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The FOCUS Model

A simple, efficient problem-solving approach.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Are your business processes perfect, or could you improve them?

In an ever-changing world, nothing stays perfect for long. To stay ahead of your competitors, you need to be able to refine your processes on an ongoing basis, so that your services remain efficient and your customers stay happy.

This article looks the FOCUS Model – a simple quality-improvement tool that helps you do this.

About the Model

The FOCUS Model, which was created by the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), is a structured approach to Total Quality Management (TQM) , and it is widely used in the health care industry.

The model is helpful because it uses a team-based approach to problem solving and to business-process improvement, and this makes it particularly useful for solving cross-departmental process issues. Also, it encourages people to rely on objective data rather than on personal opinions, and this improves the quality of the outcome.

It has five steps:

F ind the problem.
O rganize a team.
C larify the problem.
U nderstand the problem.
S elect a solution.

Applying the FOCUS Model

Follow the steps below to apply the FOCUS Model in your organization.

Step 1: Find the Problem

The first step is to identify a process that needs to be improved. Process improvements often follow the Pareto Principle , where 80 percent of issues come from 20 percent of problems. This is why identifying and solving one real problem can significantly improve your business, if you find the right problem to solve.

According to a popular analogy, identifying problems is like harvesting apples. At first, this is easy – you can pick apples up from the ground and from the lower branches of the tree. But the more fruit you collect, the harder it becomes. Eventually, the remaining fruit is all out of reach, and you need to use a ladder to reach the topmost branches.

Start with a simple problem to get the team up to speed with the FOCUS method. Then, when confidence is high, turn your attention to more complex processes.

If the problem isn't obvious, use these questions to identify possible issues:

What would our customers want us to improve?
How can we improve quality ?
What processes don't work as efficiently as they could?
Where do we experience bottlenecks in our processes?
What do our competitors or comparators do that we could do?
What frustrates and irritates our team?
What might happen in the future that could become a problem for us?

If you have several problems that need attention, list them all and use Pareto Analysis , Decision Matrix Analysis , or Paired Comparison Analysis to decide which problem to address first. (If you try to address too much in one go, you'll overload team members and cause unnecessary stress.)

Step 2: Organize a Team

Your next step is to assemble a team to address the problem.

Where possible, bring together team members from a range of disciplines – this will give you a broad range of skills, perspectives, and experience to draw on.

Select team members who are familiar with the issue or process in hand, and who have a stake in its resolution. Enthusiasm for the project will be greatest if people volunteer for it, so emphasize how individuals will benefit from being involved.

If your first choice of team member isn't available, try to appoint someone close to them, or have another team member use tools like Perceptual Positioning and Rolestorming to see the issue from their point of view.

Keep in mind that a diverse team is more likely to find a creative solution than a group of people with the same outlook.

Step 3: Clarify the Problem

Before the team can begin to solve the problem, you need to define it clearly and concisely.

According to " Total Quality Management for Hospital Nutrition Services ," a key text on the FOCUS Model, an enthusiastic team may be keen to attack an "elephant-sized" problem, but the key to success is to break it down into "sushi-sized" pieces that can be analyzed and solved more easily.

Use the Drill Down technique to break big problems down into their component parts. You can also use the 5 Whys Technique , Cause and Effect Analysis , and Root Cause Analysis to get to the bottom of a problem.

Record the details in a problem statement, which will then serve as the focal point for the rest of the exercise ( CATWOE can help you do this effectively.) Focus on factual events and measurable conditions such as:

Who does the problem affect?
What has happened?
Where is it occurring?
When does it happen?

The problem statement must be objective, so avoid relying on personal opinions, gut feelings, and emotions. Also, be on guard against "factoids" – statements that appear to be facts, but that are really opinions that have come to be accepted as fact.

Step 4: Understand the Problem

Once the problem statement has been completed, members of the team gather data about the problem to understand it more fully.

Dedicate plenty of time to this stage, as this is where you will identify the fundamental steps in the process that, when changed, will bring about the biggest improvement.

Consider what you know about the problem. Has anyone else tried to fix a similar problem before? If so, what happened, and what can you learn from this?

Use a Flow Chart or Swim Lane Diagram to organize and visualize each step; this can help you discover the stage at which the problem is happening. And try to identify any bottlenecks or failures in the process that could be causing problems.

As you develop your understanding, potential solutions to the problem may become apparent. Beware of jumping to "obvious" conclusions – these could overlook important parts of the problem, and could create a whole new process that fails to solve the problem.

Generate as many possible solutions as you can through normal structured thinking, brainstorming , reverse brainstorming , and Provocation . Don't criticize ideas initially – just come up with lots of possible ideas to explore.

Step 5: Select a Solution

The final stage in the process is to select a solution.

Use appropriate decision-making techniques to select the most viable option. Decision Trees , Paired Comparison Analysis , and Decision Matrix Analysis are all useful tools for evaluating your options.

Once you've selected an idea, use tools such as Risk Analysis , "What If" Analysis , and the Futures Wheel to think about the possible consequences of moving ahead, and make a well-considered go/no-go decision to decide whether or not you should run the project.

People commonly use the FOCUS Model in conjunction with the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. Use this approach to implement your solutions in a controlled way.

The FOCUS Model is a simple quality-improvement tool commonly used in the health care industry. You can use it to improve any process, but it is particularly useful for processes that span different departments.

The five steps in FOCUS are as follows:

People often use the FOCUS Model in conjunction with the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, which allows teams to implement their solution in a controlled way.

Bataldan, P. (1992). 'Building Knowledge for Improvement: an Introductory Guide to the Use of FOCUS-PDCA,' Nashville: TN Quality Resource Group, Hospital Corporation of America.

Schiller, M., Miller-Kovach, M., and Miller-Kovach, K. (1994). 'Total Quality Management for Hospital Nutrition Services,' Aspen Publishers Inc. Available here .

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7 Solution-Focused Therapy Techniques and Worksheets (+PDF)

It has analyzed a person’s problems from where they started and how those problems have an effect on that person’s life.

Out of years of observation of family therapy sessions, the theory and applications of solution-focused therapy developed.

Let’s explore the therapy, along with techniques and applications of the approach.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free . These science-based exercises will explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology including strengths, values, and self-compassion, and will give you the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students, or employees.

This Article Contains:

5 solution-focused therapy techniques, handy sft worksheets (pdf), solution-focused therapy interventions, 5 sft questions to ask clients, solution-focused brief therapy (sfbt techniques), 4 activities & exercises, best sft books, a take-home message.

Solution-focused therapy is a type of treatment that highlights a client’s ability to solve problems, rather than why or how the problem was created. It was developed over some time after observations of therapists in a mental health facility in Wisconsin by Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg and their colleagues.

Like positive psychology, Solution Focused Therapy (SFT) practitioners focus on goal-oriented questioning to assist a client in moving into a future-oriented direction.

Solution-focused therapy has been successfully applied to a wide variety of client concerns due to its broad application. It has been utilized in a wide variety of client groups as well. The approach presupposes that clients have some knowledge of what will improve their lives.

The following areas have utilized SFT with varying success:

relationship difficulties
drug and alcohol abuse
eating disorders
anger management
communication difficulties
crisis intervention
incarceration recidivism reduction

Goal clarification is an important technique in SFT. A therapist will need to guide a client to envision a future without the problem with which they presented. With coaching and positive questioning, this vision becomes much more clarified.

With any presenting client concern, the main technique in SFT is illuminating the exception. The therapist will guide the client to an area of their life where there is an exception to the problem. The exception is where things worked well, despite the problem. Within the exception, an approach for a solution may be forged.

The ‘miracle question’ is another technique frequently used in SFT. It is a powerful tool that helps clients to move into a solution orientation. This question allows clients to begin small steps toward finding solutions to presenting problems (Santa Rita Jr., 1998). It is asked in a specific way and is outlined later in this article.

Experiment invitation is another way that therapists guide clients into solution orientation. By inviting clients to build on what is already working, clients automatically focus on the positive. In positive psychology, we know that this allows the client’s mind to broaden and build from that orientation.

Utilizing what has been working experimentally allows the client to find what does and doesn’t work in solving the issue at hand. During the second half of a consultation with a client, many SFT therapists take a break to reflect on what they’ve learned during the beginning of the session.

Consultation breaks and invitations for more information from clients allow for both the therapist and client to brainstorm on what might have been missed during the initial conversations. After this break, clients are complemented and given a therapeutic message about the presenting issue. The message is typically stated in the positive so that clients leave with a positive orientation toward their goals.

Here are four handy worksheets for use with solution-focused therapy.

Miracle worksheet
Exceptions to the Problem Worksheet
Scaling Questions Worksheet
SMART+ Goals Worksheet

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Compliments are frequently used in SFT, to help the client begin to focus on what is working, rather than what is not. Acknowledging that a client has an impact on the movement toward a goal allows hope to become present. Once hope and perspective shift occurs, a client can decide what daily actions they would like to take in attaining a goal.

Higher levels of hope and optimism can predict the following desirable outcomes (Peterson & Seligman, 2004):

achievement in all sorts of areas
freedom from anxiety and depression
improved social relationships
improved physical well being

Mind mapping is an effective intervention also used to increase hope and optimism. This intervention is often used in life coaching practices. A research study done on solution-focused life coaching (Green, Oades, & Grant, 2006) showed that this type of intervention increases goal striving and hope, in addition to overall well-being.

Though life coaching is not the same as therapy, this study shows the effectiveness of improving positive behavior through solution-focused questioning.

Mind mapping is a visual thinking tool that helps structure information. It helps clients to better analyze, comprehend, and generate new ideas in areas they might not have been automatically self-generated. Having it on paper gives them a reference point for future goal setting as well.

Empathy is vital in the administration of SFBT. A client needs to feel heard and held by the practitioner for any forward movement to occur. Intentionally leaning in to ensure that a client knows that the practitioner is engaged in listening is recommended.

Speaking to strengths and aligning those strengths with goal setting are important interventions in SFT. Recognizing and acknowledging what is already working for the client validates strengths. Self-recognition of these strengths increases self-esteem and in turn, improves forward movement.

The questions asked in Solution-Focused Therapy are positively directed and in a goal-oriented stance. The intention is to allow a perspective shift by guiding clients in the direction of hope and optimism to lead them to a path of positive change. Results and progress come from focusing on the changes that need to be made for goal attainment and increased well being.

1. Miracle Question

Here is a clear example of how to administer the miracle question. It should be delivered deliberately. When done so, it allows the client to imagine the miracle occurring.

“ Now, I want to ask you a strange question. Suppose that while you are sleeping tonight and the entire house is quiet, a miracle happens. The miracle is that the problem which brought you here is solved. However, because you are sleeping, you don’t know that the miracle has happened. So, when you wake up tomorrow morning, what will be different that will tell you that a miracle has happened and the problem which brought you here is solved? ” (de Shazer, 1988)

2. Presupposing change questions

A practitioner of solution-focused therapy asks questions in an approach derived way.

Here are a few examples of presupposing change questions:

“What stopped complete disaster from occurring?” “How did you avoid falling apart.” “What kept you from unraveling?”

3. Exception Questions

Examples of exception questions include:

1. Tell me about times when you don’t get angry. 2. Tell me about times you felt the happiest. 3. When was the last time that you feel you had a better day? 4. Was there ever a time when you felt happy in your relationship? 5. What was it about that day that made it a better day? 6. Can you think of a time when the problem was not present in your life?

4. Scaling Questions

These are questions that allow a client to rate their experience. They also allow for a client to evaluate their motivation to change their experience. Scaling questions allow for a practitioner to add a follow-up question that is in the positive as well.

An example of a scaling question: “On a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing the best it can be and one the worst, where would you say you are today?”

A follow-up question: “ Why a four and not a five?”

Questions like these allow the client to explore the positive, as well as their commitment to the changes that need to occur.

5. Coping Questions

These types of questions open clients up to their resiliency. Clients are experts in their life experience. Helping them see what works, allows them to grow from a place of strength.

“How have you managed so far?” “What have you done to stay afloat?” “What is working?”

3 Scaling questions from Solution Focused Therapy – Uncommon Practitioners

The main idea behind SFBT is that the techniques are positively and solution-focused to allow a brief amount of time for the client to be in therapy. Overall, improving the quality of life for each client, with them at the center and in the driver’s seat of their growth. SFBT typically has an average of 5-8 sessions.

During the sessions, goals are set. Specific experimental actions are explored and deployed into the client’s daily life. By keeping track of what works and where adjustments need to be made, a client is better able to track his or her progress.

A method has developed from the Miracle Question entitled, The Miracle Method . The steps follow below (Miller & Berg, 1996). It was designed for combatting problematic drinking but is useful in all areas of change.

State your desire for something in your life to be different.
Envision a miracle happening, and your life IS different.
Make sure the miracle is important to you.
Keep the miracle small.
Define the change with language that is positive, specific, and behavioral.
State how you will start your journey, rather than how you will end it.
Be clear about who, where, and when, but not the why.

A short selection of exercises which can be used

1. Solution-focused art therapy/ letter writing

A powerful in-session task is to request a client to draw or write about one of the following, as part of art therapy :

a picture of their miracle
something the client does well
a day when everything went well. What was different about that day?
a special person in their life

2. Strengths Finders

Have a client focus on a time when they felt their strongest. Ask them to highlight what strengths were present when things were going well. This can be an illuminating activity that helps clients focus on the strengths they already have inside of them.

A variation of this task is to have a client ask people who are important in their lives to tell them how they view the client’s strengths. Collecting strengths from another’s perspective can be very illuminating and helpful in bringing a client into a strength perspective.

3. Solution Mind Mapping

A creative way to guide a client into a brainstorm of solutions is by mind mapping. Have the miracle at the center of the mind map. From the center, have a client create branches of solutions to make that miracle happen. By exploring solution options, a client will self-generate and be more connected to the outcome.

4. Experiment Journals

Encourage clients to do experiments in real-life settings concerning the presenting problem. Have the client keep track of what works from an approach perspective. Reassure the client that a variety of experiments is a helpful approach.

17 Top-Rated Positive Psychology Exercises for Practitioners

Expand your arsenal and impact with these 17 Positive Psychology Exercises [PDF] , scientifically designed to promote human flourishing, meaning, and wellbeing.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

These books are recommended reads for solution-focused therapy.

1. The Miracle Method: A Radically New Approach to Problem Drinking – Insoo Kim Berg and Scott D. Miller Ph.D.

The Miracle Method by Scott D. Miller and Insoo Kim Berg is a book that has helped many clients overcome problematic drinking since the 1990s.

By utilizing the miracle question in the book, those with problematic drinking behaviors are given the ability to envision a future without the problem.

Concrete, obtainable steps in reaching the envisioned future are laid out in this supportive read.

Available on Amazon .

2. Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques – Harvey Ratney, Evan George and Chris Iveson

Solution Focused Brief Therapy: 100 Key Points and Techniques is a well-received book on solution-focused therapy. Authors Ratner, George, and Iveson provide a concisely written and easily understandable guide to the approach.

Its accessibility allows for quick and effective change in people’s lives.

The book covers the approach’s history, philosophical underpinnings, techniques, and applications. It can be utilized in organizations, coaching, leadership, school-based work, and even in families.

The work is useful for any practitioner seeking to learn the approach and bring it into practice.

3. Handbook of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (Jossey-Bass Psychology) – Scott D. Miller, Mark Hubble and Barry L. Duncan

It includes work from 28 of the lead practitioners in the field and how they have integrated the solution-focused approach with the problem-focused approach.

It utilizes research across treatment modalities to better equip new practitioners with as many tools as possible.

4. More Than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution -Focused Therapy (Routledge Mental Health Classic Editions) – Steve de Shazer and Yvonne Dolan

It allows the reader to peek into hundreds of hours of observation of psychotherapy.

It highlights what questions work and provides a thoughtful overview of applications to complex problems.

Solution-Focused Therapy is an approach that empowers clients to own their abilities in solving life’s problems. Rather than traditional psychotherapy that focuses on how a problem was derived, SFT allows for a goal-oriented focus to problem-solving. This approach allows for future-oriented, rather than past-oriented discussions to move a client forward toward the resolutions of their present problem.

This approach is used in many different areas, including education, family therapy , and even in office settings. Creating cooperative and collaborative opportunities to problem solve allows mind-broadening capabilities. Illuminating a path of choice is a compelling way to enable people to explore how exactly they want to show up in this world.

Thanks for reading!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Psychology Exercises for free .

de Shazer, S. (1988). Clues: Investigating solutions in brief therapy. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co.
Green, L. S., Oades, L. G., & Grant, A. M. (2006). Cognitive-behavioral, solution-focused life coaching: Enhancing goal striving, well-being, and hope. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1 (3), 142-149.
Miller, S. D., & Berg, I. K. (1996). The miracle method: A radically new approach to problem drinking. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co.
Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P., (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Santa Rita Jr, E. (1998). What do you do after asking the miracle question in solution-focused therapy. Family Therapy, 25( 3), 189-195.

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Key Skills for Solution-Focused Problem-Solving

Imagine that you just received an unexpected complex problem and need to find a solution fast. You have never experienced this situation before. What is your approach? Most of us focus on the problem by asking questions such as: “Why do I have this problem? What shall I do to get rid of this problem? Are you sure this is my problem?” Before you know it, the challenge becomes bigger by the minute. Your attention and effort are fully focused on overcoming the problem and you begin to feel less resourceful to find an acceptable solution.

When you focus on the problem instead of the desired outcome, you get stuck in the depths of the problem, as if you are in quicksand. Some people walk into the quicksand with lead boots on. One of the most powerful frames you can use to achieve results is to shift from a problem approach (I don’t want X) to an outcome approach (What I want is Y). This immediately shifts your thinking and the way you feel.

Only when your frame of mind is changed to focusing on the desired result can you begin to move forward toward the desired outcome. Using the Solution-Focused approach, you will be surprised how competently you can tackle even the thorniest of problems and turn them into opportunities.

Interested in becoming a coach? Discover how Solution-Focused coaching skills enable you to create transformational change in yourself and others.

Solution-Focused communication magnetizes our attention toward getting the desired outcome, and so the outcome is held in mind as the vision for the future . Others naturally tend to respond positively to our leadership because we hold the vision that serves everyone. Rather than dwelling on the difficulties or the setbacks, the idea of the solution becomes the road to results, and people feel cheered when they can see a strong pathway toward the solution and are inspired by the plan.

Imagine running a race where there are hurdles every 100 yards. With problem framing, you are focused on the hurdles, “Oh my, how high they are! How hard will I have to work to jump them?” Such a focus, with little or no attention on the finish line, will not make you a champion—guaranteed! The hurdles symbolically (and in reality) stand in your way. When you are focused on the hurdles, you cannot see past them to the finish line that is your true aim. The hurdles loom large in your mind, and the race seems difficult (if not impossible) to run.

