Imagine you wake up with a pounding headache. You’ve never woken up with a headache before. No amount of rest, hydrating, deep breathing, aromatherapy, etc. can shake it. It feels like little explosions in your brain.
After a few hours, the pain is still intense, so you head to a doctor. Something feels wrong and you want an expert opinion.
“So, what seems to be the problem?” he asks as he enters the room.
“Well, my head feels like it’s splitting in half,” you respond.
“So, you have a headache?” he replies. “Go home and take an aspirin.”
I don’t know about you, but if my doctor responded by taking one look and simply prescribing an aspirin, I’d be pretty disappointed in the outcome of the trouble I took to come into the office, not to mention my copay.
Sure, an aspirin might offer a quick fix to the surface issue. But was the headache the actual problem?
While some headaches are simply treatable, there could be an underlying condition causing it. Someone who wants to attempt to actually help us solve the problem needs to look deeper.
When we come up against a challenge or issue, the presenting problem is often not the actual problem. We need to dig deeper, ask thoughtful questions, and explore different perspectives to get to the root cause.
As our organization works extensively with youth, we encounter “quick misdiagnoses” quite often. We may see a young person’s behavior or hear a comment they make, and we immediately draw conclusions about what their problem is. But our quick assessments often neglect the heart of the issue, and are therefore unhelpful.
What would we think of a doctor who just immediately gives us aspirin for a headache? We would probably question their credibility and be unwilling to trust their advice. Over time they would have a limited impact on our lives.
If we want to empower others, we need to practice taking a thorough look to dig out the real problem. We can’t hope to make an impact on friends, coworkers, family, or the next generation if we aren’t making the effort to truly understand.
My organization, the Institute for Cultural Communicators, uses a collaborative problem-solving model called “Round Table” to help people learn to discover actual problems in diverse and challenging scenarios. Then we collaborate to solve them.
Here are some common mistakes we see when teams are trying to solve problems:
The problem is not clearly defined.
The problem is assumed.
The problem is not the most important one to solve.
Can you think of a time when you or your team tried to solve a problem, but one of these scenarios made it difficult to come up with an effective solution?
By the way, I’d love for you to join me at an upcoming conference where we’ll dig deeper into identifying true problems and understanding the Round Table model.
Blog post originally from teresamoon.org
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