The first thing we need to do is recognize that problems are opportunities and oftentimes they do launch us into new situations that are even better, or they give us an opportunity to make some improvements. The question is, why do so many problems happen and why do they keep coming up over and over again never to get really solved? Let's make a list of some of the common problems that you're facing right now and these are problems that perhaps you're going to want to use as an example as you learn this model. Let's face it, those some of the problems that we have are not really within our sphere of influence. We'll leave those for now and focus on problems over which we might have some control or influence. Some of the problems that I'm hearing these days are little quality time, communication, unclear goals and expectations, I've got a supervisor that doesn't follow up with me enough or I have a micro-managing supervisor that's all over me, there's a lack of accountability among our teams, differences of opinions, silos within the organization, people working remotely, I'm scared to go into the office. I'd like for you to again, pause and list some of the common problems that you're having over which you have control. For example, one of the problems that I had was that I had a boss who hired a person to help me out with my training and I had usually been doing all the training myself. I'd been doing all the tables set up and AV and flip charts, the whole thing. Now this new person was going to do all my setups for me and so I could just show up and train. The idea was that we'd be able to do more training. I showed her how to do everything and I thought that would be it. I thought she'd pick it up. Well it didn't go so great. It was a complete disaster. I mean, everywhere I went, nothing was set up the way it needed to be set up, so I explained again and again, and it just wasn't working. The problem continued and I couldn't figure it out. Go ahead and write down what are some of the problems you're experiencing right now. Good, so we've got a list that we can take a look at later and see how we can use some of these problems as we apply our learning. In this lesson, we're going to talk about why we have so many problems that don't seem to get solved and we're going to learn and actually memorize the seven step problem-solving model. Why do problems occur? Change, people disagree, understaffed, we don't have the tools we need to do our job. When do problems happen? Well, they happen every day. They happen when goals aren't clear, they happen when people aren't aligned, they happen when expectations aren't clear, when there's miscommunication. When people disagree, we all hear things differently. In fact, I've been to meetings before her where I walk out of the meeting thinking I know exactly what I'm supposed to do and when I talk with a colleague, they saw it completely differently. It's, wow. Why do problems resurface and why? Probably because they're not solved very well to begin with, they're not eliminated. The solution wasn't a complete fix, it was a quick fix. Someone came up with an idea, we said, ''That sounds good. Let's go with it, '' And then it didn't work. Typically, how do people respond when a problem occurs? Well, like to apply the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross model here, stages of grief. There's an acronym for it DABDA, D-A-B-D-A. When there is a problem, we do experience some grief. We experience the loss of the old way. We experience the loss of how things were running smoothly and now we've got this problem. One of the first things that happen is we immobilize and just flat out go into denial. I mean, haven't you heard that before? What problem? There's no problem. That's not a problem. Then when it hits you want the problem really is you get angry about it. I cant believe that happened. This is ridiculous. It's messing everything up. Bargaining is a really good one. This is where we think we're problem-solving, where we look for workarounds, we try to look for things that we could do that might just get us through. Then it hits us that this is a really big issue, so depression sets in and we get sad and feel bad for ourselves and get a little self absorbed. We start blaming others, and then we move into apathy. Then we finally get to acceptance and when we finally accept that the problem actually exists, that's when we can start to solve the problem. Another way that I think people approach problems is they'll approach as I'm going to point out the problem and then I want you to fix it. Another way that people look at problems is they don't want to look at the problem too much, they just want to go for a quick solution. We actually need both. We need to be able to take a look at the problem, really analyze it, think critically about it, ask really great questions about it, and then we move to solving that problem. We're going to dive into all of that. Now, I'm going to ask you to go ahead and pause, and we're going to take a quiz just to see if we understand about our approaches to problem-solving.
