Entertainment: Are You Holding on to the Monkey?

I had this interesting conversation with a CEO (whose name I can not reveal) the largest seminar company in the world. We just talked about personnel matters and that sometimes leaders as a company to assume the responsibilities of their staff and try to solve all their problems. They sometimes feel responsible if their staff can not cope with their own problems and try very hard to reassure colleagues that "we will get through this together, I just need to think of a way out."
This is what I call the syndrome: Maintaining the monkey.
Let me explain.
What is the monkey? The monkey is a personification of the typical problems that your staff or colleagues face in their daily work. Each has its own set of monkeys and it affects their daily work. But what they do is important.
For most people, when they are faced with an ape or monkey (many problems at the same time), they usually go to their managers and ask for help. They share with their managers how it affects them and seek advice. It is a good thing, but this is where the problem starts. They leave the monkey with managers and expect them to solve it.
Personally, I know very well because I have many clients who share with me that they have informed their boss about the problem and are waiting for their boss to give them direction.
The boss is not able to resolve the problem quickly (sometimes they are traveling or have work piled so high that his face is blocked by piles of files and documents). The problem then becomes the problem of the boss because the monkey is administered to him (or her). It becomes the bottleneck because everyone is waiting for him to give his "value" input or turn on its "messiah complex" to save the day with his brilliant ideas.
This is a huge mistake in most problem solving involving questions of managers. They take the problem themselves and hold the monkey staff.
A general rule that you should always remember: if you are the administrator, never work harder than your direct reports. If this is their monkey, you do not do justice to them by taking their monkey.

If you are the administrator, never work harder than your direct reports
Before you get angry with me and say that I avoid solving problems, let me explain further.
I'm not saying that we should not listen to the problems of our staff and work with them to develop solutions. What I am saying is that we should not take the monkey. We work with them, but at the end of the session brainstorming solutions, we need to return the monkey to them. We allow them to take responsibility for their own problems and give them the means to solve it. We do not take on everything and that we will adjust for them. Let them follow through the problem and ask them to come back to you if there are other obstacles to be demolished. This is what the coaching brief solution-focused is all about. Facilitate the transition from person to focus on the problem to the concentrated solution.
In fact, we are so nuts about it, in our training, we did the monkey sitting in front of our participants in our Solution Focused Brief Coaching.
Back to the conversation I had with the CEO, she joked that she asked its leaders to give him his pay if she has solved all its major problems for themselves. It was a bit nasty, but the staff got the point. They know it will work with them, but not for them.
If someone hands you the monkey next time, do not forget to put it back at the end of the session. Enable them to solve their own problems and not create a monkey for yourself.

Entertainment

Friday, November 16, 2012

Are You Holding on to the Monkey?

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