L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Coaching for Problem-Solving: How to Create a Trust-based Leadership Dynamic

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

In this episode of L&D in Action, we’re joined by Irial O’Farrell, Founder of Evolution Consulting and author of several books on the topic of Management. Irial helps organizations empower their people, at all levels, to be greater problem-solvers. Companies tend to choose and grow their leadership based on problem-solving prowess. Irial explains that a constant focus on resolving the bad doesn’t always result in long-term good, as leaders need to have the freedom to focus on innovation and growth. Her 8-step problem-solving framework is as foolproof as the scientific method, and will help any leader teach their people to become self-sufficient solution finders.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by GetAbstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. With an eye on the future and a preference for the practical, we address the most important developments in edtech, leadership strategy, and workflow learning. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to L&D in Action. I'm your host, Tyler Lay, and today I'm speaking with Ariel O'Farrell. Ariel is a consultant, executive coach, and author whose most recent work is The Manager's

Dilemma. She's also the founder of Evolution Consulting. Iriel, thank you so much for being with me here today. Thank you very much for inviting me to join you today, Tanner. I like to start off by just having all my guests give a brief overview as to what their career has looked like and what they are dedicated to achieving today, if you don't mind. Originally, I started off in financial services, but was very quickly interested in the how do you match the needs of the individual with the needs of the organization, which quickly led me into management, org design, L&D,

and set up my own company in 2006 with Evolution Consulting. Really, my raison d'etre is the whole how do you maximize the performance of the organization with the people's capabilities within the organization? So it's always aligned with that. And that can be in terms of, are we clear about our strategy? Do we have the right infrastructure and processes in place to meet those needs? Do we have the capability and the skill sets to be able to operate the system of the organization? And all of that is underpinned then around with the principles of change to ensure that we have the right culture of the organization.

At the heart of much of your work is the idea of empowering people to be greater problem solvers, especially the manager's dilemma, which is chock full of case studies and examples as to how to empower individuals to be greater problem solvers. For me, this is a really big question as to how to create more problem solving capability in the world, because I think that this skill, if you can call it that, I'm not really sure where it originates or who should be responsible for problem solving. Where does the buck stop? Is it a societal thing where we should be learning as we are raised how to problem solve and identify problems and find the best solutions? Does it come to institutional education before we actually join the workforce? Does it come to institutional education before

we actually join the workforce? Does it come down to just individual responsibility and, you know, the onus is on oneself to be a good problem solver? Or is it leadership? Is it the organization? How do you answer that question? Where does this, you know, skill of problem solving ultimately, where does the buck stop and who should be responsible for teaching this capability? Great question. And the book stops with the individual, but of course we have to create the capability to be able to problem solve and to take responsibility for the decisions that we make.

And I think that a first port of call is with the parents that kind of as part of our development, it takes quite a long time to build up that knowledge and the skillsets and the confidence to be able to believe in your decisions and that you make and to be able to evaluate the pros and cons. And I think some of that, we start that from very early on around making choices, you know, little choices, and then we build up. So I think the first port of call is the parents to kind of enable and equip

their children to grow up, to be able to problem solve and to be able to figure out the best ways to do things. And I think education plays a role in supporting that because as a culture, people need to be able to problem solve, need to be able to figure things out and need to be able to make the, you know, the more you move into the role in society and leadership, the more complex the issues are. And if you complex the decisions are, and if you don't have the skill sets and the confidence in making smaller decisions, it's very hard to make larger decisions. So I think education plays a role in supporting the development of problem solving, critical thinking, evaluation.

But it is that supportive role as a society, being the parents in the first instance, has that responsibility. And then, of course, it moves into organisations and organisations may end up recruiting people who have problem solving skills or may not. And if they don't, then unfortunately, it becomes part of their onus to ensure that they are enabling and equipping and developing people with the skills to problem-solve. Because if they don't, they're going to fall in. It becomes very costly if you can't problem-solve effectively for an organization. And so I wouldn't say it's the first instance of organizations, but I'd say

they have to pick up the pieces if it hasn't been done up to that point. And that's really the central topic we're going to cover today. So manager's dilemma, as I said, there are many case studies on this and examples as to how to design problem-solving education systems and improvement plans. But it all seems to start with escalations. I think we can jump into the conversation by talking about the three types of escalations that you discuss within the book. And that will allow us to kind of branch out from there. Ultimately, there are three valid escalations that you identify, which means, you know, a report is coming to their leader, their boss, and asking them for some sort of help or, you know, bringing something up to help address.

And this causes a lot of entropy in organizations because of the lack of necessity, in some cases, of why this escalation is even being brought up. And this just, you know, this trickles down and it trickles up and it creates all kinds of hassles and it reduces time that managers and leaders have to focus on projects and, you know, just a lot of waste, basically. So can we start by going over those three escalations? Typically, when somebody escalates, why are they escalating? First is that they actually don't know what to do. And so they're looking for direction or guidance. They're looking for a sounding board, if you like, around how do I approach this? What do I do? What do I

need to think about? A second reason they escalate is because it's a true escalation. They have actually taken on the responsibility to try and figure it out as best possible and talk to whoever is within their authority to talk. And it still isn't resolving and it is truly needs to be escalated to the next level up and formally handed over to the more senior person to take it and resolve it that way. And the third which is very very subtle and was what led me to articulating the whole concept of the manager's dilemma is that oftentimes people are, they have resolved the issue and they are bringing it to the person, to their manager to keep them in the loop. But the way in which they present it to the manager is they present it with the problem to

start with. And of course, you know, in my experience of developing managers, a common question is, you know, what's the one thing managers are good at or what's the one, you know, oftentimes it's, are they introverts, are they extroverts, are they charismatic? They often look for those sort of what's the one thing that makes somebody a manager. And in my experience of having dealt and worked with probably well in excess of a thousand managers at this stage and an awful lot of organizations, what I can see is the one thing that the most common trait they have in common is actually their ability to problem solve. So when somebody escalates up and says, I've got a problem that I have solved, because I'm coming to tell you that I have solved it and I'm keeping you in the loop. If they start off presenting it as the problem

