When someone you care about is struggling with a problem, you might be tempted to give them advice. While coming from a well-meaning place, unsolicited advice is likely to make things worse. That’s because it’s usually received as a passive-aggressive form of criticism: “I know better than you, so I’m going to tell you what to do.”
I recommend a much more powerful technique to help people solve their own problems, using their own thinking and other internal resources. And the first step, the “magic move,” is to guide them to shift from thinking about the problem to considering what they’d like instead.
What Peter Bregman and I refer to in our book as an “energizing outcome.”
The first quality of an energizing outcome: it has to be positive. That is, something to move toward, rather than away from. (Read all about it.)
That’s because negative outcomes aren’t motivating. No cab driver will know where to go if you tell them, “Anywhere but here, please.”
Vague outcomes also aren’t motivating, because they don’t speak to the subconscious, which is the engine of — or obstacle to — change.
That’s because the subconscious mind doesn’t process abstractions. But it loves specifics. (Read all about it.)
And now we’ve reached the third and final quality of an energizing outcome: it’s got to be meaningful.
Meaningful outcomes matter to the people going after them. That’s where the juice comes from; the energy in energizing.
Here’s the thing: problems only matter in context. In fact, they are only actually problems in context.
For example: my problem is that I can’t find a micro-USB charging cable for my old Black Diamond Sprint headlamp — the one that has a strong front beam and bright red blinking LED lights in back (so if I get run over by a truck, I can be confident that it was on purpose).
But wait — I’m not doing any nighttime runs these days.
So not being able to charge the headlamp is not actually a problem. It would become a problem again only if I needed hands-free light during a power outage.
Let’s say you’ve just taken the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment and discovered that your four weakest themes are Focus, Consistency, Competition, and (lowest of the low) Achiever. (Not naming names, Howie.) Is that a problem?
Trick question!
Because the answer is, it depends on the context.
If I have a system to keep me on track day after day, then my trouble with focus and consistency are mitigated. (And boy do I have a system! Between Todoist, Clickup, Sunsama, Google Calendar, and an imaginary poster of Mr T hovering inches from my desk chair, I get shit done!)
My tendency to avoid competition might be a problem if I were in an organization where ruthlessness is needed to climb the corporate ladder, or if I were a sales guy in an setting where second place gets a set of steak knives and third place gets fired. But as a coach/consultant/mentor, I don’t need an ego-driven fire in my belly to generate business. I just need to be curious and helpful and clear.
Achiever, though, is another thing altogether. If something in me really doesn’t care if I finish the next book or not, then that’s a problem.
So what’s the energizing outcome to the problem of lacking the strength of