With a Solution-Focused approach to communication, your mind is galvanized by your purpose and you are able to see past the hurdles before you. Your purpose always leads you to the finish line, and the hurdles become less important and less of an obstacle. In fact, they may seem so unimportant that they become nonexistent and are just part of the journey. They are still the same height and you’ll still have to jump as high. Yet with the focus on the value of the goal and what is working to move forward towards it, jumping hurdles seems natural and easy. The end of the race is always drawing you onward. The race itself becomes a means to achieve the vision, and it’s the vision—who you are becoming and who you are contributing to—that looms large in your mind. This difference in your focus is the power that leads you to success.

Notice how efficient this approach is – Solution-Focused thinking is far more useful than problem-focused thinking because the focus is on getting the desired outcome, rather than dwelling on the difficulties or setbacks. Constantly operating from a solution perspective is a noticeable characteristic of high achievers.

Focusing on who you are becoming

One of the main ways of producing Solution-Focused results that serve the world is to focus the mind and heart on who you are becoming— and not what you are overcoming. Allowing yourself to go into the lower energies of an overcoming focus puts you into a very challenging and unpleasant hurdle race. People can spend most of their lives running such a race. As soon as you put your attention on what doesn’t work as a ‘reality,’ it is hard to explore what really could work. This is one reason why the Erickson Solution-Focused method is successful in moving people quickly beyond mindsets and models that ‘realistically’ start by focusing on the problem as the necessary aspects to deal with.

As a transformational communicator using the coaching approach, once you are secure in this skill for yourself, you will quickly discover the value of using it consistently in coaching conversations with others. This simple and subtle skill of flipping a problem or conflict into a Solution-Focused orientation may be the single most powerful characteristic of transformational coaches who become known as integral change maestros.

Declaring and visualizing outcomes

When outcomes are declared and visualized carefully, people move toward them naturally, almost effortlessly. What was once considered a problem is now little more than a pebble on the road! Having a strong, inspiring, value-based vision for the future cuts all other concerns down to size. We grow and our ‘problems’ diminish.

Once you, the transformational communicator, know how to consciously assist people to orient toward their larger purpose and goals, your clients will move consistently and more easily toward their desired outcomes. They will achieve their outcomes by choice, not by chance.

Creating a compelling future

Developing, holding, and feeling a vision of a compelling future is the single most important task for a person, in order to achieve their goals and dreams.

Without this vision and the process of consistently visualizing potential action steps to accomplish it, people move in a random, scattered fashion. They are likely to struggle and get frustrated and stuck.

When people make the choice to hold a specific outcome securely on the movie screen of their minds, they naturally begin to move toward making their vision a reality—no matter how large or small it is. Their chosen outcome becomes their future.

Who you are is the future you are moving into! What is in your mind becomes your reality. You have two choices. You can visualize how your problems continue, which will move you towards having even more problems. Or, you can visualize your outcome becoming real and move toward having it. Which do you prefer?

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The Art of Effective Problem Solving: A Step-by-Step Guide

Problem Solving - A step by step guide - LearnLeanSigma

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Problem Solving

Whether we realise it or not, problem solving skills are an important part of our daily lives. From resolving a minor annoyance at home to tackling complex business challenges at work, our ability to solve problems has a significant impact on our success and happiness. However, not everyone is naturally gifted at problem-solving, and even those who are can always improve their skills. In this blog post, we will go over the art of effective problem-solving step by step.

You will learn how to define a problem, gather information, assess alternatives, and implement a solution, all while honing your critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills. Whether you’re a seasoned problem solver or just getting started, this guide will arm you with the knowledge and tools you need to face any challenge with confidence. So let’s get started!

Problem solving methodologies.

Individuals and organisations can use a variety of problem-solving methodologies to address complex challenges. 8D and A3 problem solving techniques are two popular methodologies in the Lean Six Sigma framework.

Methodology of 8D (Eight Discipline) Problem Solving:

The 8D problem solving methodology is a systematic, team-based approach to problem solving. It is a method that guides a team through eight distinct steps to solve a problem in a systematic and comprehensive manner.

The 8D process consists of the following steps:

Form a team: Assemble a group of people who have the necessary expertise to work on the problem.
Define the issue: Clearly identify and define the problem, including the root cause and the customer impact.
Create a temporary containment plan: Put in place a plan to lessen the impact of the problem until a permanent solution can be found.
Identify the root cause: To identify the underlying causes of the problem, use root cause analysis techniques such as Fishbone diagrams and Pareto charts.
Create and test long-term corrective actions: Create and test a long-term solution to eliminate the root cause of the problem.
Implement and validate the permanent solution: Implement and validate the permanent solution’s effectiveness.
Prevent recurrence: Put in place measures to keep the problem from recurring.
Recognize and reward the team: Recognize and reward the team for its efforts.

Download the 8D Problem Solving Template

A3 Problem Solving Method:

The A3 problem solving technique is a visual, team-based problem-solving approach that is frequently used in Lean Six Sigma projects. The A3 report is a one-page document that clearly and concisely outlines the problem, root cause analysis, and proposed solution.

The A3 problem-solving procedure consists of the following steps:

Determine the issue: Define the issue clearly, including its impact on the customer.
Perform root cause analysis: Identify the underlying causes of the problem using root cause analysis techniques.
Create and implement a solution: Create and implement a solution that addresses the problem’s root cause.
Monitor and improve the solution: Keep an eye on the solution’s effectiveness and make any necessary changes.

Subsequently, in the Lean Six Sigma framework, the 8D and A3 problem solving methodologies are two popular approaches to problem solving. Both methodologies provide a structured, team-based problem-solving approach that guides individuals through a comprehensive and systematic process of identifying, analysing, and resolving problems in an effective and efficient manner.

Step 1 – Define the Problem

The definition of the problem is the first step in effective problem solving. This may appear to be a simple task, but it is actually quite difficult. This is because problems are frequently complex and multi-layered, making it easy to confuse symptoms with the underlying cause. To avoid this pitfall, it is critical to thoroughly understand the problem.

To begin, ask yourself some clarifying questions:

What exactly is the issue?
What are the problem’s symptoms or consequences?
Who or what is impacted by the issue?
When and where does the issue arise?

Answering these questions will assist you in determining the scope of the problem. However, simply describing the problem is not always sufficient; you must also identify the root cause. The root cause is the underlying cause of the problem and is usually the key to resolving it permanently.

Try asking “why” questions to find the root cause:

What causes the problem?
Why does it continue?
Why does it have the effects that it does?

By repeatedly asking “ why ,” you’ll eventually get to the bottom of the problem. This is an important step in the problem-solving process because it ensures that you’re dealing with the root cause rather than just the symptoms.

Once you have a firm grasp on the issue, it is time to divide it into smaller, more manageable chunks. This makes tackling the problem easier and reduces the risk of becoming overwhelmed. For example, if you’re attempting to solve a complex business problem, you might divide it into smaller components like market research, product development, and sales strategies.

To summarise step 1, defining the problem is an important first step in effective problem-solving. You will be able to identify the root cause and break it down into manageable parts if you take the time to thoroughly understand the problem. This will prepare you for the next step in the problem-solving process, which is gathering information and brainstorming ideas.

Step 2 – Gather Information and Brainstorm Ideas

Gathering information and brainstorming ideas is the next step in effective problem solving. This entails researching the problem and relevant information, collaborating with others, and coming up with a variety of potential solutions. This increases your chances of finding the best solution to the problem.

Begin by researching the problem and relevant information. This could include reading articles, conducting surveys, or consulting with experts. The goal is to collect as much information as possible in order to better understand the problem and possible solutions.

Next, work with others to gather a variety of perspectives. Brainstorming with others can be an excellent way to come up with new and creative ideas. Encourage everyone to share their thoughts and ideas when working in a group, and make an effort to actively listen to what others have to say. Be open to new and unconventional ideas and resist the urge to dismiss them too quickly.

Finally, use brainstorming to generate a wide range of potential solutions. This is the place where you can let your imagination run wild. At this stage, don’t worry about the feasibility or practicality of the solutions; instead, focus on generating as many ideas as possible. Write down everything that comes to mind, no matter how ridiculous or unusual it may appear. This can be done individually or in groups.

Once you’ve compiled a list of potential solutions, it’s time to assess them and select the best one. This is the next step in the problem-solving process, which we’ll go over in greater detail in the following section.

Step 3 – Evaluate Options and Choose the Best Solution

Once you’ve compiled a list of potential solutions, it’s time to assess them and select the best one. This is the third step in effective problem solving, and it entails weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each solution, considering their feasibility and practicability, and selecting the solution that is most likely to solve the problem effectively.

To begin, weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. This will assist you in determining the potential outcomes of each solution and deciding which is the best option. For example, a quick and easy solution may not be the most effective in the long run, whereas a more complex and time-consuming solution may be more effective in solving the problem in the long run.

Consider each solution’s feasibility and practicability. Consider the following:

Can the solution be implemented within the available resources, time, and budget?
What are the possible barriers to implementing the solution?
Is the solution feasible in today’s political, economic, and social environment?

You’ll be able to tell which solutions are likely to succeed and which aren’t by assessing their feasibility and practicability.

Finally, choose the solution that is most likely to effectively solve the problem. This solution should be based on the criteria you’ve established, such as the advantages and disadvantages of each solution, their feasibility and practicability, and your overall goals.

It is critical to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to problems. What is effective for one person or situation may not be effective for another. This is why it is critical to consider a wide range of solutions and evaluate each one based on its ability to effectively solve the problem.

Step 4 – Implement and Monitor the Solution

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When you’ve decided on the best solution, it’s time to put it into action. The fourth and final step in effective problem solving is to put the solution into action, monitor its progress, and make any necessary adjustments.

To begin, implement the solution. This may entail delegating tasks, developing a strategy, and allocating resources. Ascertain that everyone involved understands their role and responsibilities in the solution’s implementation.

Next, keep an eye on the solution’s progress. This may entail scheduling regular check-ins, tracking metrics, and soliciting feedback from others. You will be able to identify any potential roadblocks and make any necessary adjustments in a timely manner if you monitor the progress of the solution.

Finally, make any necessary modifications to the solution. This could entail changing the solution, altering the plan of action, or delegating different tasks. Be willing to make changes if they will improve the solution or help it solve the problem more effectively.

It’s important to remember that problem solving is an iterative process, and there may be times when you need to start from scratch. This is especially true if the initial solution does not effectively solve the problem. In these situations, it’s critical to be adaptable and flexible and to keep trying new solutions until you find the one that works best.

To summarise, effective problem solving is a critical skill that can assist individuals and organisations in overcoming challenges and achieving their objectives. Effective problem solving consists of four key steps: defining the problem, generating potential solutions, evaluating alternatives and selecting the best solution, and implementing the solution.

You can increase your chances of success in problem solving by following these steps and considering factors such as the pros and cons of each solution, their feasibility and practicability, and making any necessary adjustments. Furthermore, keep in mind that problem solving is an iterative process, and there may be times when you need to go back to the beginning and restart. Maintain your adaptability and try new solutions until you find the one that works best for you.

Novick, L.R. and Bassok, M., 2005. Problem Solving . Cambridge University Press.

Daniel Croft

Daniel Croft is a seasoned continuous improvement manager with a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma. With over 10 years of real-world application experience across diverse sectors, Daniel has a passion for optimizing processes and fostering a culture of efficiency. He's not just a practitioner but also an avid learner, constantly seeking to expand his knowledge. Outside of his professional life, Daniel has a keen Investing, statistics and knowledge-sharing, which led him to create the website learnleansigma.com, a platform dedicated to Lean Six Sigma and process improvement insights.

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10 Problem-solving strategies to turn challenges on their head

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What is an example of problem-solving?

What are the 5 steps to problem-solving, 10 effective problem-solving strategies, what skills do efficient problem solvers have, how to improve your problem-solving skills.

Problems come in all shapes and sizes — from workplace conflict to budget cuts.

Creative problem-solving is one of the most in-demand skills in all roles and industries. It can boost an organization’s human capital and give it a competitive edge.

Problem-solving strategies are ways of approaching problems that can help you look beyond the obvious answers and find the best solution to your problem .

Let’s take a look at a five-step problem-solving process and how to combine it with proven problem-solving strategies. This will give you the tools and skills to solve even your most complex problems.

Good problem-solving is an essential part of the decision-making process . To see what a problem-solving process might look like in real life, let’s take a common problem for SaaS brands — decreasing customer churn rates.

To solve this problem, the company must first identify it. In this case, the problem is that the churn rate is too high.

Next, they need to identify the root causes of the problem. This could be anything from their customer service experience to their email marketing campaigns. If there are several problems, they will need a separate problem-solving process for each one.

Let’s say the problem is with email marketing — they’re not nurturing existing customers. Now that they’ve identified the problem, they can start using problem-solving strategies to look for solutions.

This might look like coming up with special offers, discounts, or bonuses for existing customers. They need to find ways to remind them to use their products and services while providing added value. This will encourage customers to keep paying their monthly subscriptions.

They might also want to add incentives, such as access to a premium service at no extra cost after 12 months of membership. They could publish blog posts that help their customers solve common problems and share them as an email newsletter.

The company should set targets and a time frame in which to achieve them. This will allow leaders to measure progress and identify which actions yield the best results.

Perhaps you’ve got a problem you need to tackle. Or maybe you want to be prepared the next time one arises. Either way, it’s a good idea to get familiar with the five steps of problem-solving.

Use this step-by-step problem-solving method with the strategies in the following section to find possible solutions to your problem.

1. Identify the problem

The first step is to know which problem you need to solve. Then, you need to find the root cause of the problem.

The best course of action is to gather as much data as possible, speak to the people involved, and separate facts from opinions.

Once this is done, formulate a statement that describes the problem. Use rational persuasion to make sure your team agrees .

2. Break the problem down

Identifying the problem allows you to see which steps need to be taken to solve it.

First, break the problem down into achievable blocks. Then, use strategic planning to set a time frame in which to solve the problem and establish a timeline for the completion of each stage.

3. Generate potential solutions

At this stage, the aim isn’t to evaluate possible solutions but to generate as many ideas as possible.

Encourage your team to use creative thinking and be patient — the best solution may not be the first or most obvious one.

Use one or more of the different strategies in the following section to help come up with solutions — the more creative, the better.

4. Evaluate the possible solutions

Once you’ve generated potential solutions, narrow them down to a shortlist. Then, evaluate the options on your shortlist.

There are usually many factors to consider. So when evaluating a solution, ask yourself the following questions:

Will my team be on board with the proposition?
Does the solution align with organizational goals ?
Is the solution likely to achieve the desired outcomes?
Is the solution realistic and possible with current resources and constraints?
Will the solution solve the problem without causing additional unintended problems?

woman-helping-her-colleague-problem-solving-strategies

5. Implement and monitor the solutions

Once you’ve identified your solution and got buy-in from your team, it’s time to implement it.

But the work doesn’t stop there. You need to monitor your solution to see whether it actually solves your problem.

Request regular feedback from the team members involved and have a monitoring and evaluation plan in place to measure progress.

If the solution doesn’t achieve your desired results, start this step-by-step process again.

There are many different ways to approach problem-solving. Each is suitable for different types of problems.

The most appropriate problem-solving techniques will depend on your specific problem. You may need to experiment with several strategies before you find a workable solution.

Here are 10 effective problem-solving strategies for you to try:

Use a solution that worked before
Brainstorming
Work backward
Use the Kipling method
Draw the problem
Use trial and error
Sleep on it
Get advice from your peers
Use the Pareto principle
Add successful solutions to your toolkit

Let’s break each of these down.

1. Use a solution that worked before

It might seem obvious, but if you’ve faced similar problems in the past, look back to what worked then. See if any of the solutions could apply to your current situation and, if so, replicate them.

2. Brainstorming

The more people you enlist to help solve the problem, the more potential solutions you can come up with.

Use different brainstorming techniques to workshop potential solutions with your team. They’ll likely bring something you haven’t thought of to the table.

3. Work backward

Working backward is a way to reverse engineer your problem. Imagine your problem has been solved, and make that the starting point.

Then, retrace your steps back to where you are now. This can help you see which course of action may be most effective.

4. Use the Kipling method

This is a method that poses six questions based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “ I Keep Six Honest Serving Men .”

What is the problem?
Why is the problem important?
When did the problem arise, and when does it need to be solved?
How did the problem happen?
Where is the problem occurring?
Who does the problem affect?

Answering these questions can help you identify possible solutions.

5. Draw the problem

Sometimes it can be difficult to visualize all the components and moving parts of a problem and its solution. Drawing a diagram can help.

This technique is particularly helpful for solving process-related problems. For example, a product development team might want to decrease the time they take to fix bugs and create new iterations. Drawing the processes involved can help you see where improvements can be made.

woman-drawing-mind-map-problem-solving-strategies

6. Use trial-and-error

A trial-and-error approach can be useful when you have several possible solutions and want to test them to see which one works best.

7. Sleep on it

Finding the best solution to a problem is a process. Remember to take breaks and get enough rest . Sometimes, a walk around the block can bring inspiration, but you should sleep on it if possible.

A good night’s sleep helps us find creative solutions to problems. This is because when you sleep, your brain sorts through the day’s events and stores them as memories. This enables you to process your ideas at a subconscious level.

If possible, give yourself a few days to develop and analyze possible solutions. You may find you have greater clarity after sleeping on it. Your mind will also be fresh, so you’ll be able to make better decisions.

8. Get advice from your peers

Getting input from a group of people can help you find solutions you may not have thought of on your own.

For solo entrepreneurs or freelancers, this might look like hiring a coach or mentor or joining a mastermind group.

For leaders , it might be consulting other members of the leadership team or working with a business coach .

It’s important to recognize you might not have all the skills, experience, or knowledge necessary to find a solution alone.

9. Use the Pareto principle

The Pareto principle — also known as the 80/20 rule — can help you identify possible root causes and potential solutions for your problems.

Although it’s not a mathematical law, it’s a principle found throughout many aspects of business and life. For example, 20% of the sales reps in a company might close 80% of the sales.

You may be able to narrow down the causes of your problem by applying the Pareto principle. This can also help you identify the most appropriate solutions.

10. Add successful solutions to your toolkit

Every situation is different, and the same solutions might not always work. But by keeping a record of successful problem-solving strategies, you can build up a solutions toolkit.

These solutions may be applicable to future problems. Even if not, they may save you some of the time and work needed to come up with a new solution.

three-colleagues-looking-at-computer-problem-solving-strategies

Improving problem-solving skills is essential for professional development — both yours and your team’s. Here are some of the key skills of effective problem solvers:

Critical thinking and analytical skills
Communication skills , including active listening
Decision-making
Planning and prioritization
Emotional intelligence , including empathy and emotional regulation
Time management
Data analysis
Research skills
Project management

And they see problems as opportunities. Everyone is born with problem-solving skills. But accessing these abilities depends on how we view problems. Effective problem-solvers see problems as opportunities to learn and improve.

