 Success is getting your employees thinking. For any manager, the more your employees can help you do your job, the better off you'll be, the company will be and your employees will be. A serious win-win-win in my opinion. Getting your employees thinking while you're giving work to the team will create a lot more value. Managers should not get hung up on themselves being the focal point of ideas, decisions, solutions and the critical thinking. High-performing teams utilise all the resources they have available which include the brain power and ideas of team members. I've seen time and time again that many minds create better solutions than one mind. Differences of opinion, background, experiences and the thinking processes create better solutions when harnessed in the right way. Get your employees thinking and you and your team will enjoy a lot more success. I'm covering, firstly, why you should get your employees thinking, secondly, three ways to get your team members thinking and then third, when to assign problems, not tasks at work. When the team is doing well, the manager of that team does well. I can't remember a time in over 20 years when a manager gets promoted despite the team not doing well. The team's success is the manager's success. You can make your team a lot more successful when you get them all thinking and contributing their best to the team's success. How do you get your employees thinking when delegating and organising others is the big question which I want to cover shortly. My name is Jess Coles and if you're new here in Heartstop Training Shares, people management expertise, resources and courses teaching you how to build higher performing teams. I've included links to additional videos and resources in the description below as well as the video timestamps so do take a look at these. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. In case you're not sold yet or you are scared that a team doing more of your job will mean less job security for you I'm taking you through why you should get your employees thinking. I absolutely love it when my team members think and solve problems themselves without reference to me. It makes my job as a manager so much easier. Here's why. Not all problems are the same. For instance, you get problems that, firstly, repeatedly occur with minor differences for which you can apply a similar solution. A second example might be problems that occur regularly with larger differences which require more bespoke solutioning but within a framework known to solve these problems. The third example could be a really new problem that hasn't occurred before and hasn't been solved within the team or the business before which requires critical thinking to solve. If you, the manager, spend most of your time solving the easier problems then you probably will never get round to solving the tough problems because you won't have the mental time and space needed. Being in this situation means that you won't be creating as much value for the business which means slower career progress, if any. A much better approach is getting the junior team members to solve the continually occurring simple problems, your better performers to solve the regular but not so straightforward problems and you keep yourself available to solve the one-off tough problems. This approach maximises the problem-solving capability across the team making best use of the respective experiences and skills of the team members which in turn means much better team performance. You also get, firstly, a more motivated team secondly, the team being more engaged and taking more ownership third, a team increasing their problem-solving skills and confidence which further increases team performance fourth, you have more time, less pressure, less stress and are perceived as a better manager fifth, you personally create a lot more value for the business directly and through your team and then sixth, in addition you are helping to create leaders and managers of the future creating the capability in the team so that you can continue to grow your skills and experience and thus move your career forward too What is not to like? Please think about and try to overcome any fears and insecurities you may have about empowering your team Counter-intuitively, your job security will go up, not down because you get your employees to think more you become a lot more valuable as a manager to the business when you create many managers in your team Start small and build once you see and feel the benefits personally of getting your employees thinking To help you do more to get your employees thinking I have three key ways to get your employees thinking I remember having a queue of people at my desk to ask me to make decisions and solve their problems and it felt really good all these team members thought my opinion was valuable great for my ego not quite so good for encouraging improved team performance every spare minute of my time I spent helping others sort out their problems I was the team bottleneck It didn't take me that long to realise that maybe I was creating problems for myself Here are some of the things that I did about it Firstly, whenever a team member asked me for my opinion or a decision I would ask a question back to them Yeah, what do you think? How would you solve this? What options are best to take do you think? Ask questions, then stay silent until they provided at least one solution or decision Improve this further by asking team members to come with a solution to every problem they spot Secondly, whenever possible I would assign problems, not tasks at work Assigning problems means team members have to do the thinking, the planning and the problem solving Myself or other team members would refine the solutions if needed During the implementation, the person delegated to has more flexibility and autonomy Which reduces the need to support them Which in turn creates more value and uses less management time Everyone learns this way When delegating tasks, 90% of the thinking and planning is already done Which limits the learning and takes a lot more management time to oversee this approach in the long term Thirdly, for the unique, tough problems I would ask a small group to join me to work out solutions When team members are comfortable expressing their opinions, sharing ideas and options And challenging each other in a constructive way, real magic can happen You get solutions way better than any individual could put together On top of a better solution, you also have higher ownership of the solution by the participants Because it's their solution too Higher ownership usually means better chances of successful implementation It takes mentoring and coaching skills, plus discipline not to jump straight into the solution mode yourself Step back and sketch your employees' thinking, generating ideas and creating solutions The time invested to achieve this will be paid back many, many times over With an easier and faster developing management career, plus a happier, motivated and higher performing team Lastly, I would like to cover when to assign problems, not tasks at work There are plenty of reasons to assign problems, not tasks to team members The main ones being, firstly, to develop your team members so the team performance overall improves Secondly, to build trust with and retain your team members, and particularly the high performance And third, so you are able to train the leaders and managers of tomorrow Which in turn increases the impact that you have on the team and business And increases the value that you're responsible for creating You should not assign any problem to any person Getting the balance right between the difficulty of solving the problem and the capability of the person is pretty critical The amount of support you're able to offer and how you provide that support is the third key factor As a general rule, I would delegate increasingly difficult problems to a given team member While coaching them so that I understand at which point they start struggling This approach gives me a lot of insight into each person on the team Here for example, current capabilities, their desire and ability to learn, their attitude and character Another general rule, provide tasks to less experienced or lower performing staff And provide problems to the more experienced or better performing staff members This better matches what you delegate to the capabilities of each team member Learn about your staff members and then you are in a much better place to judge when to assign problems, not tasks at work So in summary, success is getting your employees thinking The more team members are happy, confident and successful at providing ideas and solutions, the better team performance will generally be This is a great thing for the team, company and you the manager It does take time and effort to get your employees thinking In my experience the benefits far outweigh the efforts put in So I would always try to get team members thinking where they are happy and capable of doing so As a reminder, we've been through, firstly, why you should get your employees thinking Secondly, three key ways to get your team members thinking And third, when to assign problems, not tasks at work If you have any questions on success is getting your employees thinking Please leave them in the comment section below and I'll get back to you Thanks very much for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon