might set the vision and direction for innovation and problem-solving. Yet, it’s the daily practices and ideas of those on the ground that turn these goals into reality.

It is crucial to empower employees by valuing their insights and fostering a culture where every team member feels responsible for the company’s evolution. Such an approach accelerates the pace of change and democratizes innovation, making it a shared mission rather than a top-down directive. This grassroots level of engagement is where the seeds of substantial and lasting change are sown, bridging the gap between strategic intent and practical execution.

Overcoming Barriers to Integrated Problem-Solving and Innovation Training

Bringing problem-solving and innovation to the forefront of business training demands a systematic approach. It’s about recruiting and promoting from a pool of talents fortified with these skills and fostering a culture that celebrates and nurtures them. Resistance can be diminished by stepping away from standard training modules and incorporating multidisciplinary, experiential learning that better reflects the turbulence of real-world business.

Personal Perspective

In my years of consulting with various organizations, it has become evident that the leaders who instil an ethos of adaptive problem-solving are those who manage to carry their teams through challenges, emerging more robust and innovative on the other side. These leaders ensure their teams are not just employees but active thinkers and problem-solvers in their own right, a crucial differentiation in today’s knowledge economy. A corporate world built on a foundation of strong and adaptable leaders is good for business and the entire market ecosystem.

I believe the curriculum for aspiring and existing leaders should be reimagined with a dual emphasis on technical competence and adaptive problem-solving. My experience has revealed a remarkable transformation in leaders who have engaged in such learning. They approach their roles with a clarity and agility that was previously missing. They are the ones who not only recognize the winds of change within their spheres but possess the understanding to harness them for their organization’s gain.

In conclusion, the business world is not merely crying out for more leaders; it demands better leaders — those willing to confront challenges and the vision to innovate. We can no longer operate under the assumption that these qualities are innate or secondary to the ‘more important’ tenants of leadership. It’s time we recognise effective problem-solving and innovation not as virtues some leaders happen to possess but as skills, we must deliberately teach and cultivate.

Call to Action

If you are an executive who sees merit in this argument, I urge you to reassess your leadership development programs and seek ways to infuse them with problem-solving and innovation training. By taking bold steps to prepare your leaders for the turbulent waters ahead, you are investing in your organisation’s success and the future of business leadership itself. The first step is recognising the need for change — the next is taking action. The business leaders of tomorrow can not wait for today to be ready; they must be crafted.

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Reagan pannell.

Reagan Pannell is a highly accomplished professional with 15 years of experience in building lean management programs for corporate companies. With his expertise in strategy execution, he has established himself as a trusted advisor for numerous organisations seeking to improve their operational efficiency.

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Problem-solving leadership (psl), a workshop with esther derby & don gray.

The most up-to-date information on this workshop is now on our Congruent Change website.

Manage Change and Practice Innovation by Becoming a Problem-Solving Leader

Learn and practice a leader’s most valuable asset: the ability to think and act creatively. We believe that leadership is the key to building a healthy organization that can deal effectively with change. We teach that leadership is the ability to create an environment that enables everyone to contribute productively. We focus on process rather than procedure, on personal effectiveness rather than prescriptive strategies.

The “Problem-Solving Leadership” workshop has been growing and changing since 1974 to meet the changing needs of people in the workplace. The fundamental principle, however, remains the same: a leader’s most valuable asset is the ability to think and act clearly, creatively, and congruently. This is what we teach.

Work on issues of most interest to you…and your organization. We have designed this workshop to be practical and applicable to the modern workplace. Your problems and concerns provide a frame of reference for all the workshop activities. At the end of the workshop, when you review your original learning objectives, you may very well discover that you have reframed the original problems and gained insight into the actual issues.

Through simulations and group activities

You will learn:, how to be a leader while being a member of a team., how to focus your thinking while in chaos., how to make change a productive, creative event., how to build truly effective teams to design projects people really want to work on., how to use tools of effective communication to handle conflict in problem-solving groups..

Develop your own problem solving style PSL is built on sound principles of adult learning theory, general systems thinking, group process concepts, creativity and congruent human interaction. The simulations and other activities are designed to involve you totally in the experience of improving your problem solving effectiveness. You will take away an increased awareness of your own problem solving style and an understanding and appreciation of the styles of others. You will see how valuing differences can enhance innovation and increase, rather than constrain, your problem solving options.

 Upcoming Classes

Don Gray and I offer PSL one or more times a year, depending on our schedules. Currently, we are offering doing one workshop in the fall, and one in the spring, both in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

We occasionally arrange for private and overseas workshops. Click the orange Contact Esther button below to send me an email if you wish to discuss.

We’ll announce when workshops are open for registration at our Congruent Change website.

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About Don Gray

For those who don’t yet know Don , his quest to answer “What is the earliest indicator for a project’s status?” has led him to focus on such diverse topics as communication, personality types, team styles, systems thinking and human systems dynamics. For more than 25 years, his clients have ranged from small startups to Fortune 50 involving manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, financial, engineering and telecommunications. Don’s varied interests and client experience provides a platform for helping clients introduce and work through change as they transition to agile development practices. He conducts workshops on accelerating change, personality type, and retrospectives. Don occasionally writes articles that can be found in STQE, Better Software and on StickyMinds. His blog can be found at www.donaldegray.com.

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How to Improve Problem-Solving in Collaborative Leadership?

Table of contents, role of problem-solving in fostering collaboration, common challenges in collaborative problem-solving, foster a culture of open communication, clarify shared goals and objectives, build a collaborative mindset, implement effective decision-making processes, provide adequate resources and support, address resistance to change, tools and technologies for collaborative problem-solving, embracing continuous improvement.

Ever wondered what sets apart successful collaborative leaders in today’s world? The answer lies in their adept problem-solving abilities, which turn diverse teams into powerful engines of innovation and progress. 

By nurturing an ecosystem where collaboration and innovation are at the forefront, we will guide you through strategies to boost your team’s collective problem-solving capabilities, empowering you to lead your team towards shared visions and goals more effectively.

Whether you’re a product innovator, an executive, a consultant, or an educator, this article is designed to guide you through creating an environment where collaboration and innovation aren’t just encouraged but thrive. 

Importance of Problem-Solving in Collaborative Leadership

The ability to adeptly navigate problem-solving processes sits at the core of collaborative leadership, distinguishing it as a critical component for steering teams towards success. In environments where collaborative leadership thrives, problem-solving emerges not just as a task or a challenge but as an opportunity to synergize diverse talents and perspectives to achieve a common goal. It:

• Facilitates better decision-making: By pooling diverse insights, teams can arrive at more comprehensive and well-rounded solutions.
• Enhances adaptability: Effective problem-solving helps teams pivot quickly in response to unforeseen challenges, maintaining momentum for reaching their goals.
• Strengthens team bonds: Collaboratively overcoming obstacles can reinforce trust and camaraderie among team members.

A study published by the Harvard Business Review underscores this, revealing that teams tasked with complex problems achieve markedly better outcomes when they employ collaborative problem-solving approaches. These strategies not only lead to more innovative solutions but also foster a more engaged and cohesive team dynamic.

Problem-solving acts as the glue in collaborative efforts, binding individuals with different backgrounds, skills, and perspectives into a cohesive unit focused on a shared mission. Research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership found that collaborative problem-solving not only enhances team performance but also contributes to higher employee engagement and satisfaction. This unity is cultivated through:

• Jointly navigating challenges – which builds mutual respect and understanding.
• Leveraging collective intelligence – leading to innovative solutions that might not emerge in siloed environments.
• Creating a sense of shared achievement – which enhances team morale and motivation.

Now that we have a better understanding of problem-solving in collaborative settings, it’s important to address the common hurdles that can impede this process.

Recognizing and addressing these challenges is the first step towards cultivating a more cohesive and capable collaborative leadership framework.

• Communication barriers: In a diverse team, differences in communication styles, languages, and cultural backgrounds can lead to misunderstandings and misalignments, hindering the flow of ideas and collaboration. In order to overcome this obstacle, it is essential to foster an environment that encourages clear, open, and inclusive communication.
• Lack of shared goals and objectives: Without a unified vision and clear, common objectives, team efforts can become fragmented, with members pulling in different directions. Aligning everyone around shared goals not only focuses efforts but also fosters a sense of purpose and community among team members.
• Resistance to change: Inherent in human nature, resistance to change can stifle innovation and hinder the adoption of new solutions to old problems. Cultivating an open-minded culture that embraces change and views it as an opportunity for improvement is crucial for overcoming this resistance.
• Limited resources: Whether it’s time, budget, or manpower, resource constraints can force teams to compromise, potentially stifling innovation and efficiency. Strategic resource management and creative problem-solving can help mitigate the impact of these limitations, ensuring that the team can still achieve its objectives despite resource constraints.

Strategies to Enhance Problem-Solving in Collaborative Leadership

To surmount these challenges, leaders must adopt a multifaceted approach:

• Establishing effective communication channels: Utilize a variety of platforms (e.g., meetings, digital collaboration tools) to ensure all voices can be heard.
• Active listening skills: Leaders should model and encourage attentive listening, validating contributions to build a supportive atmosphere.
• Encouraging diverse perspectives: Actively seek input from all team members, especially those who may be quieter or from underrepresented groups, to enrich the problem-solving process.
• Defining common objectives: Collaboratively set clear, achievable goals to provide direction and focus for the team’s efforts.
• Aligning individual and team goals with organizational goals: Ensure personal and team objectives contribute positively to the broader organizational mission, creating a sense of purpose and unity.
• Promoting a sense of collective responsibility: Foster an environment where successes and failures are shared, strengthening team solidarity.
• Recognizing and valuing individual strengths: Leverage the unique skills and knowledge of each team member to enhance problem-solving capabilities.
• Consensus-building techniques: Employ strategies such as brainstorming, voting, or dialogue to reach decisions that reflect the collective wisdom of the team.
• Utilizing data and evidence-based decision-making : Anchor decisions in objective data to enhance credibility and effectiveness.
• Allocating resources strategically: Ensure that teams have access to the necessary tools, information, and support to tackle problems effectively.
• Offering training and development opportunities: Equip team members with the skills required for effective collaboration and problem-solving through targeted training programs.
• Identifying and understanding resistance: Engage with team members to uncover the roots of resistance, addressing concerns and fears openly.
• Implementing change management strategies: Apply structured approaches to facilitate adaptation to new ideas, processes, or solutions, minimizing disruption and fostering acceptance.

Besides strategic approaches and fostering a conducive culture, what can significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative problem-solving efforts are the right tools:

• Project management software: Tools such as Asana, Trello, and Jira offer intuitive interfaces for organizing tasks, assigning responsibilities, and tracking progress, ensuring that everyone is aligned and accountable.
• Collaboration platforms: Platforms such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom integrate various forms of communication, such as messaging, video calls, and file sharing, into a single platform, making it easier for team members to stay connected and exchange ideas, regardless of their location.
• Data analytics tools: Leveraging tools like Google Analytics, Tableau, or Power BI can provide actionable insights, informing decision-making with empirical data. You can also utilize predictive models to forecast potential obstacles or outcomes, allowing teams to proactively address challenges before they become impediments.

The journey to excel in collaborative problem-solving is an ongoing one, marked by continuous learning and adaptation. Leaders must remain committed to fostering a culture that not only values but thrives on collaboration, open communication, and shared goals. This involves being proactive in addressing challenges, adapting strategies as needed, and leveraging the best tools and technologies to support your team’s efforts.

Remember, the ultimate goal of enhancing problem-solving in collaborative leadership is not just to find immediate solutions to current challenges but to cultivate a resilient, adaptive, and innovative team capable of facing future obstacles with confidence. By investing in these strategies and tools, you’re not just solving problems; you’re building a foundation for lasting success and growth in an ever-changing business landscape. Continuous improvement, openness to new ideas, and a commitment to fostering a collaborative culture are your keys to unlocking the full potential of your team and leading them towards shared visions and goals with unwavering efficacy.

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Leadership Development Strategies in Interprofessional Healthcare Collaboration: A Rapid Review

Juan bornman.

1 Centre for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa

Brenda Louw

2 Department Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA

Contemporary healthcare practitioners require leadership skills for a variety of professional roles related to improved patient/client outcomes, heightened personal and professional development, as well as strengthened interprofessional collaboration and teamwork.

Objective/Aim

The aim of this study is to systematically catalogue literature on leadership in healthcare practice and education to highlight the leadership characteristics and skills required by healthcare practitioners for collaborative interprofessional service delivery and the leadership development strategies found to be effective.

Methods/Design

A rapid review was conducted. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) diagram shows that the 11 databases, yielded 465 records. A total of 147 records were removed during the initial screening phase. The remaining 318 records were uploaded onto Rayyan, an online collaborative review platform. Following abstract level screening, a further 236 records were removed with 82 records meeting the eligibility criteria at full text level, of which 42 were included in the data extraction. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) was used for quality appraisal.

Results showed variability in methodologies used, representing various healthcare disciplines with a range in population size (n = 6 to n = 537). Almost half of the results reported on new programs, with interprofessional collaboration and teamwork being the most frequently mentioned strategies. The training content, strategies used as well as the length of training varied. There were five outcomes which showed positive change, namely skills, knowledge, confidence, attitudes, and satisfaction.

This rapid review provided an evidence-base, highlighted by qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research, which presents distinct opportunities for curriculum development by focusing on both content and the methods needed for leadership programs. Anchoring this evidence-base within a systematic search of the extant literature provides increased precision for curriculum development.

Introduction

Changes in healthcare worldwide have led to an emphasis on leadership development in healthcare professions, which include medical, dental, public health, nursing, and allied health providers (eg, audiology, nutrition, occupational therapy, physical therapy, pharmacy, respiratory therapy, radiography, speech-language therapy) to meet current healthcare needs. 1–3 These changes have been brought about by factors, such as advances in information technology, automation, human interconnectivity, cross-sector mergers, advances in precision medicine, community involvement, providing services during periods of financial instability, and more recently the global COVID-19 pandemic. 1 , 4 , 5

As a result, effective leadership is now needed at all levels of healthcare for safety assurance, to drive service development, to ensure good clinical outcomes, 6 to foster engagement of healthcare practitioners (HCP), 2 to advocate for their patients/clients, to be self-aware and prioritize personal and professional development, to become innovative thinkers and to practice ethically. 7 , 8

Importantly, leadership skills enhance HCPs willingness to participate in team care and facilitates the long-term sustainability of team care. 5 Internationally, clinical leadership has been emphasized to ensure quality of care, job satisfaction and retention of HCP. 9

Global changes in healthcare necessitated new strategies and ways of working in HCP. Currently, there is widespread international recognition that bridging the boundaries of professional disciplines is required to address the challenges posed by changes in healthcare, 1 , 10 validating the World Health Organization’s 11 call to meet the complex service needs of the future through interprofessional collaboration (IPC).

In the IPC approach, members work collaboratively to complete an activity collectively. 12 IPC is defined by a diversity of skills, roles, and perspectives, bringing practitioners who have divergent expertise together with the purpose of combining their skills and insights to realize a shared goal that could not otherwise be achieved through the reliance on a single skill set of one disciplinary group. Leadership is essential for interprofessional collaboration. 13 A scoping review 14 (n = 114) examined how leadership is referred to and used in IPC and found that most papers did not refer to a specific leadership approach, nor did they identify, define, describe, or theorize leadership capabilities. A more critical examination of interprofessional leadership and the capabilities required to lead the necessary changes in both education and practice settings is needed.

As leadership is now valued by HCP at all levels, new models of leadership have emerged as important contributions to HCPs who work collaboratively, including, but not limited to collaborative leadership, 3 , 13 transformational leadership, 15 , 16 systemic leadership, 17 ethical leadership, 18 , 19 and recently remote leadership. 20 Collaborative leadership models feature largely in Interprofessional Education (IPE) 13 and includes shared and team leadership with an emphasis on a common vision. As such, shared leadership involves the distribution of leadership influence in the team across multiple team members. Shared leadership has been shown to enhance processes, effectiveness, and performances in interprofessional teams 21 while increasing HCP satisfaction and reducing burnout. 22 Similarly, in team leadership different professions share influence and there is a thoughtful allocation of responsibilities. Central control is shifted from a leader to the team. Team members are independent and coordinate their activities to reach the shared team goal. 3

Transformational leadership is a contemporary form of leadership, and the underlying tenets are to inspire individuals and to form teams to inspire goals through idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. 3 Transformational leadership is important to retaining HCP and to achieve overall patient satisfaction. 16

Leadership beliefs of clinicians and how it differs between professions has been explored in the research. 5 The link found between group identification and leadership beliefs, suggests that strategies which promote strong identification in both professional and interprofessional teams are likely to be conducive to clinicians supporting principles of shared leadership. HCPs benefit from developing not only leadership skills and characteristics, but also followership skills as leaders and followers co-produce the leadership that is needed in teamwork. 23 A pervasive leadership myth is that leadership is lodged in positional power in a specific organization. This type of thinking is false and flawed. HCPs at many levels and with many different roles daily display leadership, eg, leading an item on a case discussion, or leading a discussion with family members or with students. 19 This points to the requirement of HCPs to be adaptable and able to switch effortlessly between leadership and followership roles as it is beneficial to advance patient care.

HCPs are highly qualified and skilled professionals who work in range of health care settings. HCP providers require knowledge, clinical skills and competency, efficiency and productivity, and positive relationships with clients/patients. 24 In addition, HCPs require leadership skills to ensure the quality of care, to improve patient/client outcomes, to advocate for their patients/clients, to be self-aware and prioritize personal and professional development, to become innovative thinkers and to practice ethically. 7 , 25 , 26 Importantly, leadership skills enhance HCPs willingness to participate in team care and facilitates the long-term sustainability of team care, which relies on shared leadership. 5 However, the skills needed to be an effective HCP are different to those required to be an effective leader. 27 Training in HCP prepares individuals for leadership in a multitude of ways, for example, by taking care of patients, interacting with interdisciplinary team members, guiding groups, writing grant proposals with colleagues and emulating mentors or professors. 28 It is commonly acknowledged that although formal training in the multifaceted components of leadership has become accepted as highly desirable for healthcare leaders, 29 clinical HCPs have generally not been prepared for their expected role as effective health care leaders. 9 , 27 Furthermore, there are also gaps in leadership development practices in higher education settings of HCP. 1 , 30

Leadership development in HCP is an emerging research field and has been studied in various contexts by using a variety of methodologies, such as bibliometric analysis, 31 survey research, 5 qualitative research, 10 , 30 systematic reviews, 6 scoping reviews, 32 rapid reviews 17 and theoretical papers. 3 , 33 However, despite the broad diversity of the research there are limitations and a lack of consensus regarding the theoretical and conceptual frameworks applied, leadership models promoted, competencies required, training approach and strategies used to leadership development of HCP. 1 , 32 It was proposed that a universally applicable framework for leadership development in HCP will support leadership development programs aimed at multiple disciplines, both in professional training and in continuing education. Such a universal model can also lead to greater efficiency in developing new leadership development programs. 1

A new type of leader is emerging in healthcare, namely one who focuses on teamwork, improving patient outcomes and models the balance between autonomy and accountability. 3 Leadership development programs need to prepare and equip HCPs to fulfill this role expectation.

The aim of this study is to systematically catalogue literature on leadership in healthcare practice and education, in an unbiased manner, using a rapid review methodology by highlighting the leadership characteristics and skills required by HCPs for collaborative interprofessional service delivery and the leadership development strategies found to be effective.

A rapid review was undertaken due to its potential for producing timely and relevant research. 17 , 34 Rapid reviews are also attracting interest as a research method in the discipline of speech-language pathology (SLP). For example, Bolton et al 35 conducted a rapid review on aerosol generating procedures, dysphagia assessment and COVID-19 in response to urgent clinical needs, while Malandraki and colleagues 36 conducted a rapid systematized review of telehealth for dysphagia across the life span.

While there is no standardized procedure for conducting rapid reviews, several approaches have been suggested and used. 37 This rapid review used systematic review methodology and follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) statement. 38 , 39

Identifying the Research Question

To ensure that the rapid review included information relevant to the main aim, the review question was formulated in a PIO-format (Population-Intervention-Outcome): What are the leadership characteristics, skills, and strategies (Outcomes) required by HCPs (Population) in IPC and IPE (Intervention)?

Search Strategy and Study Selection

A systematic search of 11 relevant databases was conducted to capture a wide variety of potential papers that may be indexed across different databases. 40 A librarian assisted in identifying the relevant databases and interfaces as well as in refining search terms. Search terms using keywords were generated through the PIO method that categorizes the population, intervention, and outcome to identify search terms (see Table 1 ). The keywords included Boolean operators AND and OR to link the population to the intervention and outcomes in the search as well as truncation. No hand searches were performed due to restrictions brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The following four criteria were applied in the searches: (1) Only material published between January 2000 and December 2022; (2) any study design (ie, qualitative studies, quantitative studies or mixed-method research designs); (3) studies published in English; and (4) no grey literature (eg, reports, fact sheets, conference proceedings, chapters of academic textbooks, websites, newspapers and policy documents) as preliminary searches of the grey literature yielded limited information relevant to the pre-determined inclusion criteria of this review. 41

The 11 databases yielded a total of 465 records when employing the search terms, namely PubMed ( n = 86), EBSCO ( n = 71), Academic Search Complete ( n = 58), CINAHL ( n = 58), Web of Science ( n =56), Health Source – Nursing Academic Edition ( n = 55), PsychInfo ( n = 42), Scopus (n = 18), PsychArticles ( n = 9), Taylor and Francis ( n = 7) and AccessMedicine ( n = 5). An independent librarian versed in systematic reviews reviewed the search strategy and recommended databases related to health sciences and based on the topic. 42 Using multiple databases increased the depth of the search.