Ready to work on your problem-solving abilities? Get started with these seven tips.

1. Build your problem-solving skills

One of the best ways to improve your problem-solving skills is to learn from experts. Consider enrolling in organizational training , shadowing a mentor , or working with a coach .

2. Practice

Practice using your new problem-solving skills by applying them to smaller problems you might encounter in your daily life.

Alternatively, imagine problematic scenarios that might arise at work and use problem-solving strategies to find hypothetical solutions.

3. Don’t try to find a solution right away

Often, the first solution you think of to solve a problem isn’t the most appropriate or effective.

Instead of thinking on the spot, give yourself time and use one or more of the problem-solving strategies above to activate your creative thinking.

two-colleagues-talking-at-corporate-event-problem-solving-strategies

4. Ask for feedback

Receiving feedback is always important for learning and growth. Your perception of your problem-solving skills may be different from that of your colleagues. They can provide insights that help you improve.

5. Learn new approaches and methodologies

There are entire books written about problem-solving methodologies if you want to take a deep dive into the subject.

We recommend starting with “ Fixed — How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving ” by Amy E. Herman.

6. Experiment

Tried-and-tested problem-solving techniques can be useful. However, they don’t teach you how to innovate and develop your own problem-solving approaches.

Sometimes, an unconventional approach can lead to the development of a brilliant new idea or strategy. So don’t be afraid to suggest your most “out there” ideas.

7. Analyze the success of your competitors

Do you have competitors who have already solved the problem you’re facing? Look at what they did, and work backward to solve your own problem.

For example, Netflix started in the 1990s as a DVD mail-rental company. Its main competitor at the time was Blockbuster.

But when streaming became the norm in the early 2000s, both companies faced a crisis. Netflix innovated, unveiling its streaming service in 2007.

If Blockbuster had followed Netflix’s example, it might have survived. Instead, it declared bankruptcy in 2010.

Use problem-solving strategies to uplevel your business

When facing a problem, it’s worth taking the time to find the right solution.

Otherwise, we risk either running away from our problems or headlong into solutions. When we do this, we might miss out on other, better options.

Use the problem-solving strategies outlined above to find innovative solutions to your business’ most perplexing problems.

If you’re ready to take problem-solving to the next level, request a demo with BetterUp . Our expert coaches specialize in helping teams develop and implement strategies that work.

Boost your productivity

Maximize your time and productivity with strategies from our expert coaches.

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

8 creative solutions to your most challenging problems

5 problem-solving questions to prepare you for your next interview, what are metacognitive skills examples in everyday life, 31 examples of problem solving performance review phrases, what is lateral thinking 7 techniques to encourage creative ideas, leadership activities that encourage employee engagement, learn what process mapping is and how to create one (+ examples), how much do distractions cost 8 effects of lack of focus, can dreams help you solve problems 6 ways to try, similar articles, the pareto principle: how the 80/20 rule can help you do more with less, thinking outside the box: 8 ways to become a creative problem solver, experimentation brings innovation: create an experimental workplace, 3 problem statement examples and steps to write your own, contingency planning: 4 steps to prepare for the unexpected, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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35 problem-solving techniques and methods for solving complex problems

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How do you identify problems?

How do you identify the right solution.

Tips for more effective problem-solving

Complete problem-solving methods

Problem-solving techniques to identify and analyze problems
Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

Problem-solving warm-up activities

Closing activities for a problem-solving process.

Before you can move towards finding the right solution for a given problem, you first need to identify and define the problem you wish to solve.

Here, you want to clearly articulate what the problem is and allow your group to do the same. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives and alignment is necessary in order to help the group move forward.

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Be sure to try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions.

Remember that problem analysis and further discussion are also important. Not taking the time to fully analyze and discuss a challenge can result in the development of solutions that are not fit for purpose or do not address the underlying issue.

Successfully identifying and then analyzing a problem means facilitating a group through activities designed to help them clearly and honestly articulate their thoughts and produce usable insight.

With this data, you might then produce a problem statement that clearly describes the problem you wish to be addressed and also state the goal of any process you undertake to tackle this issue.

Finding solutions is the end goal of any process. Complex organizational challenges can only be solved with an appropriate solution but discovering them requires using the right problem-solving tool.

After you’ve explored a problem and discussed ideas, you need to help a team discuss and choose the right solution. Consensus tools and methods such as those below help a group explore possible solutions before then voting for the best. They’re a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of the group for great results!

Remember that the process is often iterative. Great problem solvers often roadtest a viable solution in a measured way to see what works too. While you might not get the right solution on your first try, the methods below help teams land on the most likely to succeed solution while also holding space for improvement.

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . A well-structured workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Tips for more effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.

Try different approaches

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

Six Thinking Hats
Lightning Decision Jam
Problem Definition Process
Discovery & Action Dialogue

Design Sprint 2.0

Open Space Technology

1. Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

2. Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on.

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages.

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) #action #decision making #problem solving #issue analysis #innovation #design #remote-friendly The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

3. Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design.

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition #problem solving #idea generation #creativity #online #remote-friendly A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

4. The 5 Whys

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges.

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results.

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

The 5 Whys #hyperisland #innovation This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

5. World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold.

World Cafe #hyperisland #innovation #issue analysis World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

6. Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD) #idea generation #liberating structures #action #issue analysis #remote-friendly DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

7. Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

8. Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology #action plan #idea generation #problem solving #issue analysis #large group #online #remote-friendly Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

The Creativity Dice
Fishbone Analysis
Problem Tree
SWOT Analysis
Agreement-Certainty Matrix
The Journalistic Six
LEGO Challenge
What, So What, Now What?
Journalists

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed.

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It! #gamestorming #problem solving #action Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

10. The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed.

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable.

The Creativity Dice #creativity #problem solving #thiagi #issue analysis Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

11. Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around.

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish.

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis #problem solving ##root cause analysis #decision making #online facilitation A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

12. Problem Tree

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them.

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree #define intentions #create #design #issue analysis A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

13. SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward.

SWOT analysis #gamestorming #problem solving #action #meeting facilitation The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

14. Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results.

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause.

Agreement-Certainty Matrix #issue analysis #liberating structures #problem solving You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic . A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate. It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably. A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail. Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward. A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process.

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID #gamestorming #project planning #issue analysis #problem solving When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

16. Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!

Speed Boat #gamestorming #problem solving #action Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

17. The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How #idea generation #issue analysis #problem solving #online #creative thinking #remote-friendly A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

18. LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills.

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO!

LEGO Challenge #hyperisland #team A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

19. What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems.

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken.

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What? #issue analysis #innovation #liberating structures You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

20. Journalists

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists #vision #big picture #issue analysis #remote-friendly This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to narrow down to the correct solution.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team find consensus, compare possible solutions, and move towards taking action on a particular problem.

Improved Solutions
Four-Step Sketch
15% Solutions
How-Now-Wow matrix
Impact Effort Matrix

21. Mindspin

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly.

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation.

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex.

MindSpin #teampedia #idea generation #problem solving #action A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

22. Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result.

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution.

Improved Solutions #creativity #thiagi #problem solving #action #team You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

23. Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged.

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

Four-Step Sketch #design sprint #innovation #idea generation #remote-friendly The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper, Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

24. 15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change.

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change.

15% Solutions #action #liberating structures #remote-friendly You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference. 15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change. With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

25. How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process.

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud.

How-Now-Wow Matrix #gamestorming #idea generation #remote-friendly When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

26. Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice.

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them.

Impact and Effort Matrix #gamestorming #decision making #action #remote-friendly In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

27. Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action?

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus.

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively.

Dotmocracy #action #decision making #group prioritization #hyperisland #remote-friendly Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

Check-in/Check-out
Doodling Together
Show and Tell
Constellations
Draw a Tree

28. Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute.

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out #team #opening #closing #hyperisland #remote-friendly Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

29. Doodling Together

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start.

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems.

Doodling Together #collaboration #creativity #teamwork #fun #team #visual methods #energiser #icebreaker #remote-friendly Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

30. Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team!

Show and Tell #gamestorming #action #opening #meeting facilitation Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

31. Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible.

Constellations #trust #connection #opening #coaching #patterns #system Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

32. Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic.

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree #thiagi #opening #perspectives #remote-friendly With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

One Breath Feedback
Who What When Matrix
Response Cards

How do I conclude a problem-solving process?

All good things must come to an end. With the bulk of the work done, it can be tempting to conclude your workshop swiftly and without a moment to debrief and align. This can be problematic in that it doesn’t allow your team to fully process the results or reflect on the process.

At the end of an effective session, your team will have gone through a process that, while productive, can be exhausting. It’s important to give your group a moment to take a breath, ensure that they are clear on future actions, and provide short feedback before leaving the space.

The primary purpose of any problem-solving method is to generate solutions and then implement them. Be sure to take the opportunity to ensure everyone is aligned and ready to effectively implement the solutions you produced in the workshop.

Remember that every process can be improved and by giving a short moment to collect feedback in the session, you can further refine your problem-solving methods and see further success in the future too.

33. One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round.

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them.

One breath feedback #closing #feedback #action This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

34. Who What When Matrix

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward.

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved.

Who/What/When Matrix #gamestorming #action #project planning With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

35. Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out!

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised.

Response Cards #debriefing #closing #structured sharing #questions and answers #thiagi #action It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Save time and effort discovering the right solutions

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session timing adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore how to use SessionLab to design effective problem solving workshops or watch this five minute video to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of creative exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you!

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

Your list of techniques for problem solving can be helpfully extended by adding TRIZ to the list of techniques. TRIZ has 40 problem solving techniques derived from methods inventros and patent holders used to get new patents. About 10-12 are general approaches. many organization sponsor classes in TRIZ that are used to solve business problems or general organiztational problems. You can take a look at TRIZ and dwonload a free internet booklet to see if you feel it shound be included per your selection process.

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7.3 Problem-Solving

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Describe problem solving strategies
Define algorithm and heuristic
Explain some common roadblocks to effective problem solving

People face problems every day—usually, multiple problems throughout the day. Sometimes these problems are straightforward: To double a recipe for pizza dough, for example, all that is required is that each ingredient in the recipe be doubled. Sometimes, however, the problems we encounter are more complex. For example, say you have a work deadline, and you must mail a printed copy of a report to your supervisor by the end of the business day. The report is time-sensitive and must be sent overnight. You finished the report last night, but your printer will not work today. What should you do? First, you need to identify the problem and then apply a strategy for solving the problem.

The study of human and animal problem solving processes has provided much insight toward the understanding of our conscious experience and led to advancements in computer science and artificial intelligence. Essentially much of cognitive science today represents studies of how we consciously and unconsciously make decisions and solve problems. For instance, when encountered with a large amount of information, how do we go about making decisions about the most efficient way of sorting and analyzing all the information in order to find what you are looking for as in visual search paradigms in cognitive psychology. Or in a situation where a piece of machinery is not working properly, how do we go about organizing how to address the issue and understand what the cause of the problem might be. How do we sort the procedures that will be needed and focus attention on what is important in order to solve problems efficiently. Within this section we will discuss some of these issues and examine processes related to human, animal and computer problem solving.

PROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES

When people are presented with a problem—whether it is a complex mathematical problem or a broken printer, how do you solve it? Before finding a solution to the problem, the problem must first be clearly identified. After that, one of many problem solving strategies can be applied, hopefully resulting in a solution.

Problems themselves can be classified into two different categories known as ill-defined and well-defined problems (Schacter, 2009). Ill-defined problems represent issues that do not have clear goals, solution paths, or expected solutions whereas well-defined problems have specific goals, clearly defined solutions, and clear expected solutions. Problem solving often incorporates pragmatics (logical reasoning) and semantics (interpretation of meanings behind the problem), and also in many cases require abstract thinking and creativity in order to find novel solutions. Within psychology, problem solving refers to a motivational drive for reading a definite “goal” from a present situation or condition that is either not moving toward that goal, is distant from it, or requires more complex logical analysis for finding a missing description of conditions or steps toward that goal. Processes relating to problem solving include problem finding also known as problem analysis, problem shaping where the organization of the problem occurs, generating alternative strategies, implementation of attempted solutions, and verification of the selected solution. Various methods of studying problem solving exist within the field of psychology including introspection, behavior analysis and behaviorism, simulation, computer modeling, and experimentation.

A problem-solving strategy is a plan of action used to find a solution. Different strategies have different action plans associated with them (table below). For example, a well-known strategy is trial and error. The old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” describes trial and error. In terms of your broken printer, you could try checking the ink levels, and if that doesn’t work, you could check to make sure the paper tray isn’t jammed. Or maybe the printer isn’t actually connected to your laptop. When using trial and error, you would continue to try different solutions until you solved your problem. Although trial and error is not typically one of the most time-efficient strategies, it is a commonly used one.

Another type of strategy is an algorithm. An algorithm is a problem-solving formula that provides you with step-by-step instructions used to achieve a desired outcome (Kahneman, 2011). You can think of an algorithm as a recipe with highly detailed instructions that produce the same result every time they are performed. Algorithms are used frequently in our everyday lives, especially in computer science. When you run a search on the Internet, search engines like Google use algorithms to decide which entries will appear first in your list of results. Facebook also uses algorithms to decide which posts to display on your newsfeed. Can you identify other situations in which algorithms are used?

A heuristic is another type of problem solving strategy. While an algorithm must be followed exactly to produce a correct result, a heuristic is a general problem-solving framework (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). You can think of these as mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems. A “rule of thumb” is an example of a heuristic. Such a rule saves the person time and energy when making a decision, but despite its time-saving characteristics, it is not always the best method for making a rational decision. Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, but the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met (Pratkanis, 1989):

When one is faced with too much information
When the time to make a decision is limited
When the decision to be made is unimportant
When there is access to very little information to use in making the decision
When an appropriate heuristic happens to come to mind in the same moment

Working backwards is a useful heuristic in which you begin solving the problem by focusing on the end result. Consider this example: You live in Washington, D.C. and have been invited to a wedding at 4 PM on Saturday in Philadelphia. Knowing that Interstate 95 tends to back up any day of the week, you need to plan your route and time your departure accordingly. If you want to be at the wedding service by 3:30 PM, and it takes 2.5 hours to get to Philadelphia without traffic, what time should you leave your house? You use the working backwards heuristic to plan the events of your day on a regular basis, probably without even thinking about it.

Another useful heuristic is the practice of accomplishing a large goal or task by breaking it into a series of smaller steps. Students often use this common method to complete a large research project or long essay for school. For example, students typically brainstorm, develop a thesis or main topic, research the chosen topic, organize their information into an outline, write a rough draft, revise and edit the rough draft, develop a final draft, organize the references list, and proofread their work before turning in the project. The large task becomes less overwhelming when it is broken down into a series of small steps.

Further problem solving strategies have been identified (listed below) that incorporate flexible and creative thinking in order to reach solutions efficiently.

Additional Problem Solving Strategies :

Abstraction – refers to solving the problem within a model of the situation before applying it to reality.
Analogy – is using a solution that solves a similar problem.
Brainstorming – refers to collecting an analyzing a large amount of solutions, especially within a group of people, to combine the solutions and developing them until an optimal solution is reached.
Divide and conquer – breaking down large complex problems into smaller more manageable problems.
Hypothesis testing – method used in experimentation where an assumption about what would happen in response to manipulating an independent variable is made, and analysis of the affects of the manipulation are made and compared to the original hypothesis.
Lateral thinking – approaching problems indirectly and creatively by viewing the problem in a new and unusual light.
Means-ends analysis – choosing and analyzing an action at a series of smaller steps to move closer to the goal.
Method of focal objects – putting seemingly non-matching characteristics of different procedures together to make something new that will get you closer to the goal.
Morphological analysis – analyzing the outputs of and interactions of many pieces that together make up a whole system.
Proof – trying to prove that a problem cannot be solved. Where the proof fails becomes the starting point or solving the problem.
Reduction – adapting the problem to be as similar problems where a solution exists.
Research – using existing knowledge or solutions to similar problems to solve the problem.
Root cause analysis – trying to identify the cause of the problem.

The strategies listed above outline a short summary of methods we use in working toward solutions and also demonstrate how the mind works when being faced with barriers preventing goals to be reached.

One example of means-end analysis can be found by using the Tower of Hanoi paradigm . This paradigm can be modeled as a word problems as demonstrated by the Missionary-Cannibal Problem :

Missionary-Cannibal Problem

Three missionaries and three cannibals are on one side of a river and need to cross to the other side. The only means of crossing is a boat, and the boat can only hold two people at a time. Your goal is to devise a set of moves that will transport all six of the people across the river, being in mind the following constraint: The number of cannibals can never exceed the number of missionaries in any location. Remember that someone will have to also row that boat back across each time.

Hint : At one point in your solution, you will have to send more people back to the original side than you just sent to the destination.

The actual Tower of Hanoi problem consists of three rods sitting vertically on a base with a number of disks of different sizes that can slide onto any rod. The puzzle starts with the disks in a neat stack in ascending order of size on one rod, the smallest at the top making a conical shape. The objective of the puzzle is to move the entire stack to another rod obeying the following rules:

1. Only one disk can be moved at a time.
2. Each move consists of taking the upper disk from one of the stacks and placing it on top of another stack or on an empty rod.
3. No disc may be placed on top of a smaller disk.

Figure 7.02. Steps for solving the Tower of Hanoi in the minimum number of moves when there are 3 disks.

Figure 7.03. Graphical representation of nodes (circles) and moves (lines) of Tower of Hanoi.

The Tower of Hanoi is a frequently used psychological technique to study problem solving and procedure analysis. A variation of the Tower of Hanoi known as the Tower of London has been developed which has been an important tool in the neuropsychological diagnosis of executive function disorders and their treatment.

GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY AND PROBLEM SOLVING

As you may recall from the sensation and perception chapter, Gestalt psychology describes whole patterns, forms and configurations of perception and cognition such as closure, good continuation, and figure-ground. In addition to patterns of perception, Wolfgang Kohler, a German Gestalt psychologist traveled to the Spanish island of Tenerife in order to study animals behavior and problem solving in the anthropoid ape.

As an interesting side note to Kohler’s studies of chimp problem solving, Dr. Ronald Ley, professor of psychology at State University of New York provides evidence in his book A Whisper of Espionage (1990) suggesting that while collecting data for what would later be his book The Mentality of Apes (1925) on Tenerife in the Canary Islands between 1914 and 1920, Kohler was additionally an active spy for the German government alerting Germany to ships that were sailing around the Canary Islands. Ley suggests his investigations in England, Germany and elsewhere in Europe confirm that Kohler had served in the German military by building, maintaining and operating a concealed radio that contributed to Germany’s war effort acting as a strategic outpost in the Canary Islands that could monitor naval military activity approaching the north African coast.