first to a manager who's basically has a very strong capability to problem solve, the manager will inevitably jump into trying to solve the problem instead of waiting to the end bit to say, actually, and here's how I've solved it. So the third way is instead of waiting to the end bit to say actually and here's how i've solved it so the third way is instead of asking people to come with the problem and then the solution start framing it or signposting it to say i have solved this problem i want to tell keep you in the loop of what i've done and that actually removes a lot of that immediate i need to jump in and solve this problem, dynamic that can happen. So the three escalations are, one, it truly is, the person has done everything and it truly is an escalation and it needs to be taken, the button needs to be picked up by the manager and sorted

out from there. Two, they're looking for a sounding board and looking for some help or direction, or they really don't know what to do. And the third one is actually being kept in the loop, in which case it should be presented as, I have solved it, I'm just keeping you in the loop, rather than presenting the problem, first of all, and the manager jumping in. I would agree that in my very limited experience compared to yours, that a lot of managers and leaders that I've met are incredible problem solvers. And if that's not their primary trade, it's one of their obvious strengths. Have you seen cases where organizations really seem to embody that where their leadership and their and their managers all seem to have kind of risen up the ranks as a result of their problem solving and that inevitably maybe results in issues because they were maybe promoted or, you know, given credit just basically on their ability to problem solve rather than to innovate or actually produce toward the future? Yeah, it's a really common problem. It's a real challenge for organizations. I've seen, in fact, I've rarely seen it done well that the managers actually

develop their people's problem solving. What ends up happening is that people get promoted up and they don't necessarily know what the new role is and so they take some of the problem solving with them and they end up solving problems and they don't equip their people below them to solve the problems and so they become a bottleneck so they end up sitting on a load of issues being brought to their attention they get overwhelmed they end up working huge hours as a result and the people below them are actually quite frustrated because they're kind of i'm waiting waiting for, he's not coming back to me, she won't tell me, you know, she's not enabling me to do this myself. It really cripples the organisation because the organisation is spending the time resolving problems that really probably shouldn't be resolved at that level.

So the organisation is one paying more for the problem to be resolved because they're paying more senior people to resolve them the fact that those people aren't actually spending their time working at the level or thinking of that at the level or solving the problems at the level that they should be problem solving because they keep getting things escalated up to them the whole time so it ends up um being very very costly but of course it ends up being costly in a way that isn't seen on the balance sheet. So we don't necessarily look at this on the balance sheet and go, well, actually, that portion is because the work is being done at the wrong level of the organization. And that's where you come in to save the day. So you advocate for a, you have an eight step problem solving process that when I read this, I was like, that's the scientific method.

That was my first thought here, is that what we're talking about is essentially the scientific method. And what you talk about in your book is how, you know, many people probably think of problem-solving as a two-step thing, where you identify the problem and then you solve it. And, you know, it can be thought of as simple as that, but I think in your process is what inevitably happens in almost every case, whether we realize it or not. So I want to we don't have to go step by step through the eight. But I do want to kind of just discuss that and hear from your perspective the significance of this eight step process and maybe what the key steps are to you. Yeah, so I kind of say I split the world into two types, those that problem identify and

those that problem solve. So there's an awful lot of people who are excellent at problem identification. They unfortunately don't necessarily see it as their responsibility to problem solve as well. And so that's the first point. It's sort of some of the mindset can be the, you know, does the person see their role as problem identification and batting it to somebody else or seeing it as actually, well, I need to solve it or have some attempt to solve it. And so, first of all, the first step, and I kind of say this in the book, it's like, we're not getting into whether somebody can even identify that there's a problem. We're going to assume that they can, because if they can't, then that's a whole different story,

a whole different conversation. But I definitely, one of the steps, and I work with many groups where we get them to brainstorm what do you think the eight steps are. And one of the steps and I work with many groups where we get them to brainstorm what do you think the eight steps are? And one of the steps that regularly gets overlooked is the step of the size of the problem. So some people have they assume that a mountain and a molehill are the same size of a problem without evaluating the size. So sometimes when you even kind of go, well, how many people are involved or how many people are impacted or what's the size of this? And they kind of, you know, I don don't know I didn't think about it and when they do re-evaluate it they realize that the the impact is so small that while it might be an issue or problem it's not the most pressing to deal with and so just even getting that understanding of what's the size of the problem what are we talking about how many people or how many

accounts or how many clients or whatever it is that's being discussed and is being impacted or potentially impacted has a very is an important starting point rather than diving into actually do we need to solve problem at all because if you get to that sense of actually yes we do need to resolve this or no we can ignore it is an important you know even, there's a decision that can be made as to which ones do we need to put our attention into and which ones can we push out or ignore completely. And the other thing is, I suppose, is that sort of looking at the root causes, you know, a lot of times organizations, and again, I see this in a lot of organizations, they look at the symptoms and they seek to solve the symptoms instead of the root causes of it. So they will look to say, well, that's the issue is the symptom. They don't recognize it is only a symptom and it's a symptomatic of something that's much deeper or quite different to what they think the issue is. And so if we only solve the symptom, we are putting

a sticking plaster is what I say to clients symptom, we are putting a sticking plaster is what I say to clients. So we're putting a sticking plaster over it rather than actually getting to the root cause of it. Now I have worked in the financial services where it's very fast paced. So sometimes it's appropriate to put a sticking plaster on the symptom, but it's also important to go into the root cause. So even thinking about, you know, in the solutions is it a short-term solution versus a long-term solution and you may need to have a combination of both we need to in the short term we need to get this out the door but in the long term we need to stop that from happening again and that's where you free up a lot of time because if you keep putting it you know if you keep using the sticking plaster solution over time it becomes

we end up kind of embedding it into our processes and wasting a lot of time that's unnecessary. So that becomes quite important in even determining, you know, once we've determined the size that it's worth evaluating or trying to solve, we also need to get into the root causes of what is actually causing the problem so that we get to the most effective or the long-term effective solution while recognizing we might have an immediate short-term solution might be required as well. So I think a lot of people get the whole thing around looking at options and evaluating options. I think they tend to be, people kind of tend to know that those things need to be done, but maybe not so much the size of the problem and the root causes of the problem.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that almost to me is an interesting addition, a theoretical addition to, as I was saying, the scientific method, because naturally scientists are looking at, you know, big things. The first step is, you know, ask a question. I think in the back of their minds, whether or not they're actually making this explicit, they're asking, you know, what is the impact or the significance of this question that we're asking? And that seems to be something that I would argue that most people in business and regular everyday organizations, they aren't really asking themselves that question. I would think you feel the size of the problem.

