The Problem with Always Being the Problem Solver

Coaching Real Leaders

Harvard Business Review / Muriel Wilkins

Executive, Business/careers, Leadership, Careers, Business/management, Sessions, Hbr, Coaching, Review, Society & Culture, C-suite, Leaders, Harvard, Business, Management

4.8 • 660 Ratings

🗓️ 1 March 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He’s spent much of his career successfully being a problem solver. Now, as he works his way up, he’s realizing that always trying to fix everything won’t let him focus on leading – or help his team succeed. How can he adapt his approach to lead more effectively?

Transcript

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0:00.0	HBR Presents.
0:03.0	I'm Muriel Wilkins and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Presents Network.
0:20.0	I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders is coaching real leaders part of the HBR Presents Network.
0:26.1	I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road.
0:32.3	My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them.
0:38.7	I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time coaching meeting, focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing. Today's guest is
0:48.7	someone will call Charlie to protect his confidentiality. He works for a large company and has mainly led large-scale technology
0:56.0	projects or handled mergers and integrations, which means he's very good at solving complicated
1:01.6	problems. My day-to-day is a lot about actually trying to define and manage the requirements and push the progress of the program, right? So I have quite a
1:13.9	variety of duties in over what I really should be doing. And that's a battle. And this is where I
1:20.9	come your direction, is to try and get somebody who can help me sort of build a skill set to
1:26.6	manage that better and also manage
1:29.0	kind of my thinking on how structure my career. When it comes to prioritizing and figuring out how to
1:35.3	best add value, that's where he wants to continue growing as a manager and leader. And Charlie admits
1:40.8	he doesn't always know where to begin when it comes to developing those skills.
1:45.0	It would be easier for me to then get myself organized to reach goals that I'm trying to define.
1:51.0	It's like I'm not looking to have 50 people reporting to me.
1:54.0	I'm looking to be a better person and do a better job and then expand my skills in my job
2:00.0	and become a resource for the company. My inclination
2:03.3	is never to let somebody fail. And that's one of the things that I'm being told I have to stop
2:07.7	doing. And it's just, that's just hard for me, right? I care about people. And I think that the
2:12.1	the managerial side of its management of me as well as, you know, outwardly.
	...

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