While trapped on the island over the course of World War 1, Kohler applied Gestalt principles to animal perception in order to understand how they solve problems. He recognized that the apes on the islands also perceive relations between stimuli and the environment in Gestalt patterns and understand these patterns as wholes as opposed to pieces that make up a whole. Kohler based his theories of animal intelligence on the ability to understand relations between stimuli, and spent much of his time while trapped on the island investigation what he described as insight , the sudden perception of useful or proper relations. In order to study insight in animals, Kohler would present problems to chimpanzee’s by hanging some banana’s or some kind of food so it was suspended higher than the apes could reach. Within the room, Kohler would arrange a variety of boxes, sticks or other tools the chimpanzees could use by combining in patterns or organizing in a way that would allow them to obtain the food (Kohler & Winter, 1925).

While viewing the chimpanzee’s, Kohler noticed one chimp that was more efficient at solving problems than some of the others. The chimp, named Sultan, was able to use long poles to reach through bars and organize objects in specific patterns to obtain food or other desirables that were originally out of reach. In order to study insight within these chimps, Kohler would remove objects from the room to systematically make the food more difficult to obtain. As the story goes, after removing many of the objects Sultan was used to using to obtain the food, he sat down ad sulked for a while, and then suddenly got up going over to two poles lying on the ground. Without hesitation Sultan put one pole inside the end of the other creating a longer pole that he could use to obtain the food demonstrating an ideal example of what Kohler described as insight. In another situation, Sultan discovered how to stand on a box to reach a banana that was suspended from the rafters illustrating Sultan’s perception of relations and the importance of insight in problem solving.

Grande (another chimp in the group studied by Kohler) builds a three-box structure to reach the bananas, while Sultan watches from the ground. Insight , sometimes referred to as an “Ah-ha” experience, was the term Kohler used for the sudden perception of useful relations among objects during problem solving (Kohler, 1927; Radvansky & Ashcraft, 2013).

Solving puzzles.

Problem-solving abilities can improve with practice. Many people challenge themselves every day with puzzles and other mental exercises to sharpen their problem-solving skills. Sudoku puzzles appear daily in most newspapers. Typically, a sudoku puzzle is a 9×9 grid. The simple sudoku below (see figure) is a 4×4 grid. To solve the puzzle, fill in the empty boxes with a single digit: 1, 2, 3, or 4. Here are the rules: The numbers must total 10 in each bolded box, each row, and each column; however, each digit can only appear once in a bolded box, row, and column. Time yourself as you solve this puzzle and compare your time with a classmate.

How long did it take you to solve this sudoku puzzle? (You can see the answer at the end of this section.)

Here is another popular type of puzzle (figure below) that challenges your spatial reasoning skills. Connect all nine dots with four connecting straight lines without lifting your pencil from the paper:

Did you figure it out? (The answer is at the end of this section.) Once you understand how to crack this puzzle, you won’t forget.

Take a look at the “Puzzling Scales” logic puzzle below (figure below). Sam Loyd, a well-known puzzle master, created and refined countless puzzles throughout his lifetime (Cyclopedia of Puzzles, n.d.).

A puzzle involving a scale is shown. At the top of the figure it reads: “Sam Loyds Puzzling Scales.” The first row of the puzzle shows a balanced scale with 3 blocks and a top on the left and 12 marbles on the right. Below this row it reads: “Since the scales now balance.” The next row of the puzzle shows a balanced scale with just the top on the left, and 1 block and 8 marbles on the right. Below this row it reads: “And balance when arranged this way.” The third row shows an unbalanced scale with the top on the left side, which is much lower than the right side. The right side is empty. Below this row it reads: “Then how many marbles will it require to balance with that top?”

What steps did you take to solve this puzzle? You can read the solution at the end of this section.

Pitfalls to problem solving.

Not all problems are successfully solved, however. What challenges stop us from successfully solving a problem? Albert Einstein once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Imagine a person in a room that has four doorways. One doorway that has always been open in the past is now locked. The person, accustomed to exiting the room by that particular doorway, keeps trying to get out through the same doorway even though the other three doorways are open. The person is stuck—but she just needs to go to another doorway, instead of trying to get out through the locked doorway. A mental set is where you persist in approaching a problem in a way that has worked in the past but is clearly not working now.

Functional fixedness is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for. During the Apollo 13 mission to the moon, NASA engineers at Mission Control had to overcome functional fixedness to save the lives of the astronauts aboard the spacecraft. An explosion in a module of the spacecraft damaged multiple systems. The astronauts were in danger of being poisoned by rising levels of carbon dioxide because of problems with the carbon dioxide filters. The engineers found a way for the astronauts to use spare plastic bags, tape, and air hoses to create a makeshift air filter, which saved the lives of the astronauts.

Researchers have investigated whether functional fixedness is affected by culture. In one experiment, individuals from the Shuar group in Ecuador were asked to use an object for a purpose other than that for which the object was originally intended. For example, the participants were told a story about a bear and a rabbit that were separated by a river and asked to select among various objects, including a spoon, a cup, erasers, and so on, to help the animals. The spoon was the only object long enough to span the imaginary river, but if the spoon was presented in a way that reflected its normal usage, it took participants longer to choose the spoon to solve the problem. (German & Barrett, 2005). The researchers wanted to know if exposure to highly specialized tools, as occurs with individuals in industrialized nations, affects their ability to transcend functional fixedness. It was determined that functional fixedness is experienced in both industrialized and nonindustrialized cultures (German & Barrett, 2005).

In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. Sometimes, however, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the $2,000 home? Why would the realtor show you the run-down houses and the nice house? The realtor may be challenging your anchoring bias. An anchoring bias occurs when you focus on one piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem. In this case, you’re so focused on the amount of money you are willing to spend that you may not recognize what kinds of houses are available at that price point.

The confirmation bias is the tendency to focus on information that confirms your existing beliefs. For example, if you think that your professor is not very nice, you notice all of the instances of rude behavior exhibited by the professor while ignoring the countless pleasant interactions he is involved in on a daily basis. Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Representative bias describes a faulty way of thinking, in which you unintentionally stereotype someone or something; for example, you may assume that your professors spend their free time reading books and engaging in intellectual conversation, because the idea of them spending their time playing volleyball or visiting an amusement park does not fit in with your stereotypes of professors.

Finally, the availability heuristic is a heuristic in which you make a decision based on an example, information, or recent experience that is that readily available to you, even though it may not be the best example to inform your decision . Biases tend to “preserve that which is already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and hypotheses” (Aronson, 1995; Kahneman, 2011). These biases are summarized in the table below.

Were you able to determine how many marbles are needed to balance the scales in the figure below? You need nine. Were you able to solve the problems in the figures above? Here are the answers.

The first puzzle is a Sudoku grid of 16 squares (4 rows of 4 squares) is shown. Half of the numbers were supplied to start the puzzle and are colored blue, and half have been filled in as the puzzle’s solution and are colored red. The numbers in each row of the grid, left to right, are as follows. Row 1: blue 3, red 1, red 4, blue 2. Row 2: red 2, blue 4, blue 1, red 3. Row 3: red 1, blue 3, blue 2, red 4. Row 4: blue 4, red 2, red 3, blue 1.The second puzzle consists of 9 dots arranged in 3 rows of 3 inside of a square. The solution, four straight lines made without lifting the pencil, is shown in a red line with arrows indicating the direction of movement. In order to solve the puzzle, the lines must extend beyond the borders of the box. The four connecting lines are drawn as follows. Line 1 begins at the top left dot, proceeds through the middle and right dots of the top row, and extends to the right beyond the border of the square. Line 2 extends from the end of line 1, through the right dot of the horizontally centered row, through the middle dot of the bottom row, and beyond the square’s border ending in the space beneath the left dot of the bottom row. Line 3 extends from the end of line 2 upwards through the left dots of the bottom, middle, and top rows. Line 4 extends from the end of line 3 through the middle dot in the middle row and ends at the right dot of the bottom row.

Many different strategies exist for solving problems. Typical strategies include trial and error, applying algorithms, and using heuristics. To solve a large, complicated problem, it often helps to break the problem into smaller steps that can be accomplished individually, leading to an overall solution. Roadblocks to problem solving include a mental set, functional fixedness, and various biases that can cloud decision making skills.

References:

Openstax Psychology text by Kathryn Dumper, William Jenkins, Arlene Lacombe, Marilyn Lovett and Marion Perlmutter licensed under CC BY v4.0. https://openstax.org/details/books/psychology

Review Questions:

1. A specific formula for solving a problem is called ________.

a. an algorithm

b. a heuristic

c. a mental set

d. trial and error

2. Solving the Tower of Hanoi problem tends to utilize a ________ strategy of problem solving.

a. divide and conquer

b. means-end analysis

d. experiment

3. A mental shortcut in the form of a general problem-solving framework is called ________.

4. Which type of bias involves becoming fixated on a single trait of a problem?

a. anchoring bias

b. confirmation bias

c. representative bias

d. availability bias

5. Which type of bias involves relying on a false stereotype to make a decision?

6. Wolfgang Kohler analyzed behavior of chimpanzees by applying Gestalt principles to describe ________.

a. social adjustment

b. student load payment options

c. emotional learning

d. insight learning

7. ________ is a type of mental set where you cannot perceive an object being used for something other than what it was designed for.

a. functional fixedness

c. working memory

Critical Thinking Questions:

1. What is functional fixedness and how can overcoming it help you solve problems?

2. How does an algorithm save you time and energy when solving a problem?

Personal Application Question:

1. Which type of bias do you recognize in your own decision making processes? How has this bias affected how you’ve made decisions in the past and how can you use your awareness of it to improve your decisions making skills in the future?

anchoring bias

availability heuristic

confirmation bias

functional fixedness

hindsight bias

problem-solving strategy

representative bias

trial and error

working backwards

Answers to Exercises

algorithm: problem-solving strategy characterized by a specific set of instructions

anchoring bias: faulty heuristic in which you fixate on a single aspect of a problem to find a solution

availability heuristic: faulty heuristic in which you make a decision based on information readily available to you

confirmation bias: faulty heuristic in which you focus on information that confirms your beliefs

functional fixedness: inability to see an object as useful for any other use other than the one for which it was intended

heuristic: mental shortcut that saves time when solving a problem

hindsight bias: belief that the event just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t

mental set: continually using an old solution to a problem without results

problem-solving strategy: method for solving problems

representative bias: faulty heuristic in which you stereotype someone or something without a valid basis for your judgment

trial and error: problem-solving strategy in which multiple solutions are attempted until the correct one is found

working backwards: heuristic in which you begin to solve a problem by focusing on the end result

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

Business team using creative problem-solving

01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Design Thinking and Innovation | Uncover creative solutions to your business problems | Learn More

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

The four stages of design thinking: clarify, ideate, develop, and implement

Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

The printer is overused.
The printer overheats.
The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

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Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

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Front Psychol

Simply effective? The differential effects of solution-focused and problem-focused coaching questions in a self-coaching writing exercise

1 Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2 Department of Pediatrics, Erasmus MC-Sophia Children’s Hospital, Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Jessie Koen

3 Department of Sustainable Productivity and Employability, Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, Leiden, Netherlands

Annelies E. M. van Vianen

Tim theeboom.

4 School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Bianca Beersma

5 Department of Organization Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Anne P. J. de Pagter

6 Department of Pediatrics, Willem-Alexander Children’s Hospital, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands

Matthijs de Hoog

Associated data.

Given restrictions from the ethics review board and considering that sensitive personal data are handled, it is not possible to make the data freely available. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, LS, [email protected] , upon request.

Coaching is a systematic and goal-oriented one-on-one intervention by a coach aimed to guide clients in their professional and personal development. Previous research on coaching has demonstrated effects on a number of positive outcomes, including well-being and performance, yet little is known about the processes that underlie these outcomes, such as the type of questions coaches use. Here, we focus on three different types of coaching questions, and aim to uncover their immediate and sustained effects for affect, self-efficacy, and goal-directed outcomes, using a between-subjects experiment. One hundred and eighty-three medical residents and PhD students from various medical centers and healthcare organizations in the Netherlands were recruited to participate in a self-coaching writing exercise, where they followed written instructions rather than interacting with a real coach. All participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: either one of two solution-focused coaching conditions (i.e., the success or miracle condition) or a problem-focused coaching condition. Self-report questionnaires were used to measure key outcomes of coaching, that is positive and negative affect, self-efficacy, goal orientation, action planning (i.e., quantity and quality) and goal attainment. Two follow-up measurements assessed if the effects of the self-coaching exercise led to problem-solving actions within an initial follow-up period of 14 days and a subsequent follow-up period of 10 days. Findings showed that participants experienced more positive affect, less negative affect, and higher approach goal orientation after the solution-focused coaching exercise compared to the problem-focused coaching exercise. In all conditions, goal attainment increased as a consequence of the self-coaching intervention. We discuss the implications of our findings for the science and practice of contemporary coaching.

Introduction

Problem talk creates problems, solution talk creates solutions – Steve de Shazer (Berg and Szabo, 2005).

In the past two decades, the field of psychology has largely shifted its focus from (curing) mental illness to (promoting) well-being. With that shift, a new field of research and practice has emerged, that of positive psychology. The field of positive psychology is, in essence, the study of positive human functioning or happiness as defined by the presence of positive emotions, engagement and meaning ( Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi, 2000 ). Instead of fixing what is broken, applied positive psychology highlights what is working well in people’s lives, and uncovers and amplifies people’s individual strengths, hopes, and positive virtues. The theory of positive psychology, through its strength-based approach to human functioning, is the basis of coaching research and practice ( Kauffman, 2006 ).

With a growing attention to individual well-being and thriving, professional coaching has become a popular intervention at both the workplace and the private domain. Coaching can be defined as “a result-oriented, systematic process in which the coach facilitates the enhancement of life experience and goal attainment in the personal and/or professional lives of normal, non-clinical clients” ( Grant, 2003 , p. 254). Given the continuous need of employees to adapt to the changing nature of work and organizations –which can be demanding and a risk factor for well-being and health ( George and Jones, 2001 ; van den Heuvel et al., 2013 ; Johnston, 2018 )– employees increasingly seek the support of a coach to help them deal with the many challenges that working life can present. With this uptake, coaching as a profession also continues to keep growing: The International Coach Federation, the most recognized governing body for coaches around the world, counts more than 40,000 members in 151 countries in 2021 ( International Coach Federation, 2021 ), but this is a very conservative estimate of the number of people actually working as coaches. Research on the effects of coaching supports its popularity: studies have repeatedly demonstrated the positive effects of coaching on both well-being (e.g., reducing stress and burnout) and performance outcomes (e.g., goal attainment; Theeboom et al., 2014 ; Jones et al., 2016 ; McGonagle et al., 2020 ; Solms et al., 2021 ).

Although research on coaching has accelerated in the past years, there is still a lot that we do not know. First, relatively little is known about the coaching techniques and psychological mechanisms underlying positive coaching outcomes. Here, we aim to uncover these mechanisms by focusing on the effects of three different questioning techniques that coaches can use ( Bozer and Jones, 2018 ; Fontes and Dello Russo, 2021 ; Jones et al., 2021 ). We employ a self-coaching intervention rather than a real-life coaching intervention to examine the effects of each questioning technique and isolate it from relational factors that might otherwise impact the outcomes of coaching. That is, in real-life coaching, coaches tend to use a blend of different questioning techniques, and relational factors such as similarity attraction (i.e., similarity between coach and client may increase liking for one another) may play a role in their effectiveness. Employing an experimental design with a self-coaching exercise allows us to eliminate such confounding, relational factors and uncover the unique effects of each coaching question on coaching outcomes and their underlying psychological mechanisms. Nevertheless, we note that self-coaching is different from real-life coaching where a professional coach guides the coachee in a systematic, and goal-oriented fashion to goal-attainment and personal change. Second, the majority of experimental studies have focused on the immediate effects of coaching questions ( Theeboom et al., 2014 ). Given that coaching is a temporary investment, it is important to investigate if coaching questions can foster goal-directed change (e.g., action planning) beyond such immediate effects. Here, we examine both the immediate effects of questioning techniques and their effects during a brief follow-up period. Third and finally, existing experimental research on the effectiveness of coaching –the method that supports drawing causal conclusions– has exclusively been conducted among undergraduates (e.g., Grant, 2012 ; Theeboom et al., 2016 ; Grant and O’Connor, 2018 ). This is unfortunate, given that the majority of coaching takes place within an organizational context. It is thus crucial to conduct experimental research among working individuals and in a context in which coaching normally takes place. Because we use an experimental design in which we test different self-coaching techniques among medical professionals, this study combines the advantage of experimental control with higher ecological validity, allowing stronger generalization of findings to real-life coaching of medical professionals.

Problem-focused and solution-focused coaching

Questions are an integral part of any coaching conversation ( Grant and O’Connor, 2010 ). Here, we distinguish between questioning techniques that have their roots in problem-focused coaching and questioning techniques that have their roots in solution-focused coaching . Problem-focused coaching approaches originate from more traditional, generally psychotherapy-inspired schools that tend to focus their questioning on the client’s problem. Although positive psychology provides a solid theoretical and practical backbone to the science and practice of coaching ( Kauffman, 2006 ; Seligman, 2007 ), numerous coaching practitioners are rooted in the therapeutic model which concentrates on repairing damage rather than boosting strengths ( Kauffman and Scoular, 2004 ; Kauffman, 2006 ). Consequently, these coaches tend to use questioning techniques that are aimed to understand (and eliminate) the client’s problem (i.e., problem-focused questioning techniques 1 ). These questions can for instance be focused on the origin of a problem: “How long has this been a problem? How did it start?” ( Grant, 2003 , p. 26). By analyzing the root cause of a problem and how it manifests in dysfunctional patterns and behavior, coach and client work toward a global understanding of the origin of the problem and its consequences ( Lee, 2010 ). In contrast, coaches with a deep rootedness in strength-based approaches tend to focus on nurturing clients’ positive skills and qualities. Consequently, and in line with the premises of positive psychology they tend to use questioning techniques that activate existing resources and prioritize solution building over problem solving (i.e., solution-focused questioning techniques; O’Connell et al., 2013 ). These questions can for instance be focused on exploring previous solutions (“Can you think of a time when you managed a similar problem well? What did you do?”) or exceptions to the problem (“Has there been a time where this problem was not present?”).

Stemming from Solution-Focused Brief Therapy ( De Shazer, 1988 ), solution-focused coaching represents a paradigm shift focusing on what is already working well in a client’s life ( O’Connell et al., 2013 ) rather than focusing predominantly on the problem and its origin. In practice, the problem that has brought the client to coaching in the first place will almost always be the starting point of any coach conversation and as such, problem-focused approaches play an important role especially at the beginning of the coaching process. While problem-focused coaching addresses solutions relatively late in the process, in Solution-Focused Brief Therapy and coaching, solutions are developed relatively quickly by focusing on strategies and behavior that has been proven helpful instead of focusing on a client’s dysfunctional behavior ( De Shazer, 1988 ). By identifying occasions in a client’s life where the problem could have occurred but did not (referred to as “exception times”), coach and client can work toward solutions without spending too much time on the problem itself. Research in various populations (e.g., university students, patients, managers) has shown that solution-focused approaches correlate with well-being and promote goal pursuit ( Green et al., 2006 ; Grant, 2014 ; Pakrosnis and Cepukiene, 2015 ; Zhang et al., 2018 ), a finding that has also been confirmed in a meta-analysis on coaching in organizational and educational settings ( Theeboom et al., 2014 ).

