Every day, in athletic departments across the nation, coaches and staff members take problems to their athletic directors. Every day, the athletic director asks enough questions to get the full picture, then tells the coach or staff member how to handle it.

Most of us in leadership positions like to solve problems. While we might complain to our spouses and our colleagues that work is just one brush fire after another, there is also a part of us that is proud that we're the "go to person" who can put fires out.

So what's missing? The learning and development of the employee. Daily problems provide a major opportunity to develop your coaches and staff members. This shift begins by asking artful questions that get your employees thinking. In the following article I will show you how.

The Traditional Way
First, let's look at how a typical well-meaning athletic director might ask questions when faced with a daily brush fire. She is likely to ask questions in several of these categories:

History: "How did we get here?" "Who did what?" "What have we tried before?" are history-based questions that draw upon the employee's knowledge to establish context for the current situation.

The problem itself: "What happened?" "What is the complaint?" "What's broken?" and "What's at stake?" will get factual answers from the employee's mental picture of the problem.

Available resources: "How much time do we have to fix this?" "Who is willing to help?" and "What resources do we have on hand?" will influence the feasibility of various solutions.

Possible solutions: Here, questions for the employee center on identifying ideas for solving the problem. "Do you have any ideas about how to solve it?" "What might work?" "Have you gotten any thoughts from assistant coaches?" are examples. The athletic director is gathering input while seeking a solution.

These questions are all fine. They provide important data, and will typically be part of any problem-solving conversation. They may well provide the athletic director with sufficient information to suggest a solution. Great, right? Wrong!

The downside is that these questions keep the athletic director primarily responsible for solving the problem. They lead to a one-way flow of information from the employee to the supervisor. The coach or assistant athletic director is treated as a source of data, rather than as a creative, capable problem solver. Even if the athletic director solves the problem brilliantly, the employee didn't learn anything new, and has little investment in the solution.

These questions fail to:

• Challenge the employee to think. Factual questions, geared toward obtaining information for the athletic director, invite a data download. They don't impel staff members to tap their creativity and resourcefulness.
• Keep responsibility on the shoulders of the employee. Continuing to solve problems in this way makes the athletic director's job bigger and bigger over time and fosters employee dependency.
• Stimulate joint problem-solving and collaboration. The athletic director will tend to do things the way he always has, rather than enlisting the employee in a process that could lead to new solutions. A good idea may not be a good idea if it's the only one you have.

Artful Questions
The solution lies in what I call "artful questions," which entails a different type of approach to problem-solving and invests in the employee's long-term capabilities. Artful questions push the staff member to think out of the box, put responsibility back on her own shoulders, and often lead to better solutions. Designed to impel the employee into a process of exploration, they also provide more opportunity for the athletic director to learn.

Generally, artful questions will illustrate a thinking process, rather than simply obtaining information necessary for an answer. By asking artful questions, the manager helps the coach or staffer learn how to solve problems, leading to more independence down the road. As the ancient Chinese proverb says, "If I give you a fish, you eat for a day. If I teach you to fish, you eat for a lifetime."

Obviously, the questions need to be created for each specific situation, but here are a few examples that can be used in most problem situations:

Criteria for a solution: Ask the employee about criteria that would define a great solution. Later, possible solutions can be evaluated against these criteria. Having clear criteria early in the conversation will focus and energize problem-solving. "Who needs to be happy here?" "What are the primary concerns to take care of?" "What's the bottom line that our solution must address?"

Switching perspective: Ask the coach to step into a different perspective and view the problem from there. You can ask him to look at the problem from the viewpoint of a different function, time, or person. Try out, for example, "What would our business manager say to do?" "If you were to look back in six months, knowing that your solution worked beautifully, what would be in place?" "What do you think the primary concern of the superintendent/president is in this?"

Perspective switching is a great "out of the box" approach. Often, with a different view, new ideas will surface that previously hadn't occurred to the coach.

Creative resourcing: This category of questions challenges the employee to identify new resources that could be brought to bear. This is similar to the traditional "available resources" category above, but it pushes the employee to do more in-depth thinking. "We can't go lower on the ticket price, so what can we offer that would add value without costing us much?" "What coach outside of your own sport might be able to help you?"

Unique contribution: Ask a question that directs the staff member to find a solution that works toward using her strengths. "You have terrific skills in X. How does your experience suggest we should move forward?" "What solution would best take advantage of your expertise in communication?" "Which ideas are most consistent with your values?" All of these affirm and validate the experience and judgment of the employee, and send the powerful message that she is uniquely capable of providing the solution.

Challenging limitations: Together, list the rules and assumptions that you've made about the situation. Go down the list, one by one, and question them. Be a devil's advocate. "Who says that this can't be changed?" "What assumptions can be eliminated?" "What rules can be broken?" This isn't an argument for random abandonment of reasonable rules. However, if the specific problem provides an opportunity to eliminate unnecessary restrictions, there may be real benefits to changing things.

Artful questions stimulate a creative thinking process and a dialog. Rather than a one-sided data gathering process that allows the "expert" athletic director to decide what should happen, artful questions challenge the employee to think and take ownership. As a result, the employee will be more able to problem-solve the next time, there is less dependence on you as the athletic director, and often more creative and effective solutions are found.

Before You Start
Two words of caution. First, not every problem lends itself to this approach. For example, if an employee, on his first day on the job, needs to know how to turn the computer on, it will be more appropriate to show him the switch than to ask "Who might be able to tell you where the manual is?" It takes some discernment from a supervisor to decide if a particular problem is really an opportunity for asking artful questions, or whether it might be better to simply provide an answer and get on with it. The nature of the problem, the capability of the employee, and the urgency all factor into the decision.

Second, when employees are used to getting simple answers, to be suddenly asked challenging questions can be confusing. In order to not appear "gamey," it is important for the manager to give the employee context. Let him know that you're asking questions in order to give him more responsibility and support his learning.

It may be useful to say, "Let's try something a little different. I'm not sure what the best solution is. I have confidence in your capability. Let's try some questions that will help us come up with a great solution to this." Providing a little context will do much to enroll the employee in a process that changes how you work together in subtle but significant ways.

The bottom line? Far too many supervisors and managers create a subtle dependency and keep themselves in the driver's seat when they could be helping their employees to take more responsibility in solving problems. Using artful questions to challenge and intrigue employees will help them become more capable, resourceful, and creative.