Initial Screening

As mentioned earlier, of the 465 records, a total of 95 duplicates were identified and removed ( n = 370 remained). The 370 remaining records were uploaded onto Rayyan, an online platform where researchers can perform collaborative systematic reviews. 43 The Rayyan platform was beneficial as it increased the objectivity of study selection and aided in improving the interrater agreement. The remaining 370 records were screened on title level of which 52 were excluded as the focus of these records was not on the topic of the current rapid review.

The remaining 318 abstracts were reviewed independently by two reviewers. The reviewers agreed on 291 abstracts, resulting in a 91.5% interrater agreement. The remaining 27 abstracts were discussed with two additional reviewers until 100% consensus was reached. 38 Studies were excluded on abstract level due to the non-target population, non-target outcome, or non-target focus of the study. The same process was followed to determine eligibility on the full text level of the remaining 82 records using the a priori inclusion and exclusion criteria by two reviewers. The initial interrater agreement for this stage was also high (88.9%). Table 2 shows the inclusion- and exclusion criteria that was used for the screening and eligibility phases.

Screening – Eligibility Criteria: Title and Abstract Level

After the screening at abstract level, 318 records remained. The remaining 82 records were read at full text level and assessed for eligibility by two reviewers. The initial interrater agreement was 89.0% (reviewers agreed on 73 of the 82 records), which is regarded as a high agreement. 44 Disagreements were discussed with two additional members of the research team until 100% consensus was reached for every study record. A total of 42 studies were selected for full-text inclusion, based on the criteria in Table 1 .

The PRISMA diagram is shown in Figure 1 .

PRISMA diagram for scoping review process.

Data Extraction and Analysis

A data extraction tool was developed to compile consistent and independent data reports. It included general information (ie, authors, year of publication and publication type), descriptive information (ie, the discipline involved, country of publication and design used), as well as information related to the specific population (ie, the specific discipline, the number of participants and their experience), the intervention (ie, whether a specific course/module on leadership is described and if so, the type of course) and the outcomes (ie, leadership characteristics, skills, etc.). All data were extracted independently by at least two reviewers. As was the case for the initial screening, disagreements were resolved through consensus meetings and upon full consensus, the extracted data were transferred from the data extraction tool to a synthesized Excel spreadsheet.

Critical Appraisal

Following the data extraction, the quality of the included studies was appraised using the MMAT 45 to systematically check each article for biases. The MMAT firstly considers if there is a clear research question and if the collected data address the research questions before looking at specific questions depending on the study method. The MMAT overall quality score used descriptors such as numbers ranging from 1 (indicating 20% quality criteria) to 5 (indicating 100% quality criteria met). Two raters initially scored each of the 42 papers, but the interrater reliability was unacceptably low (64.3%). Hence, an additional two raters with more experience were added and the agreement level increased to 97.6%. 46 The consensus MMAT scores for the 42 studies included are shown in Table 3 .

Descriptive Information and Population (N = 42)

Abbreviations : ER, Emergency Room; GPs, General practitioners; LEND, Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities; MMAT, Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (Hong et al, 2018); OTs, Occupational therapists; PTs, Physical therapists; SLPs, Speech language pathologists; USA, United States of America.

The results of the rapid review are presented as descriptive information related to the 42 included studies (authors, year of publication, country, research design) and the study population (discipline, number of participants and their level) (see Table 3 ). First, the quantitative studies are shown, followed by the qualitative and mixed methods studies. This is followed by an analysis of the intervention that was used, as well as the outcomes of the intervention described in the various studies included (see Table 4 ).

Intervention Applied and Outcomes Achieved (N = 42)

Abbreviations : IPC, Interprofessional collaboration; N/S, Not specified; self-aware/id/conf, self-awareness/identity/confidence.

Descriptive Information on Included Studies

It is evident that there has been a steady increase in the number of studies published on the topic of leadership with only three studies published in the period 2000–2012 (7%) fulfilling the criteria set for the current review; five studies in the period 2013–2015 (12%), 17 studies between 2016 and 2018 (40%), and 17 studies between 2019 up to December 2022 (40%).

The methodologies used in the 42 studies included 26 surveys (62%) of which six (14%) specifically mentioned being offered pre- and post-training; 13 were qualitative studies (31%) of which four were case studies and nine were interviews; and three mixed-methods studies (7%) and one study (2%) was longitudinal in nature.

Geographically, half of the studies ( n = 20) were conducted in the USA. The other half were split between the United Kingdom ( n = 4), Australia ( n = 4); Malaysia ( n = 2); South Africa ( n = 3) and one each from Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Turkey, Iran, India, China, Brazil, and Latin America ( n = 9).

Regarding the quality appraisal, the one study that met 60% of the quality indicators (score of 3/5) was a qualitative case study. The 10 studies that met 80% of the quality indicators (score of 4/5) consisted of seven studies that employed surveys of which one study was longitudinal in nature, although none of the pre- and post-surveys fell into this category, as well as two qualitative studies which made use of interviews (one study used an in-depth interview and the other study used a semi-structured interview) and one case study. Most of the studies ( n = 31) obtained a score of 5 which indicated 100% descriptive quality.

Population: Healthcare Practitioners

The number of participants ranged from six 81 to 537. 55 Slightly more than a quarter of the studies (11/42 = 26%) reported on more than 100 participants, while 10 studies (24%) reported on 20 or less participants. The remaining 50% of papers (21) reported on between 21 and 99 participants. One study 58 did not report on the number of participants.

Of the specific disciplines that were included, three studies 47 , 72 , 75 did not specify the disciplines which were included, but simply mentioned “multi-disciplinary teams”. Figure 2 shows the distribution of the professions which were included.

Distribution of professions.

In the 29 studies that mentioned physicians, and the 24 studies that mentioned nurses, some differentiated the type of medicine (oncology, emergency medicine, surgery, pediatrics, family medicine and public health) as shown in Table 3 . HCPs in the applied professions included SLPs (five studies); occupational therapists (OTs) (seven studies), physiotherapists (PTs) (four studies) and nutritionists (three studies). Other HCPs included midwives, dentists, pharmacists, and podiatrists.

Regarding the level at which these practitioners were functioning, it is evident that most studies (26/42 = 62%) reported on clinicians (ie, practicing professionals), although four of these studies reported on both clinicians and students while two studies reported on both clinicians and the academic faculty. A total of 16 students at different levels of their studies participated (ranging from under-graduate to master’s level).

