How often do you jump in and solve your employees’ problems for them? Probably more often than you would like and, if you are like most other bosses, more frequently than you should. Whether your employee brings you a problem/question or you are addressing a performance shortfall on his or her part, it is really, really tempting just to give him/her the answer and get on with life.

I touched upon this phenomenon in my last post. Here now are four reasons for managers’ tendency to adopt a directive style in these situations. See if you can relate to any of these in yourself and perhaps in other managers where you work.

1. Managers have previously developed the “take action” habit. Most of them are promoted from the ranks of individual contributors where they worked in a technical, professional, administrative or blue collar activity. Here success came from organizing and controlling inanimate “things,” such as reports, data, concepts, materials, and so forth. Their job was to take some kind of action or make some decisions around these items. They come to management having already developed a “default,” action-oriented response to their work.
2. A manager’s key success factor is his or her ability to identify and solve problems. Managers are constantly being presented with urgent issues. When they solve one they feel good, feel like they have added value to the operation. So, it’s not surprising that when an employee brings forward a problem the manager’s default response is either to solve it himself/herself or tell the employee how to solve it.
3. They most likely already know the solution. Managers typically have been around longer than many of their employees and have learned a lot about working effectively. Furthermore, if they came up from the ranks, they understand the front line work from personal experience. Often the solution is a no brainer to them. Without duct tape to cover their mouth, it is hard to keep from blurting out the answer.
4. Managers are busy people. It is simply quicker to give the answer, check it off mentally as another problem solved, and send the employee on his/her way. Any other response, such as coaching the staffer to come up with a good solution, will take more of the manager’s limited time.

If you can see one or more of these forces operating within you, you have reached the first step toward changing your default behavior to one of coaching and getting your employees do the mental heavy lifting around problems they encounter in their work.

More to come about this in my next post.