ISSUE #040 | THE LEADERSHIP CONTRARIAN
When an employee walks into your office or catches you in the hallway just to ask a quick question because they’re stuck, it can bring up a lot of emotions, depending on the person and what you’re doing at the moment.
It can be no big deal, and you encourage them to ask. It can be frustrating because you want your people to be problem solvers, and their problem just became yours.
It can feel good, because what you do is complicated and you want to make sure you weigh in on important things. The problem is, they’re all important things.
And it can feel incredibly unproductive, especially if they’re asking you to solve a problem they should already know the answer to or should be able to figure out on their own.
All of these conversations can contribute to you being the bottleneck in your own company, whether you like it or not.
Here’s the uncomfortable part: every time you just give them the answer, you take away their opportunity to grow. And you lose one more opportunity to grow your leadership.
So what can you do about it?
This week, I’m going to give you a simple technique that can help your people become better problem solvers, make your conversations more productive, and give you back some time.
It’s called 1:3:1, and when my team started using it, conversations that used to take two or three rounds started with, “Hey, I have a 1:3:1 for you.”
What Is a 1:3:1?
A 1:3:1 isn’t new, but I’ve met a lot of leaders who’ve never heard of it and others who don’t use it well.
Here’s how it works. Before someone brings you a problem, ask them to prepare three things:
- One clearly defined problem. What’s happening, why does it matter, and what would a good outcome look like?
- Three possible solutions. What could they do, and what are the benefits and drawbacks of each option?
- One recommendation. Which option do they think is best, and why?
That gives you a much better place to start the conversation. You can see what they think the problem is, what they’ve considered, and how they arrived at their recommendation.
You can also see where they need help.
That’s where this becomes a tool for developing your people.
Helping Your People Develop Better Judgment
As a leader, your responsibility includes making sure your team is being trained to do their jobs and grow in their ability to handle more responsibility. One of the most important skills you can help them develop is the ability to solve problems.
One of the biggest challenges we see in hiring employees is finding people who have good judgment. We actually use a tool called the Judgment Index™ to help assess it before someone is hired.
But you can’t always hire good judgment, and even good hires need practice and development. So you have to build it, and make developing better judgment part of how your company works.
For this conversation, it helps to think about good judgment in three parts:
- Properly assessing a situation.
- Choosing an appropriate solution.
- Figuring out how to implement that solution effectively.
That sounds simple enough. But each of those takes practice.
How do we help our people get better at it? How do we gradually remove ourselves from the problems they could learn to solve, while maintaining the quality of work our customers need?
We give them a process to practice, and we coach them as they use it.
Training Your People to Use 1:3:1
When a problem comes up, whether it’s an individual or a group working on it, you can say, “Okay, let’s work on creating a 1:3:1 for this.”
That may take a little work. They might go through five or six possible solutions and then realize they haven’t described the problem correctly. They may need to go back, restate the problem, and work through the options again before choosing a recommendation.
That’s part of the learning.
In the beginning, you’ll need to help them. The process is simple to understand, but that doesn’t mean everyone will be good at it right away.
When they bring you their 1:3:1, you get to ask questions about their thinking. What makes them think that’s the real problem? What are the drawbacks of the solution they’re recommending? Does it work within the time and budget available?
You now have a way to see how they’re thinking, so you can help them improve their judgment.
Sometimes you’ll agree with their recommendation. Sometimes you’ll see something they missed. Either way, you have something specific to talk through.
Over a few iterations, they start getting better at defining problems, considering options, and making recommendations. They begin to understand what you’re looking for and why it matters.
And the benefit doesn’t stop at work. Learning how to think through a problem is something they can take into the rest of their lives.
It's also a practical way to live out Proverbs 15:22: “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisors they succeed.”
A Real 1:3:1 From Our Team
Here’s a real example from our own company.
One of our project managers was managing an ecommerce website redesign on Shopify for a client and had reached the creative phase of the project. The structure of the site was coming together, but the client had requested significant design changes. The next step required stronger design expertise, and the deadline was getting closer.
Instead of simply bringing the problem to leadership and asking, “What should I do?” she worked through a 1:3:1.
1 Problem
The website had reached the creative phase, but she didn’t have the design expertise needed to confidently choose and manage the images, fonts, graphics, and overall visual direction. The team members who could help had limited availability, and she still needed to keep the project moving toward its deadline.
3 Possible Solutions
- Dedicate some of a team member’s time to helping with the creative direction and Shopify work, while bringing in another designer to create the needed assets.
- Find and onboard a new freelance designer to take over the creative work.
- Use the limited design knowledge she already had, along with research and tools like Canva, to complete the creative work herself.
1 Recommendation
She recommended the first option: dedicate a team member’s time to the areas where her experience was most valuable and bring in a designer to help develop the visual assets.
Why?
It was the most realistic option given the timeline, budget, and resources already available. It also meant we could move quickly without asking the project manager to suddenly become a designer or spending valuable time onboarding someone completely new.
From there, the conversation became much more specific.
We could talk through who should own each part of the work, what the designer needed to create, what the team members needed to be involved in, and what visual direction we wanted to explore.
The employee didn’t need to have the perfect answer before coming to us. But she had already defined the problem, considered several ways forward, and made a recommendation.
That gave us a much better conversation to start from.
Make the Decision, Then Come Back & Evaluate It
There’s one more part of this process that matters. Once you’ve agreed on a solution, you need to make sure everyone understands what happens next.
Who’s doing what? When will it be done? And what does “done” actually mean?
The worksheet I’m sharing with you below includes space for all of that. It also includes a review date and a place to record the result and what you learned.
Set that review date when you make the decision. Then come back together and look at what happened.
Did you do what you agreed to do? Did it produce the outcome you expected? What did you get right, and what would you do differently next time?
You might discover that the solution was reasonable, but the follow-through wasn’t there. Or you might find that everyone did what they agreed to do, but they misunderstood the original problem.
Those are different conversations, and both can help your people learn.
Coming back to evaluate the result gives you another opportunity to develop their judgment. You’re helping them connect the way they thought about a problem with what actually happened.
Try It With One Real Problem
I’ve included our 1:3:1 Decision & Action Worksheet so you can try this with your team. (click here to download the worksheet)
Start with one employee and one real problem. Have them work through the worksheet, talk through their recommendation together, and agree on the next steps. Then come back on the review date and see what you learned.
This will take some time to teach. Expect to help people, especially in the beginning. But those conversations can become an investment in their ability to handle more responsibility.
The next time someone comes to you with a problem, you have an opportunity to help them develop the judgment they’ll need for the next one.
What’s this Look Like in Your Company?
If you’re wondering what this should look like in your company, Kathryn and I would be glad to help you think it through. Helping leaders grow and lead their companies well is the work we’ve been doing for more than two decades.
Reach out. It'd be an honor.
Until next time,
Keep learning.
Keep growing.
And God bless,
Michael Redman
Half a Bubble Out (HaBO)
Business Consulting | Leadership Coaching