While problem-focused coaching centers around asking questions about the client’s problem, solution-focused coaching can use different types of questions: the miracle question or success question are prototypical examples. The miracle question lets clients imagine a situation in which the problem miraculously no longer exists ( De Shazer and Dolan, 2012 ). This questioning technique uses mental imagery to stir the conversation away from the problem toward a desired situation where the problem is absent. Applying this technique can be an eyeopener for clients who tend to focus primarily on the struggles they encounter, and consequently pave the way for change ( De Shazer and Dolan, 2012 ). The success question lets clients think back to previous situations in which they have successfully managed a problem. This questioning technique is based on the assumption that people have solved plenty of problems in the course of their life and are therefore able to generate successful strategies to solve their current problems ( De Shazer and Dolan, 2012 ). This idea strongly resembles Bandura’s (1991) concept of self-efficacy: a person’s belief in his or her capability to successfully perform a particular task. Such self-efficacy beliefs are strongly influenced by past experiences of success (i.e., mastery experiences). As such, the success question can make past mastery experiences salient to the client and increase their sense of competence.

Despite its strong roots in seminal theory (e.g., social cognitive theory; Bandura, 1991 ) and its frequent use in practice, the success question has not received much scientific attention. This is unfortunate, because a deeper understanding of the mechanisms through which specific questioning techniques can improve client outcomes would not only advance theory in the field of coaching but would also allow practitioners to resort to coaching techniques that are tailored to and more effective for their clients ( Grant, 2020 ). In this study, we will therefore examine the effects of the success question in addition to the miracle question and will compare these effects with those of the problem-focused question.

Theoretical background and hypotheses

In line with positive psychology theory and common definitions of coaching as a change process aimed at building personal strengths and attaining personal goals, here we focus on key variables relevant in the context of goal-directed self-regulation: affect, self-efficacy, goal-orientation, goal pursuit, and problem-solving actions.

Question focus and affect

Research comparing problem-focused with solution-focused questioning paints a more positive picture in favor of the solution-focused approach (e.g., Braunstein and Grant, 2016 ; Theeboom et al., 2016 ). Specifically, solution-focused questions (as compared to problem-focused questions) may increase positive affective states (e.g., feeling energetic) and may decrease negative affective states (e.g., feeling anxious; Theeboom et al., 2016 ; Grant and O’Connor, 2018 ). According to positive psychology theory ( Seligman et al., 2005 ), when people are encouraged to think about a desired outcome in the future or past successes –rather than directing their attention to the problem– they will likely experience positive emotions (such as feeling energetic or calm) that accompany these thoughts. This idea is supported by regulatory focus theory ( Higgins, 2002 ), proposing that goals aimed at achieving positive outcomes (rather than at avoiding negative outcomes) are linked to positive emotions ( Idson et al., 2000 ). In contrast, goals aimed at avoiding or overcoming negative outcomes are linked to negative emotions. Hence, when people focus on potential solutions, they will experience positive emotions, whereas when they mainly focus on their problem, they will feel increased discomfort and negative emotions ( Theeboom et al., 2016 ). Based on this theorizing, we generate our first hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1: Compared to problem-focused questioning, solution-focused questioning leads to (a) higher positive affect and (b) lower negative affect.

Question focus and self-efficacy

Coaches often seek to increase their clients’ self-efficacy to promote a sense of personal agency and goal attainment ( Grant, 2012 ). This idea is rooted in Bandura’s (1977) social learning theory that posits that past experiences guide people’s future actions and that people engage in actions that have proven useful in the past. In solution-focused coaching, self-efficacy is promoted by focusing on “what is going well” instead of “what is going wrong.” Under the tenet “If it works, do more of it” therapists and coaches encourage clients to engage in activities that have been proven useful. Small steps in the right direction will likely spark further steps, gradually leading the client to feel “better enough” to end therapy or coaching ( De Shazer and Dolan, 2012 , p. 2).

The miracle question is typically used by coaches to spark optimism of a hopeful future and break free from existing –often dysfunctional– cognitive patterns and beliefs ( Grant and O’Connor, 2010 , 2018 ; Braunstein and Grant, 2016 ). By encouraging the client to envision a world without the problem, people are reminded of their qualities and skills that have been overshadowed by the seeming incompetence to handle the problem successfully. Therefore, the miracle question (as opposed to a problem-focused coaching question) likely increases self-efficacy to solve a personal problem. Moreover, we expect that the solution-focused success question will result in even higher self-efficacy than the solution-focused miracle question, because the success question instructs clients to think about previous mastery experiences, which –according to Bandura’s social learning theory– should be particularly strongly related to self-efficacy ( Bandura, 1982 ).

Hypothesis 2a: Compared to problem-focused questioning, solution-focused questioning leads to higher self-efficacy.

Hypothesis 2b: Compared to the solution-focused miracle question, the solution-focused success question leads to higher self-efficacy.

Question focus and goal orientation

With goal pursuit lying at the heart of coaching interventions, coaches may seek to assist clients in formulating effective goals, that is, approach rather than avoidance goals ( Elliot and Church, 1997 ; Elliot et al., 1997 ). Solution-focused questioning can help to achieve this as it emphasizes a desired outcome that one aims to achieve (i.e., an approach goal) rather than a negative outcome that one aims to avoid (i.e., an avoidance goal). This is in line with the self-regulation model by Carver and Scheier (1998) proposing that behavioral regulation with negative reference points (i.e., an undesired end state) is less fruitful than behavioral regulation with positive reference points (i.e., a desired end state) because the former fails to provide clients with a clear direction. Instead of focusing on the things that are going wrong, solution-focused coaching rather emphasizes behaviors that proved beneficial for the client during times of improvement ( De Shazer and Dolan, 2012 ). Drawing on the hierarchical model of approach-avoidance motivation ( Elliot, 2006 ) we argue that solution-focused coaching –due to its strong focus on positive outcomes and how to attain them– is inherently associated with an approach rather than avoidance orientation. Specifically, both the miracle and the success question draw attention to a desired outcome that either has “magically” come about (i.e., the miracle question) or has previously been achieved (i.e., the success question). As such, we hypothesize that the solution-focused coaching questions will stimulate approach goal orientation and inhibit avoidance goal orientation.

Hypothesis 3: Compared to problem-focused coaching, solution-focused coaching leads to (a) higher approach goal orientation and (b) lower avoidance goal orientation.

Question focus and goal pursuit

Compared to problem-focused coaching, solution-focused coaching approaches are stronger future-focused and goal-directed ( De Shazer and Dolan, 2012 ): considerable time is spent on constructing solutions, presumably more than on analyzing the problem that brought a client to coaching in the first place. Consequently, clients can make goal progress relatively quickly ( Iveson, 2002 ). Drawing on hope theory –that emphasizes agency and pathway thinking as central to the process of goal attainment– ( Snyder, 2002 ), we argue that solution-focused coaching activates clients’ sense of agency (i.e., the belief in one’s capacity to initiate and sustain actions or “willpower”) and goal-directed or “pathway” thinking, which likely promotes goal-directed behavior (e.g., development of action plans) and goal attainment. Solution-focused as opposed to problem-focused coaching is expected to be superior in promoting goal progress (e.g., Grant and O’Connor, 2018 ; Grant and Gerrard, 2020 ). Based on this theorizing, research indeed found that participants who engaged in a solution-focused coaching exercise listed more action steps to solve a problem than participants in a problem-focused coaching exercise ( Grant, 2012 ). In line with hope theory and earlier empirical findings, we formulate the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4: Compared to problem-focused questioning, solution-focused questioning will lead to (a) stronger increases in goal attainment and (b) more and higher quality action planning (i.e., number and quality of action steps) directly after the experimental coaching intervention.

Question focus and problem-solving actions

Although coaches can facilitate clients’ goal pursuit through formulation of action plans, clients still need to translate their goals and plans into actual behavior ( Theeboom et al., 2016 ). According to the theory of planned behavior ( Ajzen, 1991 ) behavioral intentions (action plans to solve the problem) will promote actual problem-solving behaviors. We therefore also investigate the effects of problem-focused and solution-focused questioning on reported problem-solving actions and actual problem-solving actions within a brief follow-up period. Specifically, we include an unobtrusive behavioral measure that captures whether participants actually take action to try and solve their problem. Given the previously described benefits of solution-focused questioning on affective (e.g., positive affect), cognitive (e.g., self-efficacy), and behavioral (i.e., action planning and goal attainment) outcomes, we expect that solution-focused (as opposed to problem-focused) questioning will have stronger effects on goal attainment and reported problem-solving actions within a follow-up period of 14 days, as well as on actual problem-solving actions within a subsequent follow-up period of 10 days.

Hypothesis 5: Compared to problem-focused questioning, solution-focused questioning leads to (a) higher reported problem-solving actions (i.e., extent of performing action steps), (b) higher goal attainment, and (c) higher actual problem-solving actions during follow-up.

Materials and methods

Participants and design.

Our sample comprised medical residents and MD/PhD students recruited from several medical centers and healthcare institutions throughout the Netherlands. In total, five medical centers as well as two umbrella training and education alliances that include more than 20 medical centers and several healthcare institutions were approached by the authors and shared the study invitation within their network of residents and MD/PhD students. Participants were invited by email to participate in a study on online coaching. Initially, a total number of 232 participants completed the self-coaching exercise that consisted of written instructions concerning a work-related problem.

In order to preclude any adverse effects of our manipulation on participants’ well-being and in line with coaching operationalized as an intervention for a healthy, non-clinical population, participants were screened at the start of the study on the emotional exhaustion component of the UBOS scale (UBOS; Schaufeli et al., 1996 ; Theeboom et al., 2016 ). Because we predicted more positive effects in the solution-focused than in the problem-focused condition, participants who reached a cut-off point of severe exhaustion (cut-off = 4.62; Schaufeli and Van Dierendonck, 2000 ) were automatically led into one of the two solution-focused coaching conditions. Additionally, these participants were notified at the end of the questionnaire that they scored above average on the exhaustion scale and were advised to seek support from their occupational physician or manager. We excluded their data ( n = 7) from our analyses. After applying a predetermined exclusion procedure (see Figure 1 for a CONSORT flowchart), our final sample comprised 183 medical residents and medical PhD students (159 residents, 145 females of which 61, 66, and 56 were assigned to the problem, miracle, and success condition, respectively). Their average age was 30.71 (SD = 3.30), ranging from 25 to 46 years.

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CONSORT flowchart depicting screening and exclusion procedure at T1. EXCL refers to the exclusion of participants. Participants that spend 61 or more minutes on completing the experiment (i.e., extremes based on stem-and-leaf plot) were excluded, because the experimental design requires participants to complete the exercise at once.

The study consisted of an online self-coaching writing exercise and questionnaire (T1), a follow-up questionnaire (T2) and an unobtrusive behavioral measure (T3). The self-coaching writing exercise allowed us to test the effects of solution- and problem-focused coaching questions that were experimentally manipulated. Participants were randomly allocated to one of three conditions (problem-focused, solution-focused miracle, or solution-focused success). Including two different types of solution-focused coaching questions (i.e., miracle and success question) allowed us to compare their effects as well rather than merely contrasting solution-focused coaching with problem-focused coaching questions. While the follow-up questionnaire (T2) was used to measure the effects of the coaching exercise (i.e., reported problem-solving actions and goal-attainment) during a brief follow-up period of 14 days, the hidden behavioral measure (T3) aimed to assess actual problem-solving actions.

Procedure and manipulations

The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Review Board of the University of Amsterdam. Before starting the online coaching exercise (at T1), participants were informed about the study’s goal and procedure. They were also informed that all data would be handled confidentially, would not be shared with the organizations in which participants were employed, and that participation was completely voluntary. Finally, they read that the study consisted of a self-coaching exercise (T1) and a follow-up questionnaire (T2) they would receive 14 days later. See Figure 2 for details on the exclusion procedure at T2 and T3.

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CONSORT flowchart depicting screening and exclusion procedure for T2 and T3 Follow-up. The sample at T1 consisted of 183 participants allocated to one of the three experimental conditions. Of the 183 participants, 1 participant did not indicate their email address and thus did not receive the T2 survey. Of the remaining 182 participants, 170 participants (response rate: 92.9%) filled in the T2 survey. Overall, 10 participants were excluded as they did not complete the survey, indicated that the steps reported were not correct or showed suspicious data entry. The final sample at T2 consisted of 160 participants. The final T3 sample that was analyzed consisted of 154 participants. 6 participants were excluded as they received the link for the website (T3) and the T2 survey simultaneously and this could potentially distort the answers on the T2 survey. *For exclusion procedure at T1, see Figure 1 . **Participants that didn’t answer items on effort to perform action steps (but on extent) were included in the sample although these answers were missing.

Manipulation: Self-coaching writing exercise (T1)

Participants completed the informed consent form, filled in a self-generated identification code to allow matching the T1 and T2 data, provided demographical information (i.e., gender, age, nationality, job position [i.e., medical resident, medical PhD student] and medical specialty, previous experience with coaching and email address for follow-up contact and compensation in the form of an online voucher), and completed the exhaustion screening measure. Participants then started the self-coaching writing exercise. The exercises with the solution-focused miracle or problem-focused questions were based on previous research ( Braunstein and Grant, 2016 ; Theeboom et al., 2016 ). The exercise with the solution-focused success question was added by the researchers and is based on Bandura’s concepts of self-efficacy and mastery ( Bandura, 1982 ; see the Supplementary material for a detailed description of the self-coaching exercises). As a first step, participants were asked to identify and describe a personal work-related problem that they would like to address during coaching. In order to guarantee a certain degree of standardization of the problems described, we asked participants to describe a problem that related to their job, career or work-life balance that they would like to address in a coaching session. Furthermore, they were asked to report the extent to which the problem was causing discomfort (on a 10-point scale, from 1 [ no discomfort at all ] to 10 [ heavy discomfort ]), and how the problem influenced thoughts and feelings or interfered otherwise with their functioning at work or in their private life. Finally, they were asked to indicate on a scale from 1 ( solution not reached at all ) to 10 ( solution reached ) to what extent they currently had reached the solution to their problem. Hereafter, the manipulation started.

In the problem condition, participants were asked to think back to a day where their problem had been strongly present. Hereafter, they were asked to describe the first thing they had noticed on that day, how they had behaved, thought, and felt in that situation, and how other people had noticed that their problem was strongly present.

In the miracle condition, participants were asked to imagine a situation in which their problem had magically disappeared overnight. They were then asked to describe what they would notice the next morning, how they would behave, think and feel in that situation, and how other people would notice that the problem had disappeared.

In the success condition, participants were asked to think of a situation in the past in which they had experienced the same problem but had been able to manage it successfully. They were asked to describe the first thing they had noticed that day, how they behaved, thought and felt in that situation, and how other people had noticed that they had successfully dealt with the problem.

Figure 3 presents the experimental procedure as well as the corresponding measures. See the Supplemental Material for information on additional measures.

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Summary of study design.

At T1, participants filled out questionnaires to assess their positive and negative affect, self-efficacy, and goal orientation. Next, their own responses to the self-coaching exercise (i.e., what they had noticed, how they had felt, thought, and behaved) were presented to them and they were asked to list future action steps that would bring them closer to solving their problem. Hereafter, they were asked again about their goal attainment (i.e., how close they felt to the solution of their problem). Finally, participants answered the manipulation check questions, and were thanked for their participation.

At T2, 14 days after completion of the coaching exercise, participants who had completed T1 and had provided their email address received the invitation to the follow-up survey by e-mail. Participants reported their problem-solving actions (i.e., the extent to which participants had performed their action steps described at T1) and goal attainment. At T3, after completion of the T2 measures, they received an invitation to a website providing information on dealing with work-related stress, such as time management and mindfulness. Using a click-through measure, we assessed the number of visits during the upcoming 10 days as an unobtrusive behavioral indicator of participants’ actual (objective) problem-solving actions.

Our measures were derived from validated scales and have been used in previous studies in the context of coaching, and beyond. Below, we report reliability indices of our measures, Cronbach’s alpha and McDonalds omega ( McNeish, 2018 ).

Emotional exhaustion (T1)

Participants’ emotional exhaustion was measured with the emotional exhaustion subscale of the Dutch version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory adapted for human services such as healthcare (UBOS; Schaufeli et al., 1996 ; Schaufeli and Van Dierendonck, 2000 ). The eight items were answered on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 ( never ) to 7 ( always ). An example item is: “Working with people all day is a heavy burden for me” (α = 0.86; ω = 0.86).

Goal attainment (T1)

Goal attainment, the extent to which participants had reached the solution to their problem, was measured with a 10-point scale ranging from 1 ( solution not obtained at all ) to 10 ( solution obtained ; see Grant, 2012 ; Theeboom et al., 2016 ). Goal attainment was measured before and after the experimental manipulation. The following item was used: “On a scale from 1 to 10, to what extent have you at this point achieved the solution to this problem?”

Positive and negative affect (T1)

Participants’ positive and negative affect were measured with the hedonic tone (e.g., “satisfied”; α = 0.89; ω = 0.90), energetic arousal (e.g., “active”; α = 0.82; ω = 0.79), and the tense arousal (e.g., “nervous”; α = 0.90; ω = 0.90) subscales (8 items each) of the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist (UMACL; Matthews et al., 1990 ). Participants were asked to indicate on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 ( not applicable at all ) to 7 ( fully applicable ) to what extent these adjectives currently applied to them when thinking about the situation they had just described (i.e., the coaching manipulation).

Self-efficacy (T1)

Self-efficacy was measured with the following four items that are based on the Core Self-Evaluations Scale and were adapted to fit the context of the study (CSES; Judge et al., 2004 ): (1) “I am confident that I can solve my problem”; (2) “If I try my best, I will be able to solve my problem”; (3) “I am full of doubts about my abilities to master my problem”; (4) “I am able to handle my problem well” (α = 0.70; ω = 0.71). The items were answered on a five-point scale ranging from 1 ( completely disagree ) to 5 ( completely agree ).

Approach and avoidance goal orientation (T1)

Approach and avoidance goal orientation were measured with three items each, that were based on the Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ; Elliot and Murayama, 2008 ). We adapted the items to fit the context of the self-coaching exercise. The items were answered on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 ( completely disagree ) to 7 ( completely agree ). Example items of approach and avoidance goal orientation, respectively, are: “I strive to solve my problem as soon as possible” (α = 0.74; ω = 0.74) and “I am going to focus on preventing the problem from getting worse” (α = 0.61; ω = 0.62).