Interventions Employed to Train/Enhance Leadership Development

Table 4 reports on the specific interventions that were described in the different programs. Nearly half of the studies (20/42) reported on new training programs, while eight studies reported on existing programs. 47 , 53 , 66 , 70 , 72 , 76 , 85 , 86 In total, 14 studies did not specify whether the research reported on a new or on an existing program. 7 , 12 , 49 , 50 , 56 , 57 , 59 , 76 , 78 , 81–83 , 88 Most of the studies did not report on the length of training, although there appeared to be variability ranging from intensive-three and a half day courses 53 to courses spanning over two years. 54 Different training strategies were used, of which interprofessional teamwork (ie, working in teams across disciplinary boundaries) was the most prominent, and was mentioned in 13 of the 42 studies. 12 , 47–50 , 52 , 63 , 65 , 68 , 73 , 75 , 78 , 85 Three studies mentioned the use of group or collaborative learning, 51 , 53 , 72 while the use of simulation activities as a means of knowledge application was also mentioned in three studies. 50 , 55 , 68 Practical experiences was mentioned in the study by Rose and colleagues 67 and the use of the “train-the-trainer” method in the Brashers et al 47 study as forms of hands-on learning. In total, 23 studies did not mention what type of training strategy was used.

Regarding the content on which the training focused, it appeared that aspects related to the importance of teamwork (including a variety of teamwork elements, as well as collaboration across disciplines) received high priority in 25 of the 42 studies. 12 , 47–50 , 52–54 , 56–58 , 62 , 65 , 66 , 68 , 71 , 73 , 76–79 , 81 , 82 , 84 , 88 This was an expected finding given the focus on leadership, as leadership often involves teamwork. The aspects related to teamwork included conflict resolution, communication skills in teams, problem-solving, setting a joint vision and motivating others towards such a vision, roles and responsibilities of team members, time management and resource management. The important roles of the family as team members were also highlighted.

Another aspect that received attention was self-management, which also included demonstrating courage and resilience, empathy, reflection, and self-awareness. 51 , 60 , 65 , 66 , 71 , 74 , 76 , 79 , 80 , 84 A number of the studies specifically highlighted the importance of managing change and assisting others in this regard 53 , 58 , 59 , 61 , 67 , 68 , 79 , 80 , 85 as well as practicing in an ethically responsive manner. 47 , 60 , 62 , 74 , 79 , 84 Some studies did not specify the leadership skills, but merely reported on broad or general leadership skills, 50 , 54 , 61 , 63 , 64 , 70 , 73 , 75 , 83 , 86 while other studies were more specific and mentioned, for example, clinical leadership, 49 adaptive leadership, 72 authentic leadership, 74 collaborative leadership, 12 , 78 personal leadership, 65 or in some cases, not leadership skills but management skills. 59 , 60 , 63 , 64 , 68 , 78–81 , 87

Outcomes Achieved by the Specific Interventions Employed

Table 4 also shows the main outcomes (ie, positive change) that could be directly attributed to the interventions described in the various studies. There were five main types of outcomes achieved. The majority of the 42 studies focused on increasing specific skills with seven studies each reporting on an increase in knowledge 47 , 48 , 50 , 54 , 77 , 84 , 87 and in confidence, 48 , 51 , 55 , 60 , 61 , 84 , 85 while more positive attitudes were reported in four studies 54 , 67 , 70 , 87 and satisfaction with the leadership training program in two studies. 51 , 52 The nature of the skills which were addressed in the different studies varied greatly and hence resulted in different types of skills such as IPC or teamwork skills that improved in 18 studies, 50 , 52 , 53 , 55 , 58 , 60 , 61 , 65 , 75–79 , 81–84 followed by 15 studies that emphasized communication skills, 12 , 50 , 52 , 55 , 57 , 58 , 60 , 61 , 63 , 68 , 73 , 77 , 81 , 82 , 85 and increased self-awareness/self-identity and self-confidence in 10 studies. 59 , 60 , 62 , 64 , 71 , 74 , 75 , 77 , 79 , 84 Four studies each reported back on improved skills related to conflict resolution, 55 , 58 , 61 , 63 patient care, 48 , 65 , 83 , 84 and motivating others, 53 , 58 , 62 , 85 while three studies each reported on skills related to coping with change, 53 , 61 , 80 and problem-solving. 61 , 72 , 85 From Table 4 , it is possible to see that any combination of outcomes was possiblefor example, improving both knowledge and skills, or improving skills and facilitating a positive attitude. Furthermore, some studies only reported on one skill improving, 68 while some reported on multiple skills (eg, Jaffe 77 ).

The aim of the present rapid review is to investigate literature on leadership in health and education practice to highlight the leadership characteristics, skills and strategies of HCPs required for collaborative interprofessional service delivery. Leadership literature dated between 2010 and 2022 was studied, using a number of criteria. The main findings of this review are discussed below.

Leadership in Healthcare Professions

Leadership is viewed as a core role and responsibility of HCPs across a variety of care disciplines to ensure improved service delivery and patient care. A trend of more published research in leadership in HCPs was noted from the year 2010. Although studies from around the globe were included, the USA appears to lead the research in the current study. This trend was also noted by Brewer and colleagues 14 who mentioned that most empirical studies included in their review were undertaken by researchers based in North America. This may be attributed to the vast healthcare system in the USA and requirements for evidence-based practice that permeates all healthcare professions. In contrast to early intervention and early childhood special education where Movahedazarhouligh 89 reported a paucity of research on leadership research, this topic is well studied in the healthcare profession.

Evidence Base

This review identified a variety of methodologies employed, which can be attributed to the different types of training programs reported on. Survey research was the predominant methodology (60%) employed to study the outcomes of leadership training. Qualitative research, including case studies and interviews, mixed-methods research and a longitudinal study were included in the 42 articles included and analyzed in this review. Complying with quality indicators of research design is essential to the development of an evidence base of leadership within healthcare. 90 The different disciplines within the healthcare profession were widely represented in the populations studied, although three studies did not specify which disciplines were studied. This variation points to the strength of the research evidence which can be used to inform the development of future quality training programs within the healthcare profession.

Similar to the review by Brewer et al, 14 most articles in the present review also did not refer to, or operationalize any specific leadership approaches or models. Bahreini et al 91 emphasize the importance of developing and adhering to a framework for training leadership in HCPs, especially one that can be adapted for use in local situations. Therefore, the extracted components of the current rapid review can be viewed as a first step in developing an evidence base, building on a comprehensive overview of leadership in HCPs.

Elements of Leadership Training

Leadership is viewed to be an inherent quality and characteristic of HCPs. 90 However, the complex and dynamic nature of leadership in HCPs precludes the unanimously accepted description of the characteristics required to perform an effective leadership role. Smith et al 92 conclude that effective interprofessional health and social care team leadership requires a unique blend of understanding and skills that support innovation and improvement. Some of the ways through which leadership is often evidenced is through advocacy (ie, to promote the self-advocacy of the clients with whom HCPs work), training of families and other role players, mentoring (eg, of less experienced colleagues), supervision, continuing education, and research. It is thus self-explanatory that leadership necessitates a complex set of knowledge, skills and attitudes which require formal education, either at a pre-professional or professional level. 7 Despite this acknowledgement of the importance of leadership, formal training for the development of skill sets and abilities is generally lacking to better prepare future HCPs and in continuing education for practicing HCPs. In rare cases where leadership is included in curricula, the emphasis is on aspects, such as leadership for healthcare systems, advancing careers, etc., rather than on, for example advocacy. 7

The current review reveals some gaps in reporting on the specific nature of the training programs, for example gaps related to the length and intensity of programs, which is important in evaluating the training outcomes. Regarding training strategies, an interprofessional teamwork approach was followed by 31% of the programs and three studies followed a collaborative learning approach. These approaches reflect the recent trends in healthcare service delivery. 13 There is, however, a need for research to clearly justify and describe the training strategies employed, as 55% of the studies did not describe this in their methods. The content of the training programs was focused on different elements of leadership including interprofessional collaboration and teamwork and the specific skills required to lead in that context, personal leadership skills such as self-management, strategies for managing change and ethical responsibilities of leaders. Furthermore, not all programs identified their approach to leadership, which is the framework for selecting the knowledge and skills to be trained. Although the studies had sound research methodologies, the training program development could be more rigorous, which would allow for the replication of training programs. Rao et al 93 point to the importance of course design when developing quality improvement educational leadership programs.

Leadership Training Outcomes

Although all the articles reported positive changes which were attributed to the training programs, the question remains how to ensure retention, as only a few studies included post-surveys and long-term training. Since leadership is a desired outcome of HCPs training programs, whether on a pre-professional or professional level, it should instill a process of lifelong reflection and development. 88 By identifying specific leadership competencies relating to knowledge and skill development, defined objectives can be formulated. Curriculum mapping on the pre-professional level can be implemented to determine the overage of leadership-related competencies across the curriculum. 88 , 94

Lastly, the global COVID-19 pandemic added urgency and importance to leadership skills in the healthcare profession internationally. Difficulties in accessing services due to COVID-19 restrictions led to telehealth. However, the use of technology is challenging and could be limiting in managing complex situations. HCPs were further challenged in a variety of ways such as applying universal precautions and accessing personal protection equipment, to name but a few. The COVID-19 health emergency called for crisis leadership with specific competencies such as signal detection, prevention and preparation, containment and damages and learning and reflection. 95

Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

This rapid review includes strengths with its size, method, and scope, but also has limitations. Firstly, it is possible that the identified search terms did not identify all possible papers as only 11 databases were searched, and no hand-searching of papers was included. The present review focused only on papers published in English and only from the year 2000 onwards. One study met the 60% MMAT quality appraisal score with many studies reflecting “missing data” (eg, did not specify the sample size; did not specify the methods used for leadership training; did not specify the length of training).

The international scope of this rapid review presents distinct challenges for research conducted across varying disciplines and the methods used in the different contexts. Papers covered a range of HCP disciplines which may not result in the same implications across disciplines. However, it is expected that it would contribute to the existing body of literature and assist HCPs when developing leadership curricula for their specific discipline.

Future research could build on the current data and focus on a more critical examination of interprofessional leadership, and the capabilities required to lead the changes required in both education and practice settings. 14 To further support the emerging trend of including leadership development programs in HCP curricula, sustainability of the outcomes of leadership development programs in different contexts can be explored.

This rapid review was designed to systematically catalogue literature on leadership in healthcare practice and education in an unbiased manner to highlight the leadership characteristics and skills required by HCPs for collaborative interprofessional service delivery. It also described the leadership development strategies that had been found to be effective. As the change in healthcare leadership continues to evolve, leadership development programs need to attend to the needs of HCP on all levels. The review revealed that a paucity exists in the description of leadership approaches and models used. Moreover, a dearth of information was found on retention and long-term impact of leadership development programs. The evidence-based highlighted by qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research presents distinct opportunities for curriculum development by focusing on both content and the methods needed for leadership programs. Anchoring this evidence-base within a systematic search of the extant literature provides increased precision for curriculum development.

Acknowledgments

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship (ADF) Program (PS00174859 and PS00157223) and the University of Pretoria’s Research Office are gratefully acknowledged for sponsoring this research project. The authors also wish to thank Gabrielle Saliba and Mary Catherine Smith who assisted with the search, screening, and data extraction as well as with the technical editing of the manuscript.

We have no known conflicts of interest to disclose.

(All studies included in the review are marked with an asterisk*)

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20 Effective Math Strategies To Approach Problem-Solving 

Katie Keeton

Math strategies for problem-solving help students use a range of approaches to solve many different types of problems. It involves identifying the problem and carrying out a plan of action to find the answer to mathematical problems.  

Problem-solving skills are essential to math in the general classroom and real-life. They require logical reasoning and critical thinking skills.  students must be equipped with strategies to help them find solutions to problems.

This article explores mathematical problem solving strategies, logical reasoning and critical thinking skills to help learners with solving math word problems independently in real-life situations. 

What are problem-solving strategies?

Problem-solving strategies in math are methods students can use to figure out solutions to math problems. Some problem-solving strategies: 

• Draw a model
• Use different approaches
• Check the inverse to make sure the answer is correct

Students need to have a toolkit of math problem-solving strategies at their disposal to provide different ways to approach math problems. This makes it easier to find solutions and understand math better. 

Strategies can help guide students to the solution when it is difficult ot know when to start.

The ultimate guide to problem solving techniques

Download these ready-to-go problem solving techniques that every student should know. Includes printable tasks for students including challenges, short explanations for teachers with questioning prompts.

20 Math Strategies For Problem-Solving

Different problem-solving math strategies are required for different parts of the problem. It is unlikely that students will use the same strategy to understand and solve the problem. 

Here are 20 strategies to help students develop their problem-solving skills. 

Strategies to understand the problem

Strategies that help students understand the problem before solving it helps ensure they understand: 

• The context
• What the key information is
• How to form a plan to solve it

Following these steps leads students to the correct solution and makes the math word problem easier .

Here are five strategies to help students understand the content of the problem and identify key information. 

1. Read the problem aloud

Read a word problem aloud to help understand it. Hearing the words engages auditory processing. This can make it easier to process and comprehend the context of the situation.

2. Highlight keywords 

When keywords are highlighted in a word problem, it helps the student focus on the essential information needed to solve it. Some important keywords help determine which operation is needed.  For example, if the word problem asks how many are left, the problem likely requires subtraction.  Ensure students highlight the keywords carefully and do not highlight every number or keyword. There is likely irrelevant information in the word problem.

3. Summarize the information

Read the problem aloud, highlight the key information and then summarize the information. Students can do this in their heads or write down a quick summary.  Summaries should include only the important information and be in simple terms that help contextualize the problem.

4. Determine the unknown

A common problem that students have when solving a word problem is misunderstanding what they are solving. Determine what the unknown information is before finding the answer.  Often, a word problem contains a question where you can find the unknown information you need to solve. For example, in the question ‘How many apples are left?’ students need to find the number of apples left over.

5. Make a plan

Once students understand the context of the word problem, have dentified the important information and determined the unknown, they can make a plan to solve it.  The plan will depend on the type of problem. Some problems involve more than one step to solve them as some require more than one answer.  Encourage students to make a list of each step they need to take to solve the problem before getting started.

Strategies for solving the problem 

1. draw a model or diagram.

Students may find it useful to draw a model, picture, diagram, or other visual aid to help with the problem solving process.  It can help to visualize the problem to understand the relationships between the numbers in the problem. In turn, this helps students see the solution.

Similarly, you could draw a model to represent the objects in the problem:

2. Act it out

This particular strategy is applicable at any grade level but is especially helpful in math investigation in elementary school . It involves a physical demonstration or students acting out the problem using movements, concrete resources and math manipulatives .  When students act out a problem, they can visualize and contectualize the word problem in another way and secure an understanding of the math concepts.  The examples below show how 1st-grade students could “act out” an addition and subtraction problem:

3. Work backwards

Working backwards is a popular problem-solving strategy. It involves starting with a possible solution and deciding what steps to take to arrive at that solution.  This strategy can be particularly helpful when students solve math word problems involving multiple steps. They can start at the end and think carefully about each step taken as opposed to jumping to the end of the problem and missing steps in between.

