Chapter 7. Growing people

In the previous chapter, you learned about using commitment language. It’s time to use it to grow the people in your team.

For your team to be able to self-organize without depending on you, they need to learn how to solve their own problems. One of the simplest ways to encourage that is to stop solving all their problems for them; ask them to start solving them on their own. This is called delegation, and it may feel awkward at first, but it’s part of the idea of getting out of your comfort zone and learning new skills.

You too will have to learn a new skill here: stop solving everyone’s problems, and begin mentoring and challenging them to solve problems themselves.

Problem challenging

Sooner or later a team member will come to you with a “wishful problem” such as one of these:

When that happens, ask the wishful questioner one simple question:

What are you going to do about it?

Each word here is carefully selected:

What are you going to do about it?

This simple question, stated exactly like this, asks the person to answer using commitment language. Each word is carefully chosen to remove doubt that you’re looking for anything other than commitment.

Suppose you ask another way:

How did I react the first time I was challenged?

When to use problem challenging

Don’t punish for lack of trying or lack of success

Homework

Pace yourself and your team

Do you have enough learning time to make this mistake?

Are there situations where you shouldn’t grow people

Next up

Summary