Action planning (T1)

Action planning was assessed by asking participants to describe the first steps they would take in the near future to achieve the situation they wished for (i.e., solution of the problem; Grant, 2012 ). The following item was used: “Can you describe what first small steps you will take in the near future to achieve the desired situation (solution of the problem)?” Fifteen text fields were provided for potential responses. We recorded the number and quality of action steps of each participant by means of four indicators: specificity , uniqueness , behavior (i.e., action steps reflect behavior rather than cognitions) , and approach goal orientation . In pairs of two, the authors conducted the coding of the quality indicators based on a coding scheme. See the Supplementary material for a detailed description of the quality criteria and the coding process and scheme.

Manipulation check (T1)

With six items that described the nature of the coaching instructions people had received, we assessed whether the manipulation had been successful. Participants rated on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 ( not applicable at all ) to 7 ( fully applicable ) whether the statements were applicable to them. Example items of the problem, miracle, and success conditions, respectively, are: “In this study, I was asked to think about a situation where my problem was very present” (α = 0.71), “In this study I was asked to imagine a situation in which my problem suddenly disappeared.” (α = 0.95), and “In this study, I had to think about what I had done in the past to solve the problem” (α = 0.76).

Problem-solving actions (T2)

Participants were shown the personal problem and the action steps they had described during the coaching exercise (at T1). They were asked to indicate to what extent they had performed these steps (on a scale ranging from 1 [ not at all ] to 7 [ completely ]) and how much effort they had spent to do so (on a scale from 1 [ not much ] to 7 [ much ]). Participants then could list additional action steps that had not been listed before. We used the following item: “For each step, indicate to what extent you have performed this step and how much effort you have put into taking this step.”

Goal attainment (T2)

Participants indicated on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 ( solution not obtained at all ) to 10 ( solution obtained ) to what extent they had currently reached the solution to their previously described problem. We used the same measure as at T1.

Actual problem-solving actions (T3)

Participants received an email with the link to a website providing information that could be useful for dealing with work-related problems (e.g., time management and mindfulness). As an indicator of objective (as opposed to self-reported) problem-solving actions, we used a click-through measure to assess if participants visited the website during a period of 10 days. The specific content displayed on the website can be requested from the first author.

Analytical approach

Data were analyzed in SPSS (version 25) using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with condition as between-subjects factor. Significant main effects were followed up with planned contrasts between the problem-focused (coded as −2) and the two solution-focused conditions (coded as 1 each), and –for H2b– between the solution-focused miracle (coded as 1) and the solution-focused success condition (coded as −1). Table 1 shows the means and standard deviations of the key variables in all three conditions. Table 2 presents the correlations of the variables at T1. Table 3 displays a summary of the hypotheses and their results.

Means and standard deviations of the key study variables in all three conditions.

PA, positive affect, NA, negative affect; Goal attainment pre, before the experimental instructions; Goal attainment post, after the experimental instructions.

a Based on n = 58, n = 66, n = 55 for problem condition, miracle condition, and success condition, respectively.

b Based on n = 55, n = 58, n = 47 for problem condition, miracle condition, and success condition, respectively, for the goal attainment measure; n = 53, n = 58, n = 46 for problem condition, miracle condition, and success condition, respectively, for the extent measure; n = 45, n = 48, n = 38 for problem condition, miracle condition, and success condition, respectively, for the effort measure.

c Based on n = 54, n = 54, n = 46 for problem condition, miracle condition, and success condition, respectively.

d Reflects the percentage of participants visiting the website once or more.

Means, standard variations, intercorrelations, and reliabilities of the study variables across the three conditions at T1.

N = 183 for variables 1–9. N = 179 for variables 10–13. Cronbach’s alpha reliability indices are displayed on the diagonal between brackets.*p < 0.05. **p < 0.01.

Summary of hypotheses and results.

See the main text for a description of the statistical results.

Manipulation check

Results showed that the experimental manipulation was successful. First, participants in the problem-focused condition scored higher on the degree to which the experiment had instructed them to imagine their problem being strongly present than participants in the solution-focused conditions ( F (2, 180) = 58.12, p < 0.001, see Table 1 ). Second, participants in the miracle condition scored higher on the degree to which the experiment had instructed them to image a situation in which their problem had suddenly disappeared than participants in other two conditions ( F (2, 180) = 479.45, p < 0.001). Finally, participants in the success condition scored higher on the degree to which the experiment had instructed them to image what they had done before to solve the problem than participants in the other two conditions ( F (2, 180) = 63.99, p < 0.001). Post hoc testing confirmed that differences between conditions were significant (all p ’s < 0.001).

Hypothesis testing

H1a predicted that the two solution-focused conditions (miracle and success) would elicit higher positive affect (i.e., hedonic tone, energetic arousal) than the problem-focused condition. Results yielded a significant main effect of condition for hedonic tone, F (2, 180) = 11.85, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.12: participants in the solution-focused conditions reported significantly higher hedonic tone than participants in the problem-focused condition, t (180) = 4.81, p < 0.001. Similarly, results showed a significant main effect of condition for energetic arousal, F (2, 180) = 6.81, p = 0.001, η p2 = 0.07: participants in the solution-focused conditions reported significantly higher energetic arousal than participants in the problem-focused condition, t (180) = 3.69, p < 0.001. Thus, H1a was supported.

H1b predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would elicit lower negative affect (i.e., tense arousal) than the problem-focused condition. Results showed a significant main effect of condition for tense arousal, F (2, 180) = 3.78, p = 0.025, η p2 = 0.04: participants in the solution-focused conditions reported significantly lower tense arousal than participants in the problem-focused condition, t (180) = −2.75, p = 0.007. Thus, H1b was supported.

H2a predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would elicit higher self-efficacy than the problem-focused condition and H2b predicted that the success condition would elicit higher self-efficacy than the miracle condition. These hypotheses were not supported, F (2, 180) = 1.00, p = 0.368, η p2 = 0.01.

H3a predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would elicit higher approach goal orientation than the problem-focused condition. Results showed a significant main effect of condition for approach goal orientation, F (2, 180) = 3.83, p = 0.024, η p2 = 0.04: participants in the solution-focused conditions reported significantly higher approach goal orientation than participants in the problem-focused condition, t (180) = 2.65, p = 0.009. Thus, H3a was supported. H3b predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would elicit lower avoidance goal orientation than the problem-focused condition, but was not supported, F (2, 180) = 0.71, p = 0.494, η p2 = 0.01.

H4a predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would yield a stronger increase in participants’ goal attainment after the coaching exercise than the problem-focused condition. Repeated measures analyses with time as within-subject variable and condition as between-subject variable revealed a significant main effect of time, F (1, 180) = 95.63, p < 0.001, η p2 = 0.35. In all three conditions, participants reported higher goal attainment after the self-coaching exercise than before, all p ’s < 0.001. The time x condition interaction was not significant, F (2, 180) = 1.45, p = 0.237, η p2 = 0.02, indicating that participants’ increase in goal attainment did not differ between conditions. Results furthermore showed that there were no differences between conditions in participants’ goal attainment at the start of the manipulation nor in the severity of the problem they had described, both p ’s > 0.05. Thus, H4a was not supported.

H4b predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would lead to more and higher-quality action planning than the problem-focused condition. The average number of action steps was the same in all conditions, F (2, 180) = 0.08, p = 0.926, η p2 = 0.01 2 and there was no difference between conditions for any of the four quality indicators ( specificity : F (2, 176) = 2.63, p = 0.075, η p2 = 0.03; uniqueness : F (2, 176) = 0.69, p = 0.505, η p2 = 0.01; behavior : F (2, 176) = 0.59, p = 0.557, η p2 = 0.01; approach goal orientation : F (2, 176) = 1.18, p = 0.309, η p2 = 0.01). Thus, H4b was not supported.

H5a predicted that the two solution-focused conditions would lead to higher reported problem-solving actions within the period of 14 days after the experimental coaching intervention than the problem-focused condition. Results showed no differences between conditions in formulated action steps, F (2, 154) = 0.01, p = 0.992, η p2 = 0.00, nor in the amount of effort spent on performing those action steps, F (2, 128) = 1.53, p = 0.221, η p2 = 0.02. Additionally, a Pearson Chi-Square test showed that the proportion of participants who reported additional action steps ( n = 22; 13.8%) did not differ as a function of condition X 2 (2, N = 160) = 3.96, p = 0.138. Thus, H5a was not supported. H5b predicted that participants in the two solution-focused conditions would report higher goal attainment than participants in the problem-focused condition. We found no support for this hypothesis, F (2, 157) = 0.375, p = 0.688, η p2 = 0.01.

H5c predicted that participants in the two solution-focused conditions would show higher actual problem-solving actions (i.e., website visits). We found no support for this hypothesis: a Pearson Chi-Square test indicated that participants from all three conditions 3 visited the website equally, X 2 (2, N = 154) = 1.39, p = 0.499.

Despite the popularity of coaching for increasing well-being and thriving at both the workplace and the private domain, research has lacked behind in uncovering the mechanisms behind coaching effectiveness. Specifically, only little is known about the effectiveness of specific type of coaching questions, and it has remained unclear if the positive effects of such questions can be sustained outside of coaching sessions. The current study therefore examined the immediate effects of solution-focused and problem-focused coaching techniques in an experimental setting and investigated if these questions led to goal-directed changes during a brief follow-up period of 14 days. We showed that when implemented in a self-coaching writing exercise, solution-focused questioning –a popular approach to the practice of coaching– fosters affective self-regulation relatively more than problem-focused questioning. That is, solution-focused questioning promotes positive emotions, hampers negative emotions, and increases people’s motivation to solve their problem (i.e., approach goal motivation). Yet, solution-focused questioning was not more effective than problem-focused questioning in reducing avoidance goal orientation or in promoting self-efficacy, action planning, problem solving and goal attainment. In fact, both solution- and problem-focused questioning increased perceptions of goal attainment right after the writing exercise and after a period of 14 days. Below, we will discuss our findings and their implications in more detail.

Our results show that thinking about solutions rather than problems makes people not only feel good, but also motivates them to strive for gains while keeping an eye on potential losses. That is, solution-focused questioning stimulated approach motivation but did not simultaneously inhibit avoidance motivation. A possible explanation for this finding might be that approach and avoidance motivation are relatively independent concepts ( Elliot and Covington, 2001 ), and are therefore influenced through different systems. It might also be possible that investing in solutions for complex problems –that often are systemic and not entirely within one’s control– is only adaptive when the problem will not get worse. In that case, adopting a prevention strategy (i.e., concerned with assuring safety and avoiding negative outcomes) can provide some degree of control ( Higgins, 1997 ).

Contrary to our expectations and earlier empirical findings, we did not find that solution-focused questioning was more effective than problem-focused questioning in increasing people’s self-efficacy beliefs, nor did we find any differences between the miracle and the success question in that regard. This is surprising, given that previous success experiences are deemed the most important source of self-efficacy ( Bandura, 1977 ). We see two explanations for this unexpected finding. First, it is possible that the success experiences made salient during the coaching exercise were too broad to be a credible source for solving one’s current problem. While mastery experiences in one domain can lead to spill-over effects to other domains, meaning that previous successes and associated positive experiences for example at work may boost motivation and positive affect to approach problems in private life, this is only the case if the same skills are required (e.g., general self-management strategies, Bandura, 2006 ). The skills that participants recalled during the coaching exercise may thus not have fully matched the skills needed to solve their current problem. It is particularly important for solution-focused coaches to not blindly focus on clients’ strengths but to enable clients to transfer the right prior experienced skills to the current problem. Second, the problems that participants expressed were complex and at least partly contextual (see the Supplementary material ), which may mean that participants may have had situational restrictions in mind when reflecting on their ability to solve the problem. Indeed, Table 1 shows moderate self-efficacy beliefs and relatively low variance among participants in all three conditions.

Another unexpected finding was that problem-focused questioning was equally successful as solution-focused questioning in promoting goal attainment (i.e., how close people felt to solving their problem). Interestingly, this was still evident in all groups 14 days later. Although ruminating on problems can be damaging to clients’ immediate affective states, taking time to reflect on one’s problem may still feel like progress. According to the Transtheoretical Model of Change ( Prochaska et al., 2015 ), people need to become aware of their problem, its causes and consequences, before they are ready to act. Although the awareness of a problem can be uncomfortable (reduced positive affect – a finding we also see in our study), it is a crucial first step on the road to change and may facilitate rather than impede problem-solving actions when one stops digging into the problem in time.

Lastly, the results showed no differences between problem-focused and solution-focused questioning with regard to people’s immediate action planning (i.e., number and quality of action steps), and their reported and actual problem-solving actions. In other words, thinking about solutions rather than problems did not make people actually do more to solve their problem. Our self-coaching writing exercise, in which participants were asked to describe a problem and reflect on it, may have been a push to start acting on the problem, irrespective of the experimental condition they were in. Thus, raising the salience of a problem may already trigger action planning and subsequent actions. Alternatively, the effects of problem-focused and solution-focused questioning techniques may outweigh each other in promoting or hampering action taking. While problem-focused questioning may cause deep reflection but also deactivating negative moods such as sadness and weariness (see Kreemers et al., 2020 ), solution-focused questioning may cause divergent thinking but also unrealistic fantasies that hinder the planning of concrete actions. Unlike concrete goals, positive fantasies lack a clear commitment to behavior ( Oettingen, 2012 ). When indulging in positive thoughts, one can easily forget that this positive future has not been realized yet, which ultimately hinders goal striving and pursuit.

Theoretical implications

The results of the present study provide a better understanding of the effects of questioning techniques in coaching and advance the literature in several ways. First, we answered to the call for a broader understanding of the psychological mechanisms that render positive coaching outcomes ( Bachkirova and Kauffman, 2009 ). We shed light on the most essential tool that coaches have: asking questions. We showed that solution-focused questions are more effective than problem-focused questions when the goal of coaching is to make people feel good, and to help people strive toward solving their problem (rather than preventing it from getting worse). For factors deemed essential for goal-directed self-regulation, the type of questioning made no difference.

Second, by examining the effects of questioning techniques on participants’ problem-solving actions during a brief follow-up period, we uncovered their differential potential to alter behavior – the ultimate goal for many clients and their coaches. Specifically, we showed that solution-focused and problem-focused questioning did not lead to different behavioral outcomes during this period. Thus, although a strength-based approach in coaching seems particularly useful in stages in the coaching process where clients get lost in complex rumination and feelings of despair, this approach may be insufficient for sustaining behavioral change. More theory development and research are needed to better understand which interventions have which effects in the different temporal stages of coaching (see also Theeboom et al., 2017 ).

Finally, while prior research with university students showed that individuals benefited more from solution-focused than problem-focused questioning, this finding was only partly replicated in our study with medical residents. This can be explained by the differences in samples: the type of problems that medical residents face in their job may fundamentally differ from those of students (e.g., study-related stress, Theeboom et al., 2016 ) in magnitude and complexity. First, the problems of employees and students may differ in magnitude . Theeboom et al. (2016) speculated that students’ problems might not be pressing enough. For example, students were instructed to think about problems that were “frustrating for them” or were posing a “dilemma […] where [they] feel caught between two or more possible courses of action” (e.g., Grant and Gerrard, 2020 ). These types of problems were probably less severe than the problems mentioned by the healthcare workers in our sample. Second, the problems of employees and students may differ in complexity. Healthcare workers are part of large organizational systems in which they can have limited autonomy and control in their work. The work-related problems they face may often involve structural organizational factors (hindrance stressors) and significant others (e.g., colleagues, supervisors or patients), which can significantly impact their perception of behavioral control, motivation and options for problem-solving actions ( Yang and Li, 2021 ). At the same time, the job demands (e.g., high workload, emotional demands) faced by the residents in this study might at least partly overlap with the experience of employees from relevant other settings (e.g., education). Consequently, we expect the findings to be generalizable across other professions outside of healthcare. All in all, it is possible that both the severity and complexity of the problems that coaching clients aim to solve influence the effectiveness of coaching questions for outcomes such as self-efficacy, goal attainment, and action planning and behavior. Therefore, as experimental studies encompass only a one-time and short (although controlled) intervention, future research could further improve its ecological validity by examining the effects of coaching questioning techniques in real coaching sessions. After all, coaching is a process.

Practical implications

Asking (the right) questions is an essential part of coaching. Our results show that not all types of questions are equally effective. Coaching questions that convey a positive outcome make the client feel good and motivate them to pursue their goals whereas “problem talk” goes along with unpleasant feelings. In coaching practice, it would be neither desirable nor constructive to eliminate the problem from the coaching conversation altogether. However, if coaches –in a specific stage of the coaching process– aim to reinforce positive feelings and inspire optimism and hope for the future, they might do well to ask solution-focused questions. This may help clients to temporarily detach from their problem and develop a different and broader view on their situation.

Second, our results suggest that feeling good is a “nice-to-have” rather than a “must-have” for clients to pursue and achieve their goals: with positive outcomes in mind, people feel better in the short run, but these immediate affective reactions may not translate into goal-directed behaviors in the long run. Thus, asking solution-focused questions is not necessarily helpful in every stage of the coaching process. Given that coaching clients enter a coaching session with a description of what brought them to seek support in the first place (the preparatory contemplation stage of the coaching process), focusing on the problem at hand often is the logical first step. Especially when clients want to talk about their problems –which can be a cathartic experience– coaches should meet this need and not counter it with a rigid focus on solutions ( Theeboom et al., 2016 ). Coaching is typically a blend of solution-focused and problem-focused techniques ( Grant, 2012 ), and not one or the other.

Finally, we recognize that effective questioning is only one pillar of successful coaching conversations. While skillfully asked questions can fundamentally set the tone of a coaching conversation by provoking thinking and self-awareness, the ultimate goal of coaching is client development and change. Therefore, coaches need to assist their clients in setting concrete and attainable goals and turning intentions into actions – one of the biggest challenges for many clients.

Limitations and future research

Our study is not without limitations. First, the experimental design of our study did not allow us to capture the coaching process in all its complexity. However, it afforded experimental control by which we could compare the pure effects of different questions techniques unaffected by relational (and other) factors that influence coaching outcomes in real-life. It is important to note that participants engaged in a short, online self-coaching exercise rather than a real coaching session with a professional coach. Real-life coaching is a joint and complex behavioral change process together with a professional that is different in many ways from self-coaching where such a professional is absent. While our design allowed us to disentangle the effects of coaching questions from other factors that play a role during coaching, a necessary next step is to investigate and extend the current findings using more ecologically valid procedures. Having said this, we are confident that our participants took the online exercise seriously as became clear from their serious and extensive responses to the open questions. Additionally, given that coaches regularly use (written) homework exercises for their clients between sessions, our results stress the (potential) benefits of such practice.

