How reframing challenges builds confidence, creativity, and momentum.

In this episode of Unleash Your Impact, Unlock Others, Rich and Dave explore what it means to move from problem-centric leadership to leading with possibility. They unpack how a reactive, firefighting culture where everything is urgent and important drains energy, stifles innovation, and erodes confidence and how a solutions-focused approach can restore engagement, create empowerment and build a culture that positively impacts confidence.

Drawing from coaching practice and real-world leadership experience, they share how reframing problems, asking generative questions, and focusing on small steps forward can shift culture at every level. From the “magic wand” question to scaling and strength-spotting, this episode is packed with practical tools to help leaders energize conversations, create forward momentum, and build collective capability. The possibilities are endless.

Key Talking Points

• Why reactive, problem-focused leadership creates a downward spiral of disempowerment and fatigue.
• The mindset shift from “everything’s urgent” to “leading with possibility”
• How to use generative questions to unlock creativity and ownership
• The power of small steps and chunking down big tasks to build momentum
• How scaling questions and strengths-based dialogue build confidence
• Using future-focused conversations to shift culture and engagement
• Practical tools: the Magic Wand Question, scaling, and the art of ask, don’t tell
• How leaders can avoid colluding with negative narratives and reframe team stories

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom, stories from real leaders, and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

So welcome once again to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others. My name's Dave Morris, and as usual, I'm here with my colleague, Rich Horton. Hi, Rich.

Hi, Dave. All right.

Yeah. I'm going to set you a little context, a little scenario for today's conversation. Rich.

Okay. All right.

Imagine a business where everything is being done last minute, everything's urgent, everything's important. There's a sense of reaction, firefighting.

You have very low engagement, you have sort of stored progress, and more than anything, you just have lots of problems to solve. Does that sound like a business that you've seen before? It certainly sounds like a few I've seen before, yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It's interesting.

I was talking to a coaching client the other day, and we were just reflecting on how overwhelming, sometimes working in an organization where there's so much going on, so many challenges, so many problems, so many issues, and that can start to create real negativity and almost like a victim mentality that starts to drive negative stories.

And then you find that team members and cross teams, they sort of feed off the negativity, and it creates this really unhealthy downward spiral, I think.

Absolutely. So I think it doesn't have to be that way.

So if you take the very common Eisenhower matrix, where they say, well, really, you don't want to be working in the box which is labeled important and urgent, you want to be mainly working in the box, which is important but not urgent. But that requires culture to change and culture to shift. And I think it can shift.

And today we're going to give people some insight into how maybe they can make that shift.

So that rather than having this and a phrase I think you've used with me the other day, problem centric leadership, let's reframe that as leading with possibility. And why solutions focused leadership is the answer.

Yes. Yeah. And I think, as always, we're going to take a balanced approach to this because there's a danger with solutions focused leadership.

Because solutions focused leadership came out of the positive psychology movement, which brought an awful lot of positivity. Surprise, surprise, leadership.

But the danger with positive psychology, in my view, that sometimes there might be a tendency to almost play down the issues and play down the problems.

So we're not saying don't focus on the problems, don't focus on the issues, but actually we're going to think about how you frame that in a very different way that doesn't drive this negative mindset and this victim mentality.

Well, as with a lot of things you and I talk about on the podcast, it's about finding a balanced approach. It's not one thing or the other.

Yes. Yeah. Yes.

So again, you're dead right. Actually, we're not saying that problem solving isn't important and having problems isn't realistic. Of course it is.

Those two things are actually part of what makes the workplace the workplace. But I think go back to my framing bit.

If you're constantly working in that box where everything is urgent, everything is important, and you don't seem to be to get away from that culturally, that's not a great place to be. Long term, you might have to be in that box some of the time, but not most of the time. And I think that's the issue.

Okay, so I think if your mindset is framed around problems, problem solving, etc, etc, the danger is if you have this very reactive mindset, particularly as a leader and a manager. Imagine you have somebody in your team coming to you with a problem. So you're seen to be the expert and the person who's this font of all knowledge.

And you know subtly that that can feed our ego because, you know, people come to us with a problem and they want the answer. And the danger for leaders and managers is actually that they immediately jump into problem solving mode.

So somebody comes to them with a problem and what they tend to do is try to solve the problem for the person and give them the answer, the solution, if you like. So that's not what we mean by a solutions focused approach because you'll get the solution, to be sure.