It's maybe intuitive in some cases how big of an impact it's having. But in a lot of cases, not formally assessing that can obviously lead to more entropy. And at the end of the day, if you're not addressing the root cause, you're just you're doing something wrong there. You always need to go back and address that if you want to prevent it from happening again. But as you mentioned, a lot of people are focused on the evaluation of potential solutions and the deciding of actually what to do. And I do think that this is arguably the most important part of the process here, because there's usually an investment involved in resolving something, whether that's an investment of time of money, because you're looking for a

new solution, or you're investing in a fix or whatever you have to do. And if it doesn't go right, you know, now you have waste on top of problem on top of failure. And that's just really the issue there, it just becomes a ladder of issues. And we don't want that. So I want to dive into this and how you advise, you know, the research process or the investigation process that results in the decision of a solution and ideally the correct solution. Yeah, and this is, I think, where the coaching comes in of developing and enabling people to solve the problems that really are within their remit that they are expected to be able to solve. And as you you know from the book, it's sort of evaluating where's the person's starting point and trying to coach them from that point.

So if somebody is, they're poor at identifying the size of the problem, there's a starting point around evaluating the start of the problem, the size of the problem, getting them used to doing that. This comes to very much the coaching because what we're trying to do here is, the manager is trying to develop and coach the individual to look at the problem in the way the manager would do it.

Because the manager, we know that the manager tends to be good at problem solving. And so that's often why they got promoted up in the first place. And the manager has a good sense of like how they would approach it, which generally is on the whole, if the manager is, you know, a good performer, which they often tend to be, they're going to solve it in the way the organisation wants it solved. So the manager sort of intuitively has that knowledge and understanding. And what we're trying to do is get the manager to kind of work with the individual to, you know, ask the first question, what's the size of it and look at all the different elements to evaluating the size of it. So, you know, they might be going off and thinking about it and coming back and having a two-way conversation with the manager to say, this is what I think.

The manager can then, using coaching skills, ask that questions around, have you thought about this? Did you evaluate that? The kinds of things the manager would do if they were evaluating it themselves. And so you're kind of bringing those skills all the way through. So, you know, once they come to the manager going, I've evaluated the size of it, I think it's this, and the manager has gone through it and said, have you thought all these things? And the person's going, yes, that's this. So the manager is building up that confidence in the individual

that they're thinking of all the elements of sizing the problem or even into the root causes of it. So it's kind of the same idea right the way through is kind of that the managers, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? The person builds up their confidence, builds up their knowledge of what is it that the manager would look at? What are the aspects that the manager would look at and go and look at those in advance to then be able to bring that to the manager. So it's a symbiotic trust building process that happens. The individual, you know, knows, okay, I know they're going to ask me these questions. So I know I need to be able to answer those questions. And then the manager gets to the point where they kind of know, I know that they

have thought of those because I know that they've bring issues to me and they've thought through all the things, the questions I would ask, and they have answers to them. They start building up the trust in the individual so the individual builds up trust that they are thinking of all the things the manager would expect them to think of and the manager is building up trust that the individual is thinking of all the things that the manager would build up on and the idea is that you're each step you're building up that understanding that knowledge that um and that trust at each stage to the point where and I've personally I've done this with my own people

that have reported into me and I've seen it with other people. What ends up happening is the person comes to the manager and goes, you know, I've solved this issue. I'm letting you know that I've solved this issue. This is what it was. This was the size of the problem. And they bring everything, you know,

they kind of go through all of the steps that, you know, this is what the root cause was. These are the options. This is the evaluation I did. This is the decision i made for these reasons this is my short-term solution my long-term solution or whatever just letting you know and the manager goes couldn't have done it better myself and it's that kind of that's where you're trying to build towards it's that you know the person comes and goes here's everything um here's the decision here's you know and the manager is

kind of going, nothing I can add here. You know, you have my confidence to know that you're able to solve all these kinds of issues, all these problems are, you know, in this space. And that's what you're looking, that enablement piece. But the big part is that the individual feels confident in knowing that the manager trusts their judgment. So they know that whatever decisions they make, they know the manager will become, that's exactly what I would have done. So I want to zoom back out a little bit to my initial question about sort of the onus of teaching problem solving, if you will, and just talk about the organizational. So what do you think is the role of an organization, you know, not just the managers within the

organization, obviously the directives to improve their reports and how they problem solve in some ways will come down from higher leadership. But what is the role of the organization, whether that's in hiring and recruiting or in education, learning and development, or in, you know, executive development and how they teach their leaders? What is the role of the organization in improving problem solving across the board systematically i have never worked with an organization that doesn't value problem solving so every organization values problem solving that and knowledge assimilation that the two things nobody talks about them but problem solving the ability to problem solve is seen as key and the ability to assimilate knowledge and

learn is considered key. So they are two things that are just, I've yet to come across an organization that doesn't see them as important. And yet, very few organizations actively invest in developing problem solving skills. Some do, definitely some do. But they often focus the attention on the process of problem solving, rather than developing managers abilities to develop their people's problem solving. So they're not emphasizing the communication that's involved in actually making sure that the process is appropriately followed and, you know, taken seriously. And the trust. So the huge part is the trust. It's because if managers don't trust their people to make the right decisions, they

won't allow them to do it. So if you train the people and saying, here's our problem solving approach, or here's our problem solving structure, that's knowledge, which you might kind of say is required across the organization. And that is a very good starting point but to build up the trust to allow people at the right level to make decisions is separate from the knowledge and it's much more subtle than that and so by focusing in on managers having the capability to develop other people's problem solving skills you are increasing the capability of the organization exponentially rather than teaching people the knowledge of a system of a problem solving system because they might have the knowledge but they might not have the confidence to walk through each step of the system and they again they might not have the trust there between them and their

