When a team member is angry, usually what they want most is to have someone listen to them. They don’t want advice or solutions or a strategy or a plan or a mindset, they just want your undivided attention. My problem is that I always want to jump to solutions. “You seem upset, how can we fix it?” Wrong response. What I have learned is that quickly pivoting to a solution framework is really about me and not them. Specifically, it’s about me getting back to a place of comfort in the conversation from a place of discomfort, and not about their problem. Amateur move. The change I am making is sitting longer in discomfort. Why? Because discomfort is usually where all the growth happens.
With your teams, don’t get out of the way, do this instead
"Get out of the way!" I often hear some version of this sentiment when talking about building a culture to incentivize high performance teams. "You have to find the right people, equip them, and then get out of the way." People who talk about getting out of the way...