Focus on Solutions - Not Just Sunshine!

People often become enamored with the idea of "thinking positive," and with good reason. Many studies have been conducted, many books have been written, many audio programs have been recorded touting the benefits of a positive mental attitude.

Yet, something often happens between hearing or reading about positive thinking and putting it into action. Somewhere along the way we start thinking that it means we have to always be happy; that we should avoid negative thought and therefore ignore all issues and problems; that we should only see the good and never see the bad.

Suddenly, thinking positive is translated into denial and avoidance. In the work environment this results in a forced happy-sunshine-positive façade. People who point out issues are punished for being "negative." Open communication stops. Problems are ignored or even hidden. Morale suffers. Troubles fester, then explode. Because we've ignored potential issues we now have to be reactive instead of proactive and we spend our day putting out fire after fire after fire. Because we're in denial we spend our time fixing symptoms instead of treating the cause.

Ironic isn't it, that we started with the very good intention of creating a positive mindset and work environment and ended up hating life and up to our necks in a toxic culture. But we know that negative thinking and victim mentality aren't the answer, so what's the solution?

Three Approaches

There are three types of thinking that determine how we approach problems. Let's compare each approach to a serious problem - their house is on fire.

1) The negative thinker: "It figures my house would catch on fire! Why does this always happen to me? There's nothing I can do about it! Now my life is ruined! I'll spend the next 6 months trying to find a new house and I'll probably have to pay too much. Then there's the hassle of moving…" Etcetera.
2) The happy-sunshine-positive thinker: "My house is on fire and this is really good because… um, I was cold and the flames are keeping me warm and I never liked the drapes. I'll bet I could get the neighbors together and we could roast marshmallows and make s'mores! This is great! [said through a forced smile]" And so on.
3) The solution focused thinker: "Holy cow, my house is burning down! I'd better do something about it. I need to call the fire department and get the neighbors to help me hose it down until the firefighters arrive. What else could I do? Who else could help?"

Notice the solution focused thinker neither ignores nor dwells on the problem. They simply identify the issue and then focus their time and energy on developing solutions and putting them into action.

Facing Challenges Without Dwelling on What's Wrong

How often do we as leaders inadvertently hamstring ourselves with negative thinking? Ever seen a leader try to make things better by asking people to list everything that's going wrong? Predictably, the outcome is a laundry list of complaints with few actionable items! Everyone's thoughts are focused on what's not working. Or how often, with the best of intentions, do we try to identify and fix the problem for them? And when we do this, how often are the "solutions" rejected, halfheartedly implemented, or ultimately miss the real issue? What's the likelihood our staff is faced with daily stumbling blocks that we'd never imagine because we don't have their perspective? Isn't it true that their solutions might be ten times better than ours? How much higher will the success rate be for executing plans and solutions if they have ownership over them - if they've contributed their ideas?

A Pathways to Leadership client recently shared a success that provides a great business example of solution-focused thinking in action. Development Services of Nebraska (DSN) has several remote locations that require periodic inspection from upper management. In the past, management would send the staff away while doing the inspection and then focus on identifying and letting the staff know about everything that was wrong. They clearly weren't avoiding problems, but as you can imagine, this approach reduced morale, caused an "us vs. them" mentality, and likely led to some staff members covering up or underreporting problems.

Recently, they changed approaches. The COO led an inspection where he invited the staff to participate. He asked them to share their successes and what they were proud of. Then he asked each person two simple forward focused questions:
1) What do you like best about your job?
2) How can we support you in making your location the best in the organization?

Notice the subtle brilliance in those questions. The first question helps people build morale and pride in themselves and the organization. The second question surfaces issues and potential problems in a way that bypassed petty gripes while creating ownership and responsibility within the staff for finding (and even implementing) solutions. The staff brought up issues that he would have never considered or known how to solve.

What made this work? He was solution-focused and very sincere in his desire to help the staff continually get even better and raise their own bar for greatness. Had the COO been insincere or looking for ways to lay blame it would have never worked. It would have simply been negative thinking in disguise.

We can put this approach to work right away in our lives, and take a look at where we want to improve or create even better results. If we were to take a negative approach, we could create a list of everything that's not working or that we want to fix. Chances are we would end up feeling overwhelmed, depressed, and have no way of moving forward. Or, if we were to be happy-sunshine-positive we could simply pretend everything is just ducky and ignore what we don't like, but the issues will still all be there and probably continue getting worse.

• What is one area in my life where I want to create even better results?
• If I were to create off-the-chart outcomes in this area, what would it look like?
• What are two specific actions that I will take this week to create the results I want?

Try this approach and see if your results (and attitude) don't improve dramatically.

(c) 2003 Pathways to Leadership, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.