managers so i would say if organizations are serious about it, the focus should be around how do we, and it's two things with the managers, telling the managers they need to develop, part of their job is to develop their people's problem solving skills, because a lot of managers don't know that. And then how do they actually build out the skill sets to do that? So that it's seen as quite robustly in the manager's role. And that goes right the way up, because if you've got a middle manager, they're, you know, working with their direct teams, which are often, or their frontline manager, which is often the work of the doing work of the organisation. But as you move up, you know, if you're a head of a function, for example, the kinds of problems that your direct

reports are making are different types of problems than somebody more junior in the organisation. reports are making are different types of problems than somebody more junior in the organization. But you still need to have that confidence that the direct reports are able to make those types of decisions and resolve those types of problems. And so the specifics of them might be slightly different, but the process is the same. I've seen you describe in other places, videos, interviews that you've done. And I think this applies more generally to training and learning across the board and not just a problem solving, but also to problem solving. But whenever something is being taught in an organization, you're going to have three buckets of people that come away. Those who are going to take whatever they learned and they're just going to run with it and they're going to do great. You know, they heard it, they learned it, and now they're going to do it, and they're going

to do it correctly. Then there are those who learned it, but need an extra push to actually apply it and apply it successfully. I assume this is, you know, confidence and trust are really big there. And then of course, there are those who just they aren't going to do it, or, you know, they're going to need a lot more than an extra push to make it happen. And I'd like if you don't mind to, you, to talk about those three buckets and what should be done about them. So first off, those who are just going to run with it and do well, those are probably the types of folks that are themselves going to become leaders and managers and probably already have strong problem-solving skills. But from a learning and

development perspective, when you're teaching or giving a training, those who need an extra push, perspective when you're teaching or giving a training those who need an extra push there's confidence and there's trust what else is there that you know either lnd leaders or direct managers can do to support those kinds of people yeah so i would agree with you the people who are going to take it and run with it are you very much of the growth mindset and very much going to be given the tools and given the knowledge and they're off and they are absolutely going to be the ones that are your future stars that are often the high performers or the high potentials and so they are absolutely going to take it and apply it and you know you don't have to worry about them and then there is the cohorts that are they're kind of going yeah I can get that I can see that but they aren't going

to automatically go back into the workplace and apply the learnings and the insights some of it is they're not seeing it in their own area so So they're kind of going, yeah, I can get that, but I'm not seeing it in my area. So I'm not going to put my head above the parapet and do something different here. So does that mean that they need a more scenario-based or specified training or something along those lines? Do they need an extra type of training on top of that? Or do you think it's still a matter of coaching and mentorship perhaps? It would depend.

So some people will need the confidence piece. So I think there's probably two kind of cohorts within that. Some of it they are, they're going to kind of go, okay, I need confidence. I need the trust. I need to know that my manager's on board with this. So some of that even kind of having the manager sitting down with them after, what have you taken?

What are you going to do differently? How are you going to do it? So there's definitely that cohort. And then there's the cohort that are kind of going, I'm going back into an environment where this isn't done. That's a more systemic issue within that team or that function, or there might be a microculture there where it may be not being keeping with the rest of the organization. And they might be kind of going, yeah, if I was in a different area, absolutely, I do this. But if I'm in this particular microculture that I'm in,

they know it's not going to necessarily wash. so there's probably two cohorts within that one group there that would need to be looked at by the organization to say is it just you know it is happening you know what we are looking for the behaviors we're looking for in that area they are there they just need some confidence and coaching and maybe additional supports to get them to try it out. But then there's a review around kind of saying that particular area, there's a microculture there that isn't supportive of it. And actually, it would need to be addressed in a much more systematic way. There are lots of organizations that have microcultures all over the place. You know, I mean, I would argue that almost every single organization is composed of microcultures. And,

you know, we talk about workplace culture, often as if it's a monolith, which, you know, there are commonalities among all the microcultures in any given company or organization, but especially in, you know, really big companies, you know, you've got people who will never ever speak to 90% of the company that they're in and live 1000 miles away from each other. And, you know, there are going to be serious microcultures. And what you're referring to here is maybe there's a microculture of just malaise or a lack of willingness

to actually take something seriously. But I still think this is an important question is how do we give solid teaching for a company that might be really broad and diverse and have people doing all kinds of different jobs over here. You have frontline workers, then you have high up tech workers who are at the fore of, you know, what's going on with AI and all of that. How do we disseminate an education? And even if it's something as simple as improving problem solving, how do we disseminate an education

program that actually hits all of those people in their different microcultures? I think it goes back from the training perspective, like training is brilliant for the knowledge and sharing the knowledge and maybe practicing the skill sets. Depending on how it gets done, you have the opportunity to practice the skill sets required to put it into practice. And then I think this is where coaching becomes very important. The coaching can then work with the people around what the mindset is. And so helping them to change the mindset or to build the confidence into trying something out in a way that they go I can do that so sometimes people are a bit fearful around kind of saying well I can't I don't feel comfortable about going all the way but I could try to make some of those little moves and little changes and then build up their confidence that way and so I think there can be from an L&D perspective there can be both delivering the training of it the knowledge of it the skills of it but then following up with the coaching around it so that they're more likely to put it into practice so i think in a cross an organization i think you can approach it that way to about the

initial understanding but then the ongoing support required for it to become embedded something that you say in a few of your works, I think it's a sort of a guiding principle, is mastery and autonomy are key to motivation and self-direction. I think this is pretty well accepted in especially the L&D community now when it comes to giving learning programs and that sort of thing. There has to be a degree of autonomy as to what you're learning. It can't all just be, you know, every week you have a set of expectations or, you know, whatever it is, it's just a rote system where you are required to do this and, you know, like school or something like that.