Second, we realize that the distinction between solution- and problem-focused questioning is in part artificial, and that real-life coaching is a mixture of many different approaches –of which solution- and problem-focused coaching are merely two– rather than the strict following of one single approach. Yet, disentangling the effects of both coaching approaches, can inform coaching practitioners of the unique effects that different types of questions may have on their clients.

We suggest some promising directions for future research. Based on the finding that a short self-coaching writing exercise could already increase perceptions of goal-directed change over time, it would be interesting to explore to what extent these perceptions are related to concrete behaviors (e.g., action planning and execution). Given that coaching tends to be an expensive enterprise, shortcuts to goal attainment could allow clients with fewer financial resources to benefit from coaching as well. Finally, as to gain an in-depth understanding of what happens in and leads to successful coaching, extensive process studies are needed that combine coach- and client perspectives and ultimately relate them to coaching outcomes. Such insights into the process of coaching will not only advance the theory of coaching but will also inform coaching practice in important ways. If coaching as a profession is seeking to move beyond an “anyone can coach” – approach, it is important to know which (trained) coaching skills –including question techniques– are essential in which stage of the coaching process for attaining coaching goals.

In this study we compared the effectiveness of solution-focused and problem-focused questions in driving positive outcomes of coaching. Our study shows that thinking about solutions rather than problems during a self-coaching writing exercise increases both people’s immediate affective states and their goal-directed motivation. Both approaches, however, are equally effective for immediate action planning and execution during a brief follow-up period. Further research is needed that examines the variety and effectiveness of coaching questions in different stages of the coaching process.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The study involving human participants was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Review Board of the University of Amsterdam (2020-WOP-12154). The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contributions

LS, AV, JK, TT, and BB coded the qualitative data. LS, AV, and JK analyzed the data. LS drafted the manuscript. All authors were involved in the conception and design of the study as well as the collection and interpretation of the data, reviewed and approved the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

We thank Ronald Flohil for his help in developing the study materials.

1 We are aware that the term problem-focused coaching is used primarily by advocates of solution-focused coaching. Real-life coaching often uses a blend of solution- and problem-focused techniques ( Grant, 2012 ) but since we are interested in the effects of specific coaching questions, we separate them in our study design.

2 Log-transformation of the data showed comparable results.

3 For 9 participants, it was not possible to retrieve if they had visited the website within the set period of 10 days. Because exclusion of these participants did not lead to changes in the results, we included their data in the final analyses.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.895439/full#supplementary-material

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Problem vs. Solution Focused Thinking

Every person approaches a problem in a different way. Some focus on the problem or the reason why a problem emerged (problem focused thinking). Others prefer to think about possible solutions that help them to solve a problem (solution focused thinking). Problem Oriented Thinking: Approaching a difficult situation problem-oriented might be helpful if we attempt to avoid similar problems or mistakes in the future, but when it comes to solving the problem we simply waste large amounts of our precious time! Problem-focused thinking does not help us at all to solve difficult situations, which is especially necessary in times where one must find quick solutions to an upcoming problem. Furthermore, the problem focused approach can have negative effects on one’s motivation, but more on this later.

The whole “problem vs. solution oriented thinking” – approach does not only apply when a person faces a problem or a difficult situation (as previously mentioned), but is also being applied in one’s everyday life, when we have to face a challenging task or when having to perform several duties. In fact: if we really focus our attention on this topic we can discover that the majority of our decisions and our attitudes towards tasks, problems and upcoming situations will either be problem or solution oriented. In order to demonstrate you the problem and solution focused approach I have chosen to give you the example of a college student:

Let’s say there is a college student that really does not like math at all (it doesn’t matter what subject he does not like, but I do not like math as well) . Just like every other college student, he will have to do some homework for math and if he wants to pass the exams he will have to study a lot, whether he likes math or not. The student would be approaching the subject math problem-oriented if he would continuously imagine all the negative aspects of math that he does not like and might ask himself the question, “Why do I have to study for math? For what kind of reason?” . The college student would be talking with his fellow students about the pointlessness of math, which will only strengthen his negative opinion about math. Rather than focusing his energy on studying for math he will get uptight and spends large amounts of his time in an ineffective way, that won’t help him to pass the exams.

When I was in school I heard similar questions whole the time, especially when it came to subjects that the majority of my classmates did not like. To be honest, when I was younger I was asking myself these questions as well, especially in subjects that I knew were pointless for the profession I wanted to become. When I grew older I started to scrutinize this behavior and noticed how senseless it was to focus all my attention on problem focused thinking, especially as this only decreased my motivation and strengthened my resentment towards these subjects.

Discovering that one is majorly approaching tasks and challenges problem focused can be really difficult, but once we are aware of this we can start to change our focus from the problem towards the solution and make use of the solution-focused thinking.

Let us come back to the example of the college student that was thinking problem oriented. In order to think solution oriented, he would need to completely accept the fact that math is a part of his schedule and will, therefore, be tested in his exams, whether he likes math or not. By accepting this fact he will easily destroy the root cause for questions that focus on the reason for something (“Why?”) and that only waste his time.

We start to think solution oriented once we are aware that we cannot change certain facts/problems and will only spend our time in an inefficient way when we seek for the possible reasons for these situations. By clarifying the reasons why the task we have to face (e.g. math) might be important, for example, to get accepted to a good university or to increase our GPA, we can bring the solution focused thinking to a further level.

It is really astounding to see how many people are thinking problem oriented, especially as this behavior starts in school and can be found in the professional world as well, for example when an employee has to face a new task that he is not familiar with, or has little to no knowledge about. Those that think problem-oriented would be imagining all the negative consequences they might have to face or all the mistakes they might commit when trying to solve the task. The employee will talk about his difficult situation with different colleagues, his partner or friends, which will only increase his fear of the upcoming task.

When you focus only on the problem, you might miss a new path.

The employee that quite in the contrary knows of the benefits of solution focused thinking does not struggle with the new task for a second, as he is too busy to take necessary preparations to solve it. He will completely accept the new task as a challenge, or even consider the task as a chance to prove his boss that he is capable of solving even the more advanced tasks.

How to avoid problem focused thinking?

#1 self-knowledge:.

In order to avoid problem focused thinking and to replace it with solution-oriented thinking we firstly need to discover that we approach different tasks, problems, challenges, etc. in a problem-oriented way. This is the utmost important step to do. You can identify whether you approach tasks problem-oriented by paying attention towards the questions that arise when you have to face a task that you do not like, which might be indicators for problem focused thinking:

Why do I have to perform this task?
What is the reason that I have to study this subject?
Why do I even spend time with this?

#2 Fight problem-oriented questions:

The very first step to approach problems with solution focused thinking is to avoid questions that mainly focus on the reason or the problem in general. You need to clarify yourself that the question for the “WHY” will only waste important time that you could have invested to solve a given problem.

#3 Clarity:

When you come to the conclusion that a task needs to be done you will see the pointlessness of further evaluating the usefulness or non-usefulness of a task. So when you have to face a task that you dislike you could ask yourself the question, “Has this task to be fulfilled?” and when you conclude that the answer is “Yes”, then you know that every further attempt to evaluate the reasons and the “Why’s” is a waste of time.

#4 Why is it important to solve this task?

Questioning and clarifying the importance of a task will finally erase the root cause of every problem-oriented question. By clarifying the reasons why a task needs to be performed we can effectively change our focus from the problem to possible solutions.

#5 Think about the solution:

The final step to profit from solution focused thinking the most is to ask yourself different questions on how you can solve a given task or problem:

How can I solve this task?
How can I address this problem?
What would be the first step to solving this problem?
What kind of preparations will be necessary for this task?

Why does problem focused thinking decrease motivation?

Just imagine yourself having to study for an upcoming test (whether it is for school or a professional development is unimportant). While you are sitting in front of your table you start thinking about the exam and how much you dislike the whole subject. Questions that address the reason why you have to study for this subject start to arise and will ensure that you lose even the slightest interest in your task. Without being interested and a dozen of different questions that start to arise we finally lack the motivation to study for the exam !

Problem vs. Solution oriented thinking was presented by our Personality Growth Website. What is your preferred way of thinking? We’re excited to hear about your experiences in the comments section below.

About Author

Steve is the founder of Planet of Success , the #1 choice when it comes to motivation, self-growth and empowerment. This world does not need followers. What it needs is people who stand in their own sovereignty. Join us in the quest to live life to the fullest!

The entj personality type analyzed, the istp personality type analyzed, the esfj personality type explained, 24 comments.

Just saying Problem focused approach wastes time is ridiculous. It depends on what situation you’re in. If you’re preparing for an exam like olympiads, Problem focused approach is Best whereas while in actual exam, a solution focused approach might be better. You’re not going to learn and understand anything unless you ask yourself the questions like Why, What and How. But I can’t expect the same fro someone who has disliked Maths.

Did you read the first part of this? They specifically mentioned that starting with a problem oriented perspective is fine, but to eventually “fight it” by answering those questions so that you can get to a solution oriented perspective. Essentially, the big picture here is to not get stuck in problem orientation — it’s quite simple.

The issue of stress is ignored here. Tolerance for ambiguity is reduced by stress. When stressed, any additional requirement is a “problem.” This starts a downward spiral. A willingness to reduce our personal stress (with good diet, aerobic exercise, adequate sleep, etc.) can allow us to acknowledge our willingness (and culpability) in accepting new challenges, which can then take us away from an “Everything is a problem” attitudes.

Hello Jane, this is an incredibly important remark you make here. Thank you for sharing it. I hadn’t considered it from this perspective, but you are absolutely right.

I hate to be offensive, but I also don’t like to say, “No offense”, so I will tell you something that will probably offend you, Steve. But if you hadn’t considered it from that perspective, then you probably aren’t fully qualified to be writing articles like this. You obviously haven’t studied the full depths and ramifications of the issue.

Furthermore, you are telling people to ignore emotions which are a signal to them that something is wrong. Certainly, people can become TOO overtaken by those emotions, but just ignoring those emotions pushes them aside and suppresses them. Ultimately, it is those reactions and emotions that are the barometer of everything that we do. I’m not saying that there isn’t merit to what you are saying, but putting it in such black and white terms ignores so many factors that people deal with.

Finally, there is a strong value to considering problems, and even dwelling on them. It is a natural psychological process. The “why” is often crucial. It also leads to critical thinking and evaluating. Maybe there is a better process that could be undertaken to do the set of tasks much more efficiently, which leads to innovating thinking. It allows for questioning of morality, efficiency, ramifications and consequences. Even visceral reactions to problems can be an indicator of a deeper problem that needs to be addressed. Shutting any these down can cause numerous problems down the road.

I’m not saying that the article doesn’t provide merit, but the fact that you haven’t brought up many of the innumerable other factors to be considered really makes me think that you shouldn’t be writing articles like this, because you simply have only cursory knowledge of the psychology involved.

I’m sorry if that stings, but I think you may be doing more harm than good by saying these things.

Thanks for sharing your opinion. No offense taken.

Wonderful Steve. I so agree that a person’s success depends on their ability to be solution oriented. I am a follower of Dr. Wayne Dyer, and your philosophy sounds fully compatible.

Thanks Sherwin. I am glad someone agrees.

The only reason one (stakeholder) would recognize a situation and label it as a problem is when it demands a solution. Thus problem and solution co-exist – the latter waiting to be discovered. Difficult for me to understand what a problem oriented approach would be.

“Why should I do this task?” simply means that one is not a stakeholder. If so, the problem simply does not exist!

My intention behind writing this article was to point out that some people only focus on the problem, whereas other people take notice of the problem but more eager to find a solution. The first approach involves complaining, but does not lead anywhere. The second approach is not so prone to complaining, but actively seeks for solutions to the problem.

The key term here is orientation not exclusivity. I consider myself to be a solution-oriented person and also know that it is essential that I define what a problem actually entails before I set about trying to resolve it. Sometimes this process is met with a significant amount of resistance due to the emotional discomfort that can arise during my search to define something. Logic dictates that it is seldom a black and white scenario. Acceptance of a problem can be a bigger challenge than we initially realise. Also over-simplifying issues around problem-solving will not do justice to the sometimes complex nature of any problem and/or solution. I do believe the concept of being solution-oriented is a health directed approach and leaves less room for unhealthy manipulation. That is where I see the value in this kind of orientation. Mental and physical health always come into any equation (yes, I said that) involving problems and solutions that need attention to improve health and well being. Thanks for your thoughts and intentions Steve. I believe you are on the right track.

Thank you Louise for sharing your brilliantly articulated thoughts on this subject. I absolutely agree with you.

I’d like to add a comment as an observer of my own behavior. I notice that I complain more when I’m more physically and mentally fatigued which drains me even more. And like an earlier commenter mentioned stress plays a factor in how we choose to spend our time and what we focus on in our thoughts. All the feel good endorphins and the dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin produced in our brains has a huge effect on how we think. I agree that diet and exercise plays a huge part in how we view the world and the obstacles that are placed in front of us everyday.The more of those chemicals produced the more positive thoughts and the less fatigued you feel. I love this article BTW.

What a clearly written and extremely helpful/useful article! I thank you for it.

You’re welcome. Thanks for your feedback.

The mentality in this article is common in business management etc, but unfortunately, it is not so simple as it would have you believe. The described solution-driven thinking implies falling in line with the current power structure and establishment, and naturally is promoted wide and far.

I consider problem-oriented thinking closely linked with critical thinking, and that we have too little of today. If you don’t ask questions like “what?” and “why?”, and instead simply accept the circumstances you’re in, then you also strip away important aspects of participating in society. Circumstances can and do change, and just accepting them means someone else will change it in your stead.

Sure, sometimes you need to stay focused on solving the task at hand. Knowing the difference I’d argue is part of what critical thinking is about, which the world is in dire need of.

Excellent argumentation. Thanks for your contribution.

problems were not here without any solution. There should always be one answer for it, no matter how big or small the problem is. always think on the positive side and you’ll see the solution is just always in front of you or just within your grasp.

Nice words for to understand about the problems. How to be aware in problems. Thank you

While trying to focus on solutions to a couple of problems currently plaguing my empire, I have no choice but to consider the problems, and considering the problems makes me more and more angry and totally distracts me from finding the solution :-/

Lovely topic I was recently faced with a challenge of getting my little daughter back on track after she suddenly took a 360 degree turn in personality and this was the exact debate the edu psych at school and I were having . Do I molicottle the situation and just over compliment her to improve self esteem or do i use the problem solution way of thinking which I agre with and he disagrees with ,wow tough one but I feel equip a young impressionable mind with so many negative influences in her way ,the best approach as a mom in help in my child succeed in her future is the solution based technique and in order for us to find solutions we need to identify the problem else the word solution lol would never have been invented as an antonym ….hahhah

Very good article. When you linger too long on problem, it makes you stressful whereas solution focused approach brings up your dormant resources. Although the situation is same the way your brain chemistry works is very different with these two different approach.

When presented with a problem my instinct is to find a way to fix it, I’m led to believe this is more a male trait than a female trait.

Males are tunnel vision, females periphery vision.

What Is Problem-Solving Therapy?

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Daniel B. Block, MD, is an award-winning, board-certified psychiatrist who operates a private practice in Pennsylvania.

Verywell / Madelyn Goodnight

Problem-Solving Therapy Techniques

How effective is problem-solving therapy, things to consider, how to get started.

Problem-solving therapy is a brief intervention that provides people with the tools they need to identify and solve problems that arise from big and small life stressors. It aims to improve your overall quality of life and reduce the negative impact of psychological and physical illness.

Problem-solving therapy can be used to treat depression , among other conditions. It can be administered by a doctor or mental health professional and may be combined with other treatment approaches.

At a Glance

Problem-solving therapy is a short-term treatment used to help people who are experiencing depression, stress, PTSD, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and other mental health problems develop the tools they need to deal with challenges. This approach teaches people to identify problems, generate solutions, and implement those solutions. Let's take a closer look at how problem-solving therapy can help people be more resilient and adaptive in the face of stress.

Problem-solving therapy is based on a model that takes into account the importance of real-life problem-solving. In other words, the key to managing the impact of stressful life events is to know how to address issues as they arise. Problem-solving therapy is very practical in its approach and is only concerned with the present, rather than delving into your past.

This form of therapy can take place one-on-one or in a group format and may be offered in person or online via telehealth . Sessions can be anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours long.

Key Components

There are two major components that make up the problem-solving therapy framework:

Applying a positive problem-solving orientation to your life
Using problem-solving skills

A positive problem-solving orientation means viewing things in an optimistic light, embracing self-efficacy , and accepting the idea that problems are a normal part of life. Problem-solving skills are behaviors that you can rely on to help you navigate conflict, even during times of stress. This includes skills like:

Knowing how to identify a problem
Defining the problem in a helpful way
Trying to understand the problem more deeply
Setting goals related to the problem
Generating alternative, creative solutions to the problem
Choosing the best course of action
Implementing the choice you have made
Evaluating the outcome to determine next steps

Problem-solving therapy is all about training you to become adaptive in your life so that you will start to see problems as challenges to be solved instead of insurmountable obstacles. It also means that you will recognize the action that is required to engage in effective problem-solving techniques.

Planful Problem-Solving

One problem-solving technique, called planful problem-solving, involves following a series of steps to fix issues in a healthy, constructive way:

Problem definition and formulation : This step involves identifying the real-life problem that needs to be solved and formulating it in a way that allows you to generate potential solutions.
Generation of alternative solutions : This stage involves coming up with various potential solutions to the problem at hand. The goal in this step is to brainstorm options to creatively address the life stressor in ways that you may not have previously considered.
Decision-making strategies : This stage involves discussing different strategies for making decisions as well as identifying obstacles that may get in the way of solving the problem at hand.
Solution implementation and verification : This stage involves implementing a chosen solution and then verifying whether it was effective in addressing the problem.

Other Techniques

Other techniques your therapist may go over include:

Problem-solving multitasking , which helps you learn to think clearly and solve problems effectively even during times of stress
Stop, slow down, think, and act (SSTA) , which is meant to encourage you to become more emotionally mindful when faced with conflict
Healthy thinking and imagery , which teaches you how to embrace more positive self-talk while problem-solving

What Problem-Solving Therapy Can Help With

Problem-solving therapy addresses life stress issues and focuses on helping you find solutions to concrete issues. This approach can be applied to problems associated with various psychological and physiological symptoms.

Mental Health Issues

Problem-solving therapy may help address mental health issues, like:

Chronic stress due to accumulating minor issues
Complications associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI)
Emotional distress
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Problems associated with a chronic disease like cancer, heart disease, or diabetes
Self-harm and feelings of hopelessness
Substance use
Suicidal ideation

Specific Life Challenges

This form of therapy is also helpful for dealing with specific life problems, such as:

Death of a loved one
Dissatisfaction at work
Everyday life stressors
Family problems
Financial difficulties
Relationship conflicts

Your doctor or mental healthcare professional will be able to advise whether problem-solving therapy could be helpful for your particular issue. In general, if you are struggling with specific, concrete problems that you are having trouble finding solutions for, problem-solving therapy could be helpful for you.