For example,

To solve this problem working backwards, start with the final condition, which is Sam’s grandmother’s age (71) and work backwards to find Sam’s age. Subtract 20 from the grandmother’s age, which is 71.  Then, divide the result by 3 to get Sam’s age. 71 – 20 = 51 51 ÷ 3 = 17 Sam is 17 years old.

4. Write a number sentence

When faced with a word problem, encourage students to write a number sentence based on the information. This helps translate the information in the word problem into a math equation or expression, which is more easily solved.  It is important to fully understand the context of the word problem and what students need to solve before writing an equation to represent it.

5. Use a formula

Specific formulas help solve many math problems. For example, if a problem asks students to find the area of a rug, they would use the area formula (area = length × width) to solve.   Make sure students know the important mathematical formulas they will need in tests and real-life. It can help to display these around the classroom or, for those who need more support, on students’ desks.

Strategies for checking the solution 

Once the problem is solved using an appropriate strategy, it is equally important to check the solution to ensure it is correct and makes sense. 

There are many strategies to check the solution. The strategy for a specific problem is dependent on the problem type and math content involved.

Here are five strategies to help students check their solutions. 

1. Use the Inverse Operation

For simpler problems, a quick and easy problem solving strategy is to use the inverse operation. For example, if the operation to solve a word problem is 56 ÷ 8 = 7 students can check the answer is correct by multiplying 8 × 7. As good practice, encourage students to use the inverse operation routinely to check their work. 

2. Estimate to check for reasonableness

Once students reach an answer, they can use estimation or rounding to see if the answer is reasonable.  Round each number in the equation to a number that’s close and easy to work with, usually a multiple of ten.  For example, if the question was 216 ÷ 18 and the quotient was 12, students might round 216 to 200 and round 18 to 20. Then use mental math to solve 200 ÷ 20, which is 10.  When the estimate is clear the two numbers are close. This means your answer is reasonable. 

3. Plug-In Method

This method is particularly useful for algebraic equations. Specifically when working with variables.  To use the plug-in method, students solve the problem as asked and arrive at an answer. They can then plug the answer into the original equation to see if it works. If it does, the answer is correct.

If students use the equation 20m+80=300 to solve this problem and find that m = 11, they can plug that value back into the equation to see if it is correct. 20m + 80 = 300 20 (11) + 80 = 300 220 + 80 = 300 300 = 300 ✓

4. Peer Review

Peer review is a great tool to use at any grade level as it promotes critical thinking and collaboration between students. The reviewers can look at the problem from a different view as they check to see if the problem was solved correctly.   Problem solvers receive immediate feedback and the opportunity to discuss their thinking with their peers. This strategy is effective with mixed-ability partners or similar-ability partners. In mixed-ability groups, the partner with stronger skills provides guidance and support to the partner with weaker skills, while reinforcing their own understanding of the content and communication skills.  If partners have comparable ability levels and problem-solving skills, they may find that they approach problems differently or have unique insights to offer each other about the problem-solving process.

5. Use a Calculator

A calculator can be introduced at any grade level but may be best for older students who already have a foundational understanding of basic math operations. Provide students with a calculator to allow them to check their solutions independently, accurately, and quickly. Since calculators are so readily available on smartphones and tablets, they allow students to develop practical skills that apply to real-world situations.  

Step-by-step problem-solving processes for your classroom

In his book, How to Solve It , published in 1945, mathematician George Polya introduced a 4-step process to solve problems. 

Polya’s 4 steps include:

• Understand the problem
• Devise a plan
• Carry out the plan

Today, in the style of George Polya, many problem-solving strategies use various acronyms and steps to help students recall. 

Many teachers create posters and anchor charts of their chosen process to display in their classrooms. They can be implemented in any elementary, middle school or high school classroom. 

Here are 5 problem-solving strategies to introduce to students and use in the classroom.

How Third Space Learning improves problem-solving 

Resources .

Third Space Learning offers a free resource library is filled with hundreds of high-quality resources. A team of experienced math experts carefully created each resource to develop students mental arithmetic, problem solving and critical thinking. 

Explore the range of problem solving resources for 2nd to 8th grade students. 

One-on-one tutoring 

Third Space Learning offers one-on-one math tutoring to help students improve their math skills. Highly qualified tutors deliver high-quality lessons aligned to state standards. 

Former teachers and math experts write all of Third Space Learning’s tutoring lessons. Expertly designed lessons follow a “my turn, follow me, your turn” pedagogy to help students move from guided instruction and problem-solving to independent practice. 

Throughout each lesson, tutors ask higher-level thinking questions to promote critical thinking and ensure students are developing a deep understanding of the content and problem-solving skills.

Problem-solving

Educators can use many different strategies to teach problem-solving and help students develop and carry out a plan when solving math problems. Incorporate these math strategies into any math program and use them with a variety of math concepts, from whole numbers and fractions to algebra. 

Teaching students how to choose and implement problem-solving strategies helps them develop mathematical reasoning skills and critical thinking they can apply to real-life problem-solving.

READ MORE : 8 Common Core math examples

There are many different strategies for problem-solving; Here are 5 problem-solving strategies: • draw a model  • act it out  • work backwards  • write a number sentence • use a formula

Here are 10 strategies of problem-solving: • Read the problem aloud • Highlight keywords • Summarize the information • Determine the unknown • Make a plan • Draw a model  • Act it out  • Work backwards  • Write a number sentence • Use a formula

1. Understand the problem 2. Devise a plan 3. Carry out the plan 4. Look back

Some strategies you can use to solve challenging math problems are: breaking the problem into smaller parts, using diagrams or models, applying logical reasoning, and trying different approaches.

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Differentiated Instruction: 9 Differentiated Curriculum And Instruction Strategies For Teachers 

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Ultimate Guide to Metacognition [FREE]

Looking for a summary on metacognition in relation to math teaching and learning?

Check out this guide featuring practical examples, tips and strategies to successfully embed metacognition across your school to accelerate math growth.

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Samsung tells its executives to work a 6-day week to ‘inject a sense of crisis’ after posting its worst financial year in over a decade

While firms around the world embrace a four-day week, Samsung is going in the opposite direction: The $374 billion tech giant is mandating a six-day workweek for all of its executives in a bid to “inject a sense of crisis” among workers and raise its bottom line.  

Execs at the South Korean company will have the option of pulling overtime either on a Saturday or Sunday, starting as early as this week, Korea Economic Daily reports.

“Considering that performance of our major units, including Samsung Electronics Co., fell short of expectations in 2023, we are introducing the six-day work week for executives to inject a sense of crisis and make all-out efforts to overcome this crisis,” a Samsung Group executive told Korea Economic Daily .

Lower performance combined with other economic uncertainties like high borrowing costs, the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war and rising oil prices, have reportedly pushed the firm into “emergency mode.”

Last year, Samsung posted its weakest financial year in over a decade, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that net profit fell 73% in Q4. 