It's got to be more autonomous and more free. But at the same time, you know, you're advocating for coaching and the follow up on that sort of thing. So do you think that, you know, maybe like a multimedia multifaceted type of education approach is best because you have an individual contributor's ability to choose what they want to learn but then the leadership at the end of the day above them is always responsible for really making sure that they are not only learning effectively but applying so there's always sort

of you know two components to education it's what does the individual do and then how does their leader help them apply it is definitely multi-pronged first of all i think the organization almost needs to give the framework as to what the roles are and what's expected of them and what some of the skill sets are and i think that's what often people are looking for there's a lot of people who are quite happy to to learn and to master things whatever but they don't necessarily understand how it fits into their wider development so i think it's incumbent on an organization to actually provide that framework and i think as well when we look at performance management and performance development, if

we look over the last 70, 80 years that we've had this concept, the types of roles people do have changed so substantially. And an awful lot of the work that people do is now happening in their head. It's knowledge work. And so it's very hard to understand, well, what's going on in your head? Tell me, Tyler, what is going on in your head that makes you successful at what you do? And then how do you systemize that in an organization? And how do you develop people up, more junior people up to understand what that looks like? So actually, you need a whole system,

you need a framework by which you say, actually, these are the step ups. These are the skill sets. These are the knowledge. This is what we expect in these areas and these different dimensions. And I don't think organizations, they don't have a handle on that for an awful lot of organizations. So it's very, very difficult to provide that guidance to people to say, you need to develop this because of this reason. You need to develop this because of this, this other reason. And, you know, why do you need to develop good problem solving skills? Well, if you want to progress up the organisation, you're going to need to solve problems. And so you're going to need to have that skill. But most people can't articulate that. And most people can't differentiate between what do I expect in problem solving in a

junior role versus more senior role versus a high, you know, a high level individual contributor versus a head of function. they can look quite different. And so oftentimes we're not even having those conversations to know. So people are blindly almost kind of going, I'm going to develop this because it's of interest to me, but I have no idea if this helps me or not. So I think we need the framework to understand that and then people can pick and choose as to and see the step ups and see where their career can go within the context of understanding what different roles look like and what skill sets are required in different roles.

I think this is adjacent to the AI conversation right now. And the fact that it's I mean, it's been a conversation for a long time, you know, what's going to happen to my job, what's going to happen to these jobs and all jobs in the near future now that chat GPT can be your best friend and talk to you. I think that the question of capabilities and skills is starting to supersede the question of job expectations and you know, a job description. I've spoken with Robin J. Southausen, who's written a handful of books on this, and he believes in the use of job marketplaces and sort of like skill set marketplaces where within an organization or sort of externally as well, you know, you make available what your skills are, and you can apply

to certain types of tasks or assignments rather than doing just like a day to day job that has a rote set of expectations, you know, it's more freeform, and it's very much dependent upon your skills and not what was written in a piece of paper when you were first hired. You've discussed the idea of job families. I'm not sure if this is somewhat similar to that, but role dimensions and sort of what your skill sets are. It seems to me like the conversation is sort of moving in that direction in general. How to turn that, the knowledge work into something more concrete

is really the big question to me. How do we really do that? Because at the end of the day, the knowledge work that you do, you have to be good at something that you're, you know, doing in your head. And I think that's harder to translate than something that you have to be good at doing something physically, which is, you know, measured by efficiency and quality and that sort of thing. I think companies are really, really grappling with this, you know, have this around, you know, a job description tells you sort of some of the what, it doesn't tell you a lot of the how. And with even within that, it's not necessarily giving you the sort of, well, you know, it kind of goes, this is roughly your tasks or roughly what you need to

do, but it doesn't necessarily look at the standards or the outcomes or the volumes or anything like that. So they're a very poor proxy to what organisations actually require out of people. There's two things that, as you were talking there, that struck me. Some industries are still very, very, they're a lot more traditional than some of the leading edge kind of technology companies or whatever. So there's quite a big divide around what kind of some industries require versus what other industries require. I think that's often lost in some of the conversations. The subtleties of that can often get lost in the conversations.

But even with the skill sets of that idea of having the, and particularly you get this concept in sort of the consulting houses as to what experience you've worked on, what skills you've had and that kind of stuff, and probably in the tech and programming as well. But even within that, you get that softer side of what people bring to the table. And I think that's the bit that gets very poorly understood because it's the bit that makes somebody special or not. It's the bit that makes somebody special or somebody who's kind of,

you know, quite difficult to manage or to get any outcomes or outputs from. So on paper, they can look, yes, I have the skill set. Yes, I have the knowledge. Yes, I have the, but what will differentiate the performance is those extra things which is what I would talk about in the role dimensions which is really you know something like somebody's ability to problem solve you might say I've got problem solving skills or whatever but what does it look like in reality it looks like well I've identified the problem or I've you know solved the symptom or somebody that actually is really understands and really is able to produce a really special solution. And then oftentimes within organizations, people often, they do it within their role, but then they don't do it within the organization. So again,

it goes back to culture and leadership around what makes an organization. You know, it's that people actually commit to and connect to the organization rather than just their job. You know, and again, likewise, it's a symbiotic two-way relationship. Absolutely. But a lot of times people are, they look to their job or their function, but they don't really have much connection to their organization. So even that understanding of like, what does it mean to be part of this organization is kind of an interesting conversation to have around that whole leadership and development point of view and the expectations. So again, that expectation around, do we expect people to show up for the organization

or is it just for their team or just for their job? I want to pick on one sentence that you just spoke in that last answer there. You mentioned that you think that most people are comfortable or appreciate striving for mastery and obviously learning and hoping to master whatever it is that they're focused on. I would argue that it's a tough thing to do. I think we can all agree that, you know, becoming a master in their field or in any field is a challenge. And I know that you've worked with really high performers for your entire career.

You've worked in finance where every single day performance matters, you know, hitting the numbers really, really matters. But really important in L&D these days, and probably always is workflow learning, learning in the flow of work without disrupting the job that you're doing without, you know, getting in the way of your typical daily tasks and assignments. And I think when it comes to really striving to achieve mastery, whether you're upskilling, reskilling into something totally new, or even just working on your current profession and your current role, shooting for mastery, it takes a lot psychologically. And I think it's, you know, it's probably a lot of support from leadership and a lot

of dedication on your own time. So how do we go about that? As I said, most people do want to be good at what they do. I mean, most people want to go in and do their job and be paid and kind of do something during the day and feel that they actually come home and achieve that I've done something, I've made a difference or have achieved something. And they don't want to be sitting there kind of going, I'm not really sure what I'm doing, because that's a very uncomfortable place to be for people.