Benefits of Problem-Solving Therapy

The skills learned in problem-solving therapy can be helpful for managing all areas of your life. These can include:

Being able to identify which stressors trigger your negative emotions (e.g., sadness, anger)
Confidence that you can handle problems that you face
Having a systematic approach on how to deal with life's problems
Having a toolbox of strategies to solve the issues you face
Increased confidence to find creative solutions
Knowing how to identify which barriers will impede your progress
Knowing how to manage emotions when they arise
Reduced avoidance and increased action-taking
The ability to accept life problems that can't be solved
The ability to make effective decisions
The development of patience (realizing that not all problems have a "quick fix")

Problem-solving therapy can help people feel more empowered to deal with the problems they face in their lives. Rather than feeling overwhelmed when stressors begin to take a toll, this therapy introduces new coping skills that can boost self-efficacy and resilience .

Other Types of Therapy

Other similar types of therapy include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) . While these therapies work to change thinking and behaviors, they work a bit differently. Both CBT and SFBT are less structured than problem-solving therapy and may focus on broader issues. CBT focuses on identifying and changing maladaptive thoughts, and SFBT works to help people look for solutions and build self-efficacy based on strengths.

This form of therapy was initially developed to help people combat stress through effective problem-solving, and it was later adapted to address clinical depression specifically. Today, much of the research on problem-solving therapy deals with its effectiveness in treating depression.

Problem-solving therapy has been shown to help depression in:

Older adults
People coping with serious illnesses like cancer

Problem-solving therapy also appears to be effective as a brief treatment for depression, offering benefits in as little as six to eight sessions with a therapist or another healthcare professional. This may make it a good option for someone unable to commit to a lengthier treatment for depression.

Problem-solving therapy is not a good fit for everyone. It may not be effective at addressing issues that don't have clear solutions, like seeking meaning or purpose in life. Problem-solving therapy is also intended to treat specific problems, not general habits or thought patterns .

In general, it's also important to remember that problem-solving therapy is not a primary treatment for mental disorders. If you are living with the symptoms of a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia , you may need additional treatment with evidence-based approaches for your particular concern.

Problem-solving therapy is best aimed at someone who has a mental or physical issue that is being treated separately, but who also has life issues that go along with that problem that has yet to be addressed.

For example, it could help if you can't clean your house or pay your bills because of your depression, or if a cancer diagnosis is interfering with your quality of life.

Your doctor may be able to recommend therapists in your area who utilize this approach, or they may offer it themselves as part of their practice. You can also search for a problem-solving therapist with help from the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Society of Clinical Psychology .

If receiving problem-solving therapy from a doctor or mental healthcare professional is not an option for you, you could also consider implementing it as a self-help strategy using a workbook designed to help you learn problem-solving skills on your own.

During your first session, your therapist may spend some time explaining their process and approach. They may ask you to identify the problem you’re currently facing, and they’ll likely discuss your goals for therapy .

Keep In Mind

Problem-solving therapy may be a short-term intervention that's focused on solving a specific issue in your life. If you need further help with something more pervasive, it can also become a longer-term treatment option.

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Shang P, Cao X, You S, Feng X, Li N, Jia Y. Problem-solving therapy for major depressive disorders in older adults: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials . Aging Clin Exp Res . 2021;33(6):1465-1475. doi:10.1007/s40520-020-01672-3

Cuijpers P, Wit L de, Kleiboer A, Karyotaki E, Ebert DD. Problem-solving therapy for adult depression: An updated meta-analysis . Eur Psychiatry . 2018;48(1):27-37. doi:10.1016/j.eurpsy.2017.11.006

Nezu AM, Nezu CM, D'Zurilla TJ. Problem-Solving Therapy: A Treatment Manual . New York; 2013. doi:10.1891/9780826109415.0001

Owens D, Wright-Hughes A, Graham L, et al. Problem-solving therapy rather than treatment as usual for adults after self-harm: a pragmatic, feasibility, randomised controlled trial (the MIDSHIPS trial) . Pilot Feasibility Stud . 2020;6:119. doi:10.1186/s40814-020-00668-0

Sorsdahl K, Stein DJ, Corrigall J, et al. The efficacy of a blended motivational interviewing and problem solving therapy intervention to reduce substance use among patients presenting for emergency services in South Africa: A randomized controlled trial . Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy . 2015;10(1):46. doi:doi.org/10.1186/s13011-015-0042-1

Margolis SA, Osborne P, Gonzalez JS. Problem solving . In: Gellman MD, ed. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Medicine . Springer International Publishing; 2020:1745-1747. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39903-0_208

Kirkham JG, Choi N, Seitz DP. Meta-analysis of problem solving therapy for the treatment of major depressive disorder in older adults . Int J Geriatr Psychiatry . 2016;31(5):526-535. doi:10.1002/gps.4358

Garand L, Rinaldo DE, Alberth MM, et al. Effects of problem solving therapy on mental health outcomes in family caregivers of persons with a new diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or early dementia: A randomized controlled trial . Am J Geriatr Psychiatry . 2014;22(8):771-781. doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2013.07.007

Noyes K, Zapf AL, Depner RM, et al. Problem-solving skills training in adult cancer survivors: Bright IDEAS-AC pilot study . Cancer Treat Res Commun . 2022;31:100552. doi:10.1016/j.ctarc.2022.100552

Albert SM, King J, Anderson S, et al. Depression agency-based collaborative: effect of problem-solving therapy on risk of common mental disorders in older adults with home care needs . The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry . 2019;27(6):619-624. doi:10.1016/j.jagp.2019.01.002

By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Decision-Making

Why choose long-term solutions to resolve tricky dilemmas, when short-term solutions to problems are mostly makeshift, go long-term..

Posted May 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

Short-term remedies, though at times necessary, may not adequately address the issues that underlie them.
There can be serious consequences when people don’t scrutinize the possible repercussions of hasty behavior.
Discipline demands flexibility, a readiness to change tactics based on feedback obtained from one's actions.
In making tough or tricky decisions, both short- and long-term time spans need to be scrupulously considered.

My previous post focused on why short-term remedies for problems—though at times necessary, maybe even imperative—may not be able to address the underlying root cause. Or the issues may be just too complicated for short-term, stopgap measures to permanently resolve.

The present post is intended to make you more aware of why, in many instances, it would be preferable to get beyond the short-term biases automatically programmed deep inside your old survival brain.

Patience Tends to Be Rewarded More Than Eagerness

Earlier, I distinguished between getting revenge and achieving justice. And I suggested that such a well-nigh universal impulse is to take retaliatory action against another’s offensive boundary transgression right away.

Pursuing justice, on the other hand, is more challenging, for it generally involves a waiting period—planning a sequence of organized, reparative behaviors over time. That’s why much shorter-term vigilante justice tends to be much less about justice than revenge, illegally assuming authority to punish those perceived as acting criminally.

But in the quest to right a wrong, it’s far more prudent to act within the law. Taking matters into your own indignant hands is not only less likely to accomplish your objectives but also could get you charged with a felony. It’s you who could wind up imprisoned.

People who lack patience, however, or are governed more by emotion than reflective thought are prone to choose a course of action that quickly alleviates their tension. But there can be serious consequences when you’re not carefully evaluating the repercussions of acting precipitously on your behalf.

The Role of Discipline in Prevailing and Finally Triumphing Over Adversity

Perhaps more than anything else, being successful in life demands discipline, which, if you think about it, intimately relates to patience.

Disciplined individuals have cultivated the habit of not acting on the spur of the moment. Prior experience has taught them that in the long (or longer) run, they’re better off taking extra time to reflect on alternatives than reacting right away to provocations or impasses.

It’s not that their apparent procrastination is anxiety -induced but that they recognize the foolhardiness of not weighing beforehand the consequences of attempting to solve problems swiftly—and, likely, capriciously.

Moreover, before giving themselves permission to act right away, thinking ahead, they’ll appraise whether such short-term action coalesces with what longer-term goals they’ve decided are optimal to pursue. If they do implement an immediate solution, that will happen only after they see it as coordinating with longer-term goals.

Ideally, you also want to be clear that these goals truly mirror your values and broader vision—that they transcend mere expediency.

If, for instance, you want somehow to address the worldwide indignity of starvation, you might look at how the lack of education and commensurate employment are two factors lying at the root of the problem. Only then would you consider shorter-term, interim remedies, like furnishing food for those who might otherwise perish.

Discipline is also required to regularly review whether each of your steps toward a final solution has proved effective or whether any might need to be replaced by something you hadn’t assessed earlier.

Although it might initially seem so, discipline doesn’t have much to do with being steadfast or unwavering. Rather, it demands flexibility, a readiness to change tactics based on the feedback you’re obtaining from actions already taken. Whether on paper or in your head, you want to scrupulously document what you did and its outcome.

Because long-term solutions necessitate predicting future possibilities, despite how clued into the present you may be, that’s hardly any guarantee you can forecast all the variables that ultimately will determine the future. Plus, the longer the time required to reach the future date you had in mind, the more errors you’re likely to make along the way that could compromise your plans.

To be an expert at a card game, you need to develop the right skills (consisting mostly of, well, patience and discipline). But even then, the confounding element of chance may defeat you. Notwithstanding your using all your accumulated card-playing chops, you can’t ever be certain about what hasn’t yet happened.

Still, even if your well-thought-out efforts fail, you’ll have less to regret than had you acted hastily. And you’re less likely to blame yourself for contingencies you couldn’t have known in advance. After all, both intra- and inter-personal reality are mutable, resistant to the formulations that, within closed systems like mathematics, you can rely on.

As the Danish proverb ironically puts it: “Prediction is hazardous, especially about the future.”

Developing the Skill Set for Efficaciously Employing Long-Term Solutions

Adopting long-term solutions won’t do much good if you lack seasoned judgment—the reason that the young aren’t very proficient in executing long-term plans. You might be gifted and mature beyond your years, but as long as your lifetime experience is limited, so will your wisdom be.

And even if you’re older, you may still have little training in the kind of analytic decision-making that a situation calls for. So you should make a point of:

Learning from both your elders and peers—and especially leaders in your field
Soliciting feedback from friends and associates who have no interest in defeating or competing with you
Reading about how others have successfully dealt with impasses or issues similar to yours
Attending (whether in person or online) lectures by authorities on the type of person or subject that’s challenging you

Unless you acquire the appropriate long-term skill set, you may be all the more tempted to grapple with your perplexing problem on the fly, viewing yourself as capable of managing it when, much of the time, you may not be. Immediate solutions can easily turn out to be mistaken or even delusory.

Short Term and Long Term: A Balancing Act

In the end, there needs to be a beneficent balance between short- and long-term solutions. Acting impetuously when upset never makes much sense. But frequently, you need to do something to keep the problem from getting worse before you come up with a longer-term solution for resolving it. So both time spans need to be considered—and considered proportionately.

As one writer wryly observes, “If you don’t take care of the present, you won’t make it to the future; if you don’t plan for the future, you’ll remain where you are in the present.”

Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. , is the author of Paradoxical Strategies in Psychotherapy and The Vision of Melville and Conrad . He holds doctorates in English and Psychology. His posts have received over 53 million views.

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How to develop a problem-solving mindset

May 14, 2023 Leaders today are confronted with more problems, of greater magnitude, than ever before. In these volatile times, it’s natural to react based on what’s worked best in the past. But when you’re solving the toughest business challenges on an ongoing basis, it’s crucial to start from a place of awareness. “If you are in an uncertain situation, the most important thing you can do is calm down,” says senior partner Aaron De Smet , who coauthored Deliberate Calm with Jacqueline Brassey and Michiel Kruyt. “Take a breath. Take stock. ‘Is the thing I’m about to do the right thing to do?’ And in many cases, the answer is no. If you were in a truly uncertain environment, if you’re in new territory, the thing you would normally do might not be the right thing.” Practicing deliberate calm not only prepares you to deal with the toughest problems, but it enhances the quality of your decisions, makes you more productive, and enables you to be a better leader. Check out these insights to learn how to develop a problem-solving mindset—and understand why the solution to any problem starts with you.

When things get rocky, practice deliberate calm

Developing dual awareness;

How to learn and lead calmly through volatile times

Future proof: Solving the ‘adaptability paradox’ for the long term

How to demonstrate calm and optimism in a crisis

How to maintain a ‘Longpath’ mindset, even amid short-term crises

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April Rinne on finding calm and meaning in a world of flux

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How to Talk to an Employee Who Isn’t Meeting Expectations

Jenny Fernandez

It’s an opportunity to address the gap between the work they’re delivering and the company’s goals.

Approaching a conversation about improving an employee’s performance requires preparation, empathy, and a focus on collaboration. Even though hearing the truth about their current performance will be tough and potentially hurtful, it’s a teaching moment managers must embrace to help them become more resilient and adept at problem-solving and developing professional relationships. The author offers several strategies for treating difficult performance conversations not as fault-finding missions, but instead as opportunities to work collaboratively to define a shared commitment to growth and development.

As a leadership and team coach, I frequently encounter situations where managers feel ill-equipped to give their team members negative performance feedback. These conversations can be particularly challenging because the stakes are high for both sides. Unfavorable performance reviews and ratings come with tangible consequences for an employee’s compensation and career progression. Further, if the negative feedback is a surprise to them, it might prompt them to start looking for a new job.

Jenny Fernandez , MBA, is an executive and team coach, Columbia and NYU faculty, and future of work and brand strategist. She works with senior leaders and their teams to become more collaborative, innovative, and resilient. Her work spans Fortune 500 companies, startups, and higher education. Jenny has been recognized by LinkedIn as a “Top Voice in Executive Coaching, Leadership Development, and Personal Branding” and was invited to join the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches community. She is a Gen Z advocate. Connect with her on LinkedIn .

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Utah Homeless Services Board: Temporary shelter isn’t enough. To truly help the chronically homeless, we must focus on trauma.

For those who have suffered trauma and the ongoing deprivation of human dignity, we cannot expect them to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” — first, they must be given boots before they are set along the path toward recovery..

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A homeless camp is pictured next to the Jordan River across from Cottonwood Park in Salt Lake City on Monday, April 29, 2024. The city has initiated a general obligation bond project at the park, actively engaging with the community to gather ideas on enhancing the space.

Utahns take pride in our exceptionally high quality of life — a testament to the strength of our local communities. These communities form the bedrock of our success, providing safe and supportive environments. However, as Utah attracts new investments and sustained growth, we are faced with evolving challenges that jeopardize our state’s livability. Among these is the familiar issue of homelessness.

Homelessness isn’t limited to the Wasatch Front. During Utah’s 2023 point-in-time count, 3,687 individuals experienced homelessness from Logan to St. George when counted on a single night in January. Furthermore, according to the Utah Homeless Management Information System , nearly 30,000 individuals accessed some form of homeless services in 2023. These individuals are all familiar faces; they are our neighbors, our friends and our family.

Much like the rest of the nation, the challenges of homelessness in Utah extend beyond mere economic factors. While employment and affordable housing are crucial, they alone are not enough to solve the issue. This is, in part, because we must recognize and address the different types of homelessness affecting our communities — differentiation is vital for creating solutions that uplift those in need and provide them with the tools to achieve human dignity.

The Utah Homeless Services Board, created by HB298 in the 2024 General Legislative Session , is intended to be a nimble response to a rapidly evolving crisis. Today, we will meet for the first time to begin the next chapter in Utah’s efforts to end homelessness. As members of the Board’s executive committee, we are eager to share our vision.

We must start by making a clear distinction between the situational and chronic homelessness which affects Utahns. Not everyone who experiences homelessness falls clearly in one or the other of these categories, and may be somewhere in the middle, but understanding the core differences helps explain the need for unique approaches tailored to each person.

Situational homelessness typically results from sudden, significant life setbacks and can often be alleviated through interventions that include housing and supportive social services. The vast majority of Utahns accessing homeless services fall in this category, and we have great success in supporting their needs. Investments in affordable and deeply affordable housing since 2022 have created over 1,600 units statewide , which is a testament to the vision of our state leaders.

But for those facing chronic homelessness, traditional housing and services alone are not enough to help them recover housing stability and reintegrate into society. By maintaining a know-by-name system for the roughly 2,300 chronically homeless for whom this term applies, we can provide individualized care plans to help our most vulnerable heal and improve.

Utah needs a robust system of personalized care, with services and supportive housing, to properly address the crisis of chronic homelessness — resources that require deeper investments in proven solutions.

Our goal must be to create systems of support that propel individuals along the continuum of care, starting from street living to the ultimate goal of fostering human dignity. To do so, we have to understand that the core difficulty for those who are chronically homeless is trauma.

When our attention remains solely on the crisis and its demands on the emergency response system, resources tend to be channeled into crisis management rather than nurturing initiatives aimed at preventing homelessness or fostering healing and growth within subpopulations. Recognizing and addressing the pervasive traumas experienced by chronically homeless Utahns is pivotal in developing effective and compassionate solutions.

To truly help those in the greatest need, we must enhance human dignity, not just provide temporary shelter. This involves investing in deeply affordable and supportive housing, comprehensive wraparound services that support lasting wellbeing and stabilization — such services should address mental and behavioral health, help overcome substance use disorders, improve access to education and employment opportunities, foster connection to community and elevate individual confidence and capability.

Among our many existing shelter sites, we must ensure safe environments that advance stability and improvement, away from criminal exploitation. It is crucial to align our systems to promote responsibility and accountability, fostering an environment that supports resiliency and growth.

Individuals experiencing homelessness aspire to improve their lives and contribute to thriving, supportive communities. The spaces we construct for those currently facing chronic homelessness must be intentional and purposeful, distinct from those designed for individuals experiencing situational homelessness. For those who have suffered trauma and the ongoing deprivation of human dignity, we cannot expect them to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” — first, they must be given boots before they are set along the path toward recovery.

By understanding the unique needs of each individual, we begin to tailor our crisis response to offer care that addresses the root causes of trauma. Fortunately, these objectives are captured in Utah’s Plan to Address Homelessness , which provides a unified, statewide strategic vision.

In this spirit, the Utah Homeless Services Board begins its work.

(Photo courtesy of Utah Homeless Services Board) Randy Shumway

Randy Shumway is the first Chair of the Utah Homeless Services Board.

(Photo courtesy of Utah Homeless Services Board) Wayne Niederhauser

Wayne Niederhauser is Utah’s State Homeless Coordinator.

(Photo courtesy of Utah Homeless Services Board) Erin Mendenhall

Erin J. Mendenhall is the 36th mayor of Salt Lake City.

(Photo courtesy of Utah Homeless Services Board) Spencer P. Eccles

Spencer P. Eccles is Managing Partner and Co-Founder of The Cynosure Group.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here , and email us at [email protected] .

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