Meanwhile, its semiconductor business—which accounts for about 80% of Samsung’s earnings—recorded a loss of nearly 15 trillion Korean won ($11 billion) last year.

It’s perhaps why, as per Korea Economic Daily , some execs have been voluntarily working six days a week since the start of this year anyway.

But now, executives across Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co. and Samsung SDS will be expected to work an extra day, with its financial services arms of the business expected to follow suit in the near future.

Employees below executive level aren’t expected to clock in on weekends. However, a spokesperson told Korea Economic Daily that the company will keep an eye on their business strategy and adapt as needed.

Fortune has contacted Samsung for comment.

Meanwhile, other firms are ditching Fridays

Samsung’s six-day mandate goes against the global shift to adopting a shorter week as pilots of the “100:80:100” working model—100% pay for 80% of the time, in exchange for 100% productivity—prove to be a roaring success.

Following in the footsteps of Iceland, New Zealand, and Japan, Britain completed the world’s biggest trial of a four-day working week last year and experienced a 65% reduction in the number of sick days, maintained or improved productivity, and saw a 57% decline in the likelihood that an employee would quit, dramatically improving job retention.

The results even found that reducing employees’ working hours had a positive impact on the bottom line: Company revenue increased by 35% when compared to the same six-month period in 2021.

Earlier this month, an acrylic fiber producer became the first major company in Turkey to permanently adopt a 4-day work week, leading to an 85% rise in work-life balance and employee engagement.

Even just this week, Singapore ordered employers to consider workers’ requests for a three-day weekend. 

But in South Korea, the government has generally been pushing to make the workweek longer—not shorter. 

Last year, the country proposed a plan for a 69-hour workweek , after business groups complained that the current cap of 52 hours was making it difficult to meet deadlines. But protests from the country’s millennials and Gen Z prompted the government to reconsider . 

Meanwhile, SK Group the owner of Samsung’s rival SK Hynix , has similarly implemented biweekly Saturday meetings for its chief executives.

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Leveraging systems models: a strategic advantage for it professionals.

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Thomas Lim is the Vice-Dean of Centre for Systems Leadership at SIM Academy. He is an AI+Web3 practitioner & author of Think.Coach.Thrive!

IT professionals increasingly need to navigate projects arising from greater business complexity. The integration of systems models with established methodologies, like design thinking, agile and lean, presents a unique opportunity for IT experts to enhance their capacity and expertise. This systemic integration not only enriches their problem-solving tool kits but also ensures the delivery of innovative, sustainable solutions that align with the strategic objectives of their organizations.

The landscape of IT projects has expanded beyond straightforward software development to include complex ecosystems involving artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, big data and more. This complexity necessitates a holistic view of project management and solution development, where understanding interdependencies and emergent behaviors becomes crucial. Systems models, with their focus on the interrelations within and among systems, offer a comprehensive framework for analyzing and addressing these complexities.

Enhancing Design Thinking With Systems Thinking

Within the Design Thinking phases, there are opportunities to embed systems thinking models. For example, during the Ideate phase, using causal loops would help clarify the Theory of Success.

Agile methodologies emphasize flexibility, rapid iteration and stakeholder collaboration. Integrating systems dynamics into agile practices allows IT professionals to model and simulate the behaviors of complex systems over time. This predictive capability can inform sprint planning, risk management and the prioritization of features based on their potential impact on the system. By understanding the feedback loops and causal relationships that drive system behavior, IT teams can anticipate challenges and opportunities, leading to more informed decision-making and effective agile implementation.

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Apple iphone 16 unique all new design promised in new report, rudy giuliani and mark meadows indicted in arizona fake electors case, diagnosing with the levels of perspective model.

The Levels of Perspective Systems Model categorizes viewpoints from which a system can be analyzed, ranging from concrete events to deep-rooted structures and mental models. This hierarchical framework includes the Events level, Patterns of Behavior level, Structural level and, sometimes, the Mental Models level. Each level offers a unique lens through which IT developers can understand and address complex challenges.

Enhancing Design Thinking

Design thinking emphasizes empathy, collaboration and iterative learning to solve problems creatively. By applying the Levels of Perspective Model, IT developers can deepen their empathetic understanding by recognizing not only the immediate needs (Events level) but also the underlying patterns and behaviors of users (Patterns of Behavior level). This approach allows developers to design solutions that are more closely aligned with users' evolving behaviors and preferences. Additionally, considering the Structural and Mental Models levels enable developers to identify and challenge assumptions about what users need or value, leading to more innovative and user-centric solutions.

Complementing Agile Methodologies

The Levels of Perspective Model can enhance agile practices by encouraging developers to look beyond the immediate backlog of tasks (Events level) and consider the broader patterns of team dynamics and project progress (Patterns of Behavior level). This wider perspective can help in anticipating challenges and opportunities for improvement.

Stacking Systemic Choices Using The Hierarchy Of Choices

The Hierarchy of Choices model offers a structured approach to decision-making that can greatly enhance the effectiveness of IT developers. By delineating decisions across five levels—fundamental, primary, secondary, tertiary and other choices—this model provides a comprehensive framework that aligns closely with design thinking and agile and lean methodologies, enhancing developers' capacity to deliver impactful, user-centered solutions efficiently.

Fundamental Choice: The Purpose Behind Existence

At the core of every IT project is the fundamental question: Why does this project exist? This aligns with the empathetic core of design thinking, which starts with understanding the user's needs and challenges.

Primary Choice: Defining Desired Outcomes

What results does the project aim to achieve? Identifying primary choices involves setting clear, measurable goals, a principle that resonates with the outcome-focused nature of agile methodologies. For developers, defining these outcomes provides a clear direction for the project, facilitating prioritization and helping to maintain focus on delivering value to the end-users.

Secondary Choice: Crafting The Strategy

Deciding on the strategy—how the project will achieve its goals—ties into lean thinking, which emphasizes value streams and waste elimination. For IT developers, understanding the chosen strategy informs the selection of technologies, architectural patterns and development practices that align with project goals. This strategic alignment ensures that resources are optimized and efforts are directed toward activities that directly contribute to the project's objectives.

Tertiary Choice: Selecting Tactics

Tactical choices concern the specific actions taken to implement the strategy. This is where agile practices shine, offering a flexible framework for iterative development, continuous integration and regular feedback loops. Developers, by making informed tactical decisions, can adapt to changes quickly, experiment with solutions and refine their approach based on real-time feedback, all while ensuring alignment with the overarching strategy.

Finally, the model includes a broad category for other choices, encompassing the operational decisions related to the what, where, how and when of project execution.

The Road Ahead

As IT professionals strive to navigate the complexities of modern projects, the integration of systems models with traditional methodologies like design thinking, agile and lean offers a powerful synergy. This systemic integration enables a holistic understanding of complex environments, fosters innovative problem-solving and supports the agile adaptation to change. By embracing these integrated approaches, IT professionals can elevate their expertise, deliver impactful solutions and achieve strategic alignment in their projects, ensuring their role as key drivers of digital transformation.

In conclusion, the relevance of systems models in the IT domain cannot be overstated. As we advance into a future where projects become increasingly complex and interconnected, the ability to integrate and apply these models alongside established IT methodologies will be a defining skill for IT professionals. This systemic integration not only enhances their capacity to address current challenges but also positions them to lead the way in shaping the digital landscapes of tomorrow.

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