And then they have to hide it. And then it leads down to all sorts of misplaced efforts. But one doesn't master on one's own. So it is within the context of the organisation. It's within the context of what the team is designed to do and to understand what do I need to do to be able to contribute to the whole of my job, not just kind of parts of my job, but the whole of my job. So that doesn't happen in a vacuum. It needs to happen within the context of the manager's capabilities of developing the individuals within the team, of showing them what does mastered look like at this level. And then as they move into another role, what does mastery of this role look like and what does mastering all parts of it look like?

development of developing manager capabilities, one of the things a manager needs to be able to do is to develop and provide on-the-job training and to develop and give effective feedback to individuals to guide them towards what does mastery in this particular topic mean. You know, I talk to managers and I kind of ask them, and this goes back to objective setting and development and performance and all of that kind of stuff. And I'll ask managers, like, what's your vision for this role that you have these people doing? So, you know, if you have five people doing the same role, what's the vision for the role? And they often can't answer that question. So when you can't answer that question, it's like, well, how do you know what you're developing

people towards? Or how do you know what you're trying to stretch them towards? Or how do you know how to evaluate their performance if you don't know what the role itself is designed to deliver? And that's where I do think L&D and, I suppose, the organizational design of an organization has a huge role to play in being explicit around these are the roles, this is what they're designed to deliver, and these are the skillsets, which again goes back to that role dimensions, you know, it's that infrastructure, understanding, providing that understanding to managers, and then skilling the managers to be able to have those conversations to be able to break down the particular topic into kind of how do I coach

people through the different levels of the different stages to build up towards that mastery. So between the individual kind of wanting to master it, but not necessarily knowing how to master it, which is then it makes it a big deal for the individual on how do I do this because I need guidance on it. And the manager is not necessarily knowing, well, what's the end state? And what am I trying to build these people towards? And then do I have the skills to do that? end state and what am I trying to build these people towards and then do I have the skills to do that and it creates this sort of vacuum if you like where people start going oh both parties are kind of going not really sure what I'm doing here but that does go to the point that you're making around that managers I suppose they have a coaching role to help people towards that mastery and to

break it down into the various different components, which then they can practice and work on in the workflow. So it should be embedded absolutely within the workflow so that they can see how they're progressing and how they're using the workflow as an opportunity to develop and to master, bringing it all back together. That's concerning to hear that managers don't really have that vision. I mean, it's not surprising. Obviously, we know how businesses get and how people can become very tied up in the day-to-day tasks that keep things flowing, but are unable to sort of pull them. In the entrepreneurial world that I more or less come from, it's take yourself out of

the business to improve the business. And I think that goes for any size organization is how do you actually sort of remove yourself to do the higher level tasks and make sure that you're actually focusing on growth and that sort of thing so no i was just going to add to that like it gets more complex because that on the job training and development of people is a frontline manager's skill set and if it's not developed there and the person moves further and further up the ranks, the work, it gets more and more complex because you're moving further and further away from the doing of the work

to the more planning of the work and the strategic elements of the work. If you haven't learned that skill of how do I develop my people at the front line of management, it only gets more complex because the work is more complex. It's much more subtle work

because nobody tells managers how to do the work of management complex. It's much more subtle work because nobody tells managers how to do the work of management, like very few organizations. We have organizations design processes for the work of the business, but they don't necessarily do it for the management of the business. And so managers move up the ranks

and the job descriptions get more and more sketchy. They're like, you know, manage and insure. And you go, what does that mean in the grand scheme of things? Like, how do I do that? I love reading through those job descriptions on LinkedIn and stuff. It's just a bunch of abstract verbs. Like, oh, great. Are there information flows as to how I do that?

No, you just make that bit up yourself, which you get. And so what ends up happening is... Problem solving, right? Sorry? Problem solving. I mean, that's what they're looking for, somebody who will solve all the problems, including how to do their own job.

That's the number one problem. Exactly. The issue compounds itself. So, you know, for me, for L&D, I'd always be kind of going, do my frontline managers know how to develop their people? Do they know what they're doing in terms of development? Do they know what each of the roles are designed to deliver?

And then do they have the skill sets to develop people towards that? Because that's what enables the organization. Because when parts of the organization, when a role isn't delivering what it's supposed to deliver, it starts putting pressure on the rest of the system, and then the performance starts getting impacted. Well, when it comes to coaching and developing individuals, there's nothing more effective than a good acronym. I think this is a good opportunity for us to talk about SMART objective setting, SMART goal setting. You've written a book about it and it's central to much of your work. I think this is something that, as we're talking about managers who don't have a vision, let's go ahead and give those managers

one option right now. So do you want to just jump in and explain SMART real quick? Yeah, most people would know the SMART acronym as S for specific, M for measurement, A for attainable, or for relevance or realistic. You can get a couple of different versions of it, and T for timeframe or timeline. You know, purpose of SMART initially was really if I'm setting a goal for myself that I can use SMART as a framework to kind of put some structure to it. But of course, when we are using SMART within the objective setting process, the performance management process, we're not just setting a goal for ourselves,

we're setting a goal with somebody else. And so that automatically inserts the communication process. And so we end up, it's not just one process, it's both the objective setting and the SMART, sorry, the communication process. And I would always say that smart is really a way or it's a tool or a framework to actually have a proper two-way conversation. But in my experience, that's not how managers approach it. They tend to approach it of like, we'll quickly get through this, you know, tick all the boxes and put in a date, you know, we'll kind of measurement is go on a course. This is one of my favorite ones is you'll go on a course. This is one of my favourite ones is you'll go on a course and that isn't actually the measurement because if you're

looking to develop somebody's mastery in something, it's actually that they can master it and do the work of what they have mastered. So it's the output of the work rather than going on a course. Because as we know, and we've already touched on this, somebody can go on a course and attend the course and go, yes, I've ticked that box, but I'm not going to do anything any further with it, but I've ticked the box of having achieved the measurement of the objective. So I would use it as a, are we on the same page around what this objective is and what success will measure? The attainable is really an interesting one, because I look at it, the answer is, you know, is it attainable? Well, yes, of course, it's attainable. Otherwise, we wouldn't be setting this objective. But that's not how I use it. I use it in the sense of, well,

it may be attainable, but are there constraints? Are there boundaries? Are there dependencies that need to be in place in order to succeed in this objective. And so if we start having those conversations around, well, you know, what are the boundaries? What are the constraints? Like, if you're running a project and you do everything, but you do everything you can, but somewhere in the organization isn't playing ball, well, then all of a sudden you're into, well, can I succeed in this objective if it's dependent on somebody else who isn't playing ball? So you're actually kind of having those real conversations to say, actually, within the context of if that happens, then you need to let me know or, you know, that they're

