A short piece about problems

Problems… issues… challenges… whatever your term of choice is.

Whether you’re helping a client professionally or a friend informally (or even trying to work out what to do for yourself), it’s worth remembering a few things.

Whenever anybody tells me they have a problem, all  I know at that moment is that that is not the problem.

People are remarkably unaware of what their real issues are.  This is not because they are stupid or vexatious:  they simply don’t know.  Call it a blind spot, if that helps.  If you ask them what the problem is, you’ll probably get one or more of the following

A suggested solution.  Nobody’s problem is “I need X”.  What they have is a problem which they believe can be solved by X.  (When I was an IT consultant X was usually “a database”:  the universal panacea.)  The immediate help they need is to identify the problem.  Whether X turns out to be the solution is irrelevant at this stage.

A symptom.  Of course the symptom may be a problem in itself, and it may need fixing, but it is a problem, not the problem.  Please see this story about a drill.

A real problem.  It’s tempting to think that this is the problem, but it is always worth introducing the idea that problems have layers and asking the question:

If there were a deeper problem underlying this problem, what might it be?

And, if you get the response, “I don’t know”, persist and ask the question:

If you were to know what it was, what would it be?

Both these questions need a certain amount of skill in the asking if they are not to irritate, but a willing respondent will find them very enlightening.

The largest number of layers I have gone down with a client was six before I sensed that asking another time would not be fruitful.

The purpose is to facilitate insight.

Related material:
>  Drill  [story]

by Jeremy Marchant . © 2015 Jeremy Marchant Limited . added 26 april 2015 . image: Free images

I know I go on a bit at times!  This is the fourth of what will be many short pieces, each restricted to 300 words, and each about a key topic in the worlds of emotional intelligence or work or both.  The title is named for Krzysztof Kieślowski, who directed a couple of excellent films in the eighties with the name, A short film about…