given guidance around what to do in those situations. And the other way I use SMART specifically on the T is usually people go, yes, have it done by the 31st of July, you know, and kind of going, okay, so have it done by the 31st of July. But of course, there could be, you know, 10 or 15 different elements or aspects or, you know, activities that need to be done between now and the 31st of July. So I also use the time frame to actually kind of almost create a mini time plan around what needs to be done and when does it need to be done by and again having that conversation it forces a conversation of in my head when I say this objective this is what it means to me and the other person is kind of saying well that's not what was in my head and so by having that conversation

we're much more on the same line or on the same page I should say and the other thing I often find because again I do do an awful lot of performance management and development design, design out those systems. A lot of times people are, and again, this comes to the coaching side as well, they might want to do the objective, but they actually don't know how to start it. They're not really sure about how would I go about starting that objective. So by having the conversation, particularly when you start putting a structure on the approach within the timeframe conversation, it makes it very much more tangible to people around how to go about it and what steps they would need to do to achieve it, which increases the likelihood of the objective being delivered, because we're removing the uncertainty from because we're having that conversation, as opposed to going through the motions of, you know, here's a smart objective, you know, it's given to the person and done to the person without them having almost any input into it. And so that's kind of my experience of

with smart is that used well, it can be highly effective in having aligning and having real conversations, but used poorly, it can be, you know, we're going through the motions and it doesn't deliver anything different. worked with really sort of elite performance type people where the day-to-day numbers very much matter, especially in the financial sector. Can this framework be used with those folks? Can it be as simple as their daily goals and their day-to-day expectations fit into the SMART framework? Or is it more that this is used almost as like some sort of performance improvement system or for long-term goals? Does it fit with everybody? That's a great question. What I didn't answer previously was that actually it's very effective with both what goals and how goals. People are more comfortable, managers are more comfortable using smart with the what goals

as in deliver X, Y, and Z. They're much more tangible. The work of the business, it's a lot more tangible to deliver. They can also be used very effectively in the how goals. So, you know, if we need to increase retention or we need to increase capability or things like that, which are much more fuzzy and where you get a lot more difference in opinion or kind of, I suppose, many ways to achieve it. So that's where the importance of having that conversation to bring

both sides together. I would also say, and this comes back to performance development and what are we trying to achieve with it, smart shouldn't be around the using it in terms of, you know, what the normal outputs of the job are. So, you know, if the job is designed to deliver X, Y, and Z, well, yes, you should be delivering X, Y, and Z because that's your job and that's what you're there to do when we're setting objectives really we're talking about what is it it could be about their own development what is it you need to do to develop within your role you know that you're again moving towards that mastery that you know you've mastered half of but you need to master the other half of it so it could be about

developing how do they develop into the full mastery of the role. It can also be linked to the objectives of the organization. So it could be objectives that they need to contribute to that are aligned with the strategic direction of the organization rather than the day-to-day of the job. So I would be kind of saying objective setting should be more around the stretching of the individual and their capabilities and or the work that they do aligned to the bigger type of corporate objectives as opposed to the day-to-day you know if you deliver your job you're performing well it's almost like well actually that's what you're there to do is that's the job that you're paid to do is the day-to-day of the job i'd like to just rein in these questions

that i've been asking with sort of the most obvious question that I think comes from it, which I've asked a handful of other people independently, but also on this podcast. When you have really high performers, if their daily expectations aren't, you know, like finance where you got to meet the numbers, maybe they're doing something like scientific research or, you know, they're doctors, they have terminal degrees, those types of people, like, these people are critical to many kinds of organizations and many kinds of industries. But we also theoretically, we want them to be learning to whenever we have a learning and development program, we're going to include those people, even though they're, you know, many of these people are geniuses. And we want to make sure regardless that they're still learning, they're still developing in some way. So how do we do that? First of all, how do we convince them that it's worth their time to continue to pursue mastery, maybe they're not, you know, pursuing the science that they studied, or the, you know,

financial expertise that they arguably have already mastered, but they're working on their human skills, or they're working on another skill set, something like data literacy, or just, you know, new tech, becoming aware of new tech, How do we convince them that this is worth their time, even though they probably spent more time in school than the rest of us? And how do we actually give them effective programs that teach at the level that their learning requires? I suppose what they do is they have very deep knowledge in a very small section, if you like, if they're PhDs and that. And really, it's around, you know, what's their role and in what way are they contributing to the overall objectives of the organisation? And so, as you say, it's not just about the specific technical knowledge that they have, but it could be around

how they are interrelating to and connecting with other people and what their role, you know. So, again, you know, if you're working in R&D, but the organization is quite commercial, that's quite a big shift to kind of focus in on organization because the value of more senior roles is around the multiplier effect of how many people can you, you know, how much value can you bring to the organization. So again, a lot of times people, individual contributors end up this sort of role of I'm an expert in what I do, but I want to have a wider role within the organization. And so it's kind of, again, it's having that conversation around seeing the bigger picture of the organization and having that conversation around, well, where do you want to go within it? And that can be a really difficult conversation to have because a lot of times these people are very, they're excellent at what they do

and they enjoy what they do, but yet they want some of the kudos that maybe comes with some of the more, I suppose, the multiplier effect type roles, which are often in sales because you can bring in large sales with one person or they're in management because you can affect the value in the organization at a moment. You know, manager could manage two or three hundred people. And so the value that they bring is greater than the value of one person. So it's having the conversations in those ways to kind of say, well, where do you want to move to? And then this would require these skill sets. And again, that framework that I've talked about before,

by having that framework designed and populated, if you like, or whatever, it provides the framework to have the conversation in a more constructive way, as opposed to like, without the manager or the L&D or the HR, whoever's having that conversation it can feel quite an uncomfortable conversation because there's no framework to look to to make it a depersonalized conversation so the person might feel that you're just saying this because

you don't want me to move into that role and it's like well no actually we're having this conversation because from the organizational perspective, regardless of who the person is, these are the skill sets they need to have to be successful in this role. So it can feel like a much more personal conversation. And so oftentimes those conversations aren't had because it's hard to depersonalize them if you don't have that clear vision or that clear understanding of the bigger picture of the organization and how the organization is designed. So I'll give you one last question, then it might be the impossible question here. But as I was reading your book, as I was reading Manager's Dilemma, I'm going through the conversations that are being had, you know, you have coach and sort of the characters that are being discussed by the, you know, it's a coach, and I think Trish, and as the theoretical two that are

working on setting SMART goals for their direct reports, and you have like six different scenarios. And theoretically, this manager, Trish, is going to have to speak to six different people about all their issues with problem solving. And I'm sitting there thinking, like, that just sounds like a lot of stress, you know, having like six different categories of conversations for performance improvement. And, you know, the book makes it seem very easy, because the coach conversations are very fluid, and they make sense. And there's revelation points. But in reality, these things are just hard, you know, it's hard to have these conversations to, like you say, depersonalize them. And it's just a challenge to explain to somebody why what they're doing is

wrong, no matter what the context is, or why what they're doing could be improved or could be better. Or, you know, even when you're just doing something as simple as relating it to the bigger picture, are you implying that they don't think or that they're not contributing to that bigger picture successfully already? They're just hard conversations to have these human conversations. And I would love to just, you know, finish things off by hearing from you any advice that you have for managers and leaders on how to have those conversations. Absolutely. And they are very difficult conversations and managers really do struggle to have them

and therefore they don't have them because they don't know how to frame them. Go back to that framework, that kind of what is the purpose of a role, that understanding, that vision piece around what's the purpose of a role or what's the purpose of the team or where does the team fit into the wider? Ideally, if you have the framework there to have that conversation absolutely but it also as you know tyler i used to live in boston and my boss there used to talk about chunk it up here way too much detail chunk it up and i don't know if you've heard of that term but there's model around you know what level are we having the conversation at so a lot of times people have the conversation at a very detailed level. You know, it's like very specific level. And it's often like,

what's that an example of? You know, what's that? Why is that behavior so unacceptable? Or why is that behavior bad? Or why are we having this conversation about this particular behavior? And it's, if we have the conversation, if you're having the detailed conversation, it's like you're in the trenches, you're having the detailed conversation, it's like you're in the trenches. You're having a detailed and it's very hard to explain why a particular tone of voice or a particular way of saying something or, you know, a particular, I don't know, look or whatever it is that's under discussion is a particular way of phrasing something when you're at the detailed level of discussing the specific like that it's very hard to stand over what that is uh you know why this is the why this doesn't work because otherwise we're going to have to explain it at every single time because we're at the specific and so it's like what's that an example of so oftentimes it's an example of you know it's it erodes trust or it undermines you know the person or you know it's an example of, you know, it erodes trust or it undermines, you know, the person or,

you know, it's disrespectful, whatever it is. So it's like chunking it up towards, well, what is this an example of? And you might need to ask yourself that a couple of times, two, three times to kind of be able to chunk it up or to be able to bring it to the generic as to this is an example of, you know, undermining the colleague or being eroding trust. So when you can have the conversation at the, well, this goes to eroding trust, it's a lot easier to have the conversation because it's anything that erodes trust is going to be unacceptable. So you've brought it up a level or two levels or three levels to have the conversation at the right level of why this matters.

So one of the questions I would always ask managers when they're, you know, they're giving me whatever they're telling me and telling me all their woes or whatever, why it's not what the issue is. And I will always ask, what's the business impact of this? Why does this matter? And, you know, so somebody coming in late every day, why does that matter? Maybe it's not such a big deal that remote working, you know, but why does it matter? You know, so somebody coming in late every day, why does that matter? Maybe it's not such a big deal, the remote working, you know, but why does it matter? Why does it matter if somebody turns up to meetings late all the time? Why does it matter if they've never read any of the content that, you know, the pre-reading or whatever? Why does it matter if they don't turn up prepared?

If you have the conversation at the, you know, you turned up to the meeting late, now we're into a skirmish of, well, yeah, I know, but I was like, da, da, da, da, da, and we'll have all sorts of excuses. If you chunk it up to say, turning up to the meeting late is disrespectful of other people's time. You're saying your time is more important than other people's time. And there was five people waiting there for 10 minutes while you decided to rock up. You wouldn't phrase it quite like that. you decided to rock up kind of you wouldn't phrase it quite like that but you know it's very you know then they're kind of going okay you can't argue that to the same degree because it doesn't really matter what the reasons were you were late it's just the actual being late is disrespectful

and what's the business impact of that well you've wasted 10 minutes of five people's time which is like 50 minutes you know they could have been doing something different not only that but you also start building out a culture of it's okay to turn up to meetings 10 minutes late so if it's okay to turn up to meetings 10 minutes late is it okay to turn up 15 minutes late 20 minutes late and so when you're having the conversation at that level it's a much more difficult conversation for the person to just excuse and give you a reason why it happened at that time. You know, it's like, it's now we're into the principle of why this isn't okay. And then the conversation, it's a lot easier to then have the conversation around, this isn't personal to you. It's just, this is what this message sends out to anybody.

And so it helps us depersonalize it. So I would always kind of encourage managers to be able to put it in terms of what's the business impact of this and why does this matter? And then, you know, if they can't and what I do say to them is if you can't give me a business impact, then this is your thing. This is your idiosyncrasy. It's something you need to deal with. You know, this is how because you want it like this, as opposed to actually that there's a business need for this. It's employing the relatively common business tactic of asking why

more and more to get to the, you know, the base of an issue. I think sometimes that's in the frame of, you know, product and solution development, asking why until you find sort of the core issue. But I think it's just as relevant and problem solving when it comes to why doing something one way is, you know, not as good as another way or is harming an organization. Cool. That's great advice. I can't think of a better place to wrap than there. Before we say goodbye, Ariel, can you just let our listeners know where they can learn more from you?

Yep. So I am on LinkedIn, Ariel O'Farrell on LinkedIn. My website is evolutionconsulting.ie and my books are available on Amazon. Great. Well, thank you so much again for joining us. Everybody listening at home, thank you for joining us as well. And we will catch you on the next episode. Cheers. Thanks, Tyler. You've been listening to L&D in Action, a show from Get Abstract. Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode.

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