But if you think about the impact that has on the person that came to you with the problem, it has a real potential to disempower them because they're continually come back to you for you to solve their problems for them.

Yeah.

How many times have you heard Rich, a leader, a senior leader, say to you, I wish I could get my people not to just bring me problems, but come to me with a solution or a potential solution as well? And they don't do that. And they're not doing that. Well, that's a cultural issue. There's a reason why that happens.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so what we're advocating here is when we're talking about solutions, focused leadership, that doesn't mean sometimes you need to tell people if they don't, you know, if they don't have the knowledge or something as urgent, sometimes it's absolutely right to sort of dive into the problem and to resolve it and to move things on as quickly as possible. But when that happens, the learning in the individual doesn't take place.

So you're not moving them forward in their role and developing them in their role. So actually fundamentally, if you do that all the time, it becomes disempowering and drives this sort of, this victim's blame mentality, I think.

So when we talk about solutions focus, what we're meaning is as a general rule, you coach somebody to a solution so you help them to find the solution for themselves by asking good sort of coaching questions, reframing the problem. So actually they're thinking, actually what's the solution to this?

Yeah, so what we're moving away from. So if we're having too many problem focused conversations, which is what you're talking about, there's a cost to that, isn't there?

And I don't just mean a cost in pounds and pence, but there's a cost in terms of other things. So like you've just mentioned disempowerment. What happens if people feel disempowered?

Maybe they feel judged or they feel inadequate because they didn't come up with a solution themselves. Maybe there's just low engagement. Because I know you'll solve my problems. I'm not really going to think for myself.

You might because of this get stored progress because actually a lack of innovation going on. There's a number of issues and costs associated with a problem focused way of leading a business.

Yeah. And if, you know, if all roads in your team lead back to you, you're going to be overwhelmed.

And actually if all roads in your team lead back to you, your team aren't going to develop and you create this unhealthy sort of negative cycle.

And the other thing you said, I think, which is really important, that if you're focused always on the problem, you don't think creatively into the future in terms of what something different might look like. Because if you think about a problem, it's that definition of insanity, isn't it?

If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you're never going to get somewhere different, actually.

So sometimes by just thinking just about the problem and thinking it through just that lens as opposed to lifting yourself up and looking out to what the possibilities, what the options are, you can really lock your team into a very tunnel visioned approach.

Yeah, absolutely. So if we explore what solution focused leadership is, I guess the starting point, as with a lot of things, is a mindset shift.

And it's a mindset shift where the language that you use both internally and therefore afterwards verbally to your team or the people around you has to change. So I'd be interested in exploring with you what that mindset shift looks like in very simple language terms, Rich.

So I think in simple language term, that's about not having a victim blame mentality. So the danger is actually that our mindset gets completely driven by external events.

So it's almost like, oh, here we go, another problem, another issue. I got so much on that sort of mindset where you're just reacting and a victim to your circumstances doesn't lift you out of that mindset.

So a solutions focused mindset actually says, right, stop, let's think about this. And rather than getting locked in the problem, let's think about what a positive future might look like.

So that's actually the starting point. Rather than saying, well, everything's broken, everything is not working. That's, that's not the way we're going to look at this.

What we're going to say is actually let's focus on what's working or what might work better.

Yes, yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, trying to spot opportunities.

Also, if you take a solutions focused approach, what you get your team to do is to focus on what are the strengths and the resources they already have available for them to solve the problem. So it actually inherently builds your team's confidence as well. If you have a solutions focused approach.

Absolutely. So if we just for a minute, you know, change this narrative and say to ourselves, right, let's just stop. Let's think about the possibilities here.

Let's think about the outcome we want to achieve.

And I know sometimes you and I both use the magic wand question where we'll say to a team that we're working with or an individual that we're coaching, if you could wave a magic wand over this and get your ideal outcome, what would that look like? Just to get someone to think about possibilities and not get rooted in the problem. That's the starting point.

What you're then saying is, okay, once they've articulated what that magic wand answer is, the first thing we then say is, okay, well, what's currently working? What strengths have you got that you can rely on to move towards this ideal outcome that you want to achieve.

Yeah.

And I think the other thing just to say about that magic wand question, it's a very powerful question because it opens people up to possibilities that they don't see when they're just locked into the problem. So the magic wand question is not about painting a picture of an unrealistic idealized future.

No.

But it's about unlocking what are the possibilities. And by lifting people out of the problem and looking forward, that generates automatically a positive mindset.

Well, linking back to the previous podcast that we've done before, what we're really tapping into here is creativity curiosity. And we've talked about this a number of times on the podcast before. These are really important things for leaders to tap into in the workplace.

Are we, are we using a curious, curiosity focused mindset? Are we thinking in a creative, bigger picture way?

Yes.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

So once we've done that, once we've.

Kind of painted this picture, as you said, not an unrealistic, there's no way you're going to achieve that type of answer, but something which unlocks possibilities, you've then got to create some momentum. And I think, how do you create the momentum with a solutions focused way of working?

Yeah, and I think that this is one of the important elements of a solutions focused approach. Often when I coach people, they feel really overwhelmed by all the stuff that they have to achieve.

And in the context of organizations, if you think about the expectations that are placed on people at the moment, that can feel very overwhelming.

So if somebody's asked to produce, you know, this, this big overarching strategy to, you know, to address a particular specific business issue, you know, when you start to think strategically, that's, that actually can feel very overwhelming. So one of the, one of the key elements of a solutions focused approach is what we call taking small steps, or if you like, chunking stuff down.

So rather than thinking, good grief, you know, this is the strategy, this is.

Where we need to go.

That feels like a huge greater normal step to get from here to here.

What we encourage people to do in the context of coaching is, okay, so what's the first step or the first couple of steps that you need to take in order to achieve that goal? And then you take those steps, you do a little review, you know, what.

Went well, what didn't go so well.

What'S then the next step? And you sort of chunk it down. So you had the meta view to be sure. That's the magic Wand question, that's your meta view.

But what you're constantly doing is you're constantly chunking that stuff down and then reviewing those little steps.

And in my experience, when I coach people to think quick wins little steps, you soon get through the coaching sessions and say after the fourth coaching session, you look back at the progress that somebody has made and they've just been taking these little steps and actually they've.

Come much further than they thought they ever could do.

It's a real positive, practical way to build momentum.

It's interesting what you say there because as you know, I do quite a bit of work with leadership teams around structuring how they're growing their business and putting some framework around how they grow their business to get focus and clarity and good habits in place.

And often if I'm helping them do a review, an annual review or a quarterly review, one of the things I want to dive into is, okay, what are all the problems we've got to solve in the next quarter or the next year when actually what I try and get them to do normally is say, okay, we'll come on to that, but actually, why don't we just have a look at what's already working for you and all the things you've achieved.

In that last period.

So when they brainstorm that rich, what's really interesting is A, they've achieved a lot more than they thought they had, than they realized they had, and B, it starts to point them towards the things that are already working well in their business that they need to keep on using and keep on focusing on. And I think that energizes the conversation.

It starts the conversation off particularly for there for a half day or a day, it really energizes the conversation. And I think that's one of the benefits of taking a solutions focused approach is it energizes the conversation.

Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. Because if you're constantly taking small steps and then doing a review, you know, you can celebrate those small steps and.

Or you can learn from those small steps.

So maybe the small step didn't work, but it's not a complete disaster because it's a small step.

Absolutely.

So viewers will know that I come from an IT background, and in early days in it, one of the problems with trying to develop a new system was they tried to do these huge great releases of a system and include all these new features. And what would happen is because it was such a big release and really complex in terms of its approach, often it would fail.

You know, there'd be issues and problems.

So you know, quite a number of years ago, decades ago now, they introduced this agile approach where actually in it, what you do is you chunk your releases down into small steps. So maybe the next release is just focused on this particular feature or this particular bug fix. Do that, program those changes in, test.

Them and then release them.

So the agile approach in it is actually solutions focused in action. Chunk it into small steps, then review and then move on to the next small step.

And you build positivity into the system in terms of how you're doing, how you're doing stuff.

Well, it's really interesting when you start to energize a conversation around, you know, whether it's business planning, whether it's some issue that you've got in the business right now and you need to solve it pretty quickly.

When you energize a conversation and people get much more engaged in that conversation because there's energy in it, you tend to get better, better ideas come out and ultimately that will lead to a better solution.

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Okay, Rich, let's bring this to sort of life with some practical tools and techniques so that people would understand how to apply this to their everyday workplaces. So I'm interested from your perspective, what are those sort of practical ways of bringing a solutions focused leadership approach to life?

So this is what I call using a really skillful coaching approach. So this is next level coaching if you like. So this takes us beyond things like the TGRO model which is very commonly taught in coaching courses.

And that's all well and fine, but that's very process focused.

So if you shift from a problem focused approach to a solutions focused approach and using a coaching approach to do that, a really good coach will ask what I call generative questions.

So generative questions are questions that tend to be open ended and there were questions that will facilitate growth or by being future focused, they stimulate creativity, enable people to look beyond the problem. Maybe they're strength based questions. So in other words, they're engaging and energizing for people in the team.

Or actually you drive change by envisioning possibilities and outcomes as opposed to getting fixated on the problem. So let me bring that to life.

So there are teams I've worked with even in the recent past actually, where quite often when a team is struggling or perhaps there's a little bit of dysfunction inside the team or people aren't getting on so well, I do some activities that get them to focus on what their strengths are. And one really powerful Way of doing that is to get the team to give feedback to each other what they see the strengths are in their team members.

You know, so people out there won't be able to use exactly the same approach that we use, but we use what we call strengths cards, for example. So we have 24 cards with pretty pictures on the front that give examples of the sort of strengths that you might see inside an organization.

And we put these strengths cards out on the table and then get people to pick cards that they believe best represents their team members and ask them to give, give them feedback when they seen those strengths displayed inside the team.

And actually you can see when the team engaged in this activity, you can see the energy levels immediately start to rise and the engagement immediately start to rise and people can start to see the strengths in themselves and the strengths in their team members. And it's a very engaging, energizing thing to do. And a solutions focused approach will or get people to focus on their strengths.

So for example, you could ask questions like, you know, what strengths do you bring to our team that you're most proud of?

That's a very simple question you can ask in a one to one or you know, what personal strengths have you have helped you to navigate the past challenges, say over the past month or the past year? You know, so actually if you want to build the confidence in your team members or in the, in the teams, focus on strengths, focus on values.

I think the word you use there, Rich, which I was going to pick up on myself, was the word confidence.

So if you imagine you're working in an environment where you've just got lots and lots of issues and all we're focusing on is these problems, these problems, these problems that can SAP people's confidence. Not just SAP in energy, but it can SAP confidence.

The beauty of reframing this and using these generative questions is actually by re energizing the conversation and focusing it more positively, that actually breeds confidence. It doesn't SAP it away, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So the magic wand question that we talked about earlier, you know, if you could wave a magic wand, step into the step six months into the future and the miracle has happened, you know, what would your future look like? You know, that's a very powerful way of envisioning the future and imagining what success would look like.

So for example, you could ask a question like, if you could design the ideal experience for our customers, what would that look like? So it lists people out the problem and encourage them to think creatively and into the Future of what a positive future might look like.

I think it's also the other thing that you can do if you think about those small steps and regularly reflecting and reviewing on those small steps, you know, very simple questions that you can learn. So, okay, so we've taken that small step, you know, what have you learned through this experience and what could we do differently next time?

You know, so you're building in this critical reflection, this, this learning process into the way that you do stuff.

So you're constantly taking small steps, you're chunking stuff down and then you're reviewing what went well and what could you do to make it even better next time. So it's, you're not locked into this victim mentality and victim approach.

I'm guessing also if we adopt this solutions focused approach and we say, right, let's just stop, let's just maybe ask that, as you said, that sort of future perfect question just to get people.

Thinking in a different way.

One of the things we've got to do practically is sort of benchmark where we are right now. And I know you've talked about scaling questions as well. Just want to unlock what that means because I think that's really important.

Scaling questions can be very powerful. So by scaling question, what we mean is get people to assess where they are right now.

And then by scaling questions, it encourages chunking stuff down into small bits and thinking about the next steps that people can take. So for example, let me give you an example. Quite often in coaching, I will coach a leader around the subject of confidence.

That's a very common thing that comes to me in the context of coaching. So one of the first questions I will ask them to do is actually to assess where they think they are right now.

Now often when people come to me, say, with an issue that they have around confidence, they probably think that confidence is rock bottom.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

So what I will say is, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, you know, 10 being actually that, you know, you feel perfectly confident in every scenario, in every situation, that would be, that would be a 10 out of 10 versus a zero. Where actually in every situation, in every scenario that I go into, I feel completely overwhelmed. I feel completely underprepared.

I feel completely under resourced for dealing with the problem, that would be a zero.

Okay, so when you ask people to place themselves then on that scale of, you know, 0 to 10 or 1 to 10, I don't know of any leader that I've coached that that would rate themselves as a one or A zero.

Okay.

Quite low. Okay. So they probably say, well, actually, well, it would depend on the circumstance.

So that's a really important insight because it would depend on the circumstance, you know, so maybe it's somewhere between a five and a seven.

Okay, okay, yeah.

So if you think about that actually, rather than thinking that their confidence is at a 1, actually they're somewhere between a 5 and a 7 depending on the situation. So that immediately starts to say, actually, well, I'm, you know, I'm not completely lost. Call.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

You know, so it gives people a realistic way to frame where they are actually right now. So okay, so let's say right in this particular scenario you're in a five.

Yeah.

Okay. You rate yourself at a five. Thinking about small steps.

If you think about actually what could I do in terms of a small step that would give me just the confidence that be a six, you know, for this situation. So what you're not trying to do with scaling questions is to think, what do I need to do? What do I need to do to become a 10?

10?

Yeah.

Okay, you're thinking, actually I'm at 5 right now. What do I need to do just to take a small step to bring myself to a six?

Well, I guess when if someone says, okay, well, I'm a 5 out of 10 at the moment, it does depend situationally, but let's just call it broadly speaking, I feel I'm a 5 or 6 out of 10.

I guess what you can do then is bring that strengths based question in saying, okay, okay, so you must have some strengths and some resources and some experience with skills, etc. To bring to the table. So what are those strengths that make you a 5 out of 10 straight away? You're flipping it, aren't you already?

So by doing that, you're helping them tap into a more positive mindset straight away, aren't you? To sort of attack this issue that they've got in their mind which might be made bigger than it actually is.

Yeah.

And the other thing you can do, if you think about those small steps and taking those small steps, make those very practical.

So for example, if somebody is coming to me with a confidence issue, say they're struggling to speak up in the context of large important meetings, you know, so, you know, they feel, they don't feel the confidence to speak up. So we could think about, you know, we could have a coaching conversation. So what's going to take you from a five to a six?

What little thing could you do in that next big meeting that would take you from a five to a six.

So something that you can do that's going to build that confidence and that might be just something as simple is, okay, I'm going to commit in that next meeting to say something in response to somebody else. Just the one thing. They're going to commit to just doing that one thing in that next meeting.

I'm just going to commit to saying something in that meeting. Now, what's really quite interesting is, okay, so they commit to that and in the next coaching session, we'll review what happens.

What's really quite interesting is when people take that step, that small step, they usually take a couple more small steps because they think, oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought it might be.

Yeah.

You know, so it encourages them. It encourages them then to take more small steps.

So when we come back to the coaching next time, you know, they've taken not just one small step, they've taken a couple of small steps and each step builds on the other and that, that builds your confidence and energizes you.

So this is building up a really good, practical toolkit here. So let's just recap what you've just been saying.

So some reframing questions, things like what's already working or what's not quite working now, but what would you like to be working? These are very, you know, that's very positively focused questions, scaling questions. On a scale of 1 to 10, where do you think you are now?

And I think, as you said, when you frame what the two extremes are, most people are not going to put themselves on either of the extremes.

Yeah, see, exactly.

Yeah.

The future. Perfect. Thinking that question about if this was working brilliantly, what would it look like? What would be happening for you?

I think that type of questioning is really helpful. And lastly, and importantly, strength spotting and amplifying things that are already working well, that are already resources people can tap into.

I think this is a good, practical toolkit for use when you are actually doing a solutions focused approach to something.

So let's be clear here. You know, we're not saying dismiss the problems.

We're actually asking you to change your mindset and to reframe how you approach these challenges and these issues. And I think I'll just reiterate what I said towards the beginning of this podcast, actually. It's really important to have that meta and micro view.

So the meta view lifts us out of the challenges and issues and stops the overwhelm. So that's the magic wand. Questions the strengths based questions.

And then the micro view is actually focusing on what are the small steps that I can take.

So where am I right now and what are the small steps that I can take to get me from five to a six and then to build in critical reflection so you generate insight into actually what happened with those small steps, what worked well and what can I do differently next time. So it all fits together into a really nice way of thinking about how do I develop a solutions focused approach.

And what I like about this.

Rich, go back to the context I gave you at the beginning where we're in that box of everything's urgent, everything's important, we feel overwhelmed, we're very reactive, it feels like we're firefighting all the time. We're. By starting to use an approach like this, it does get you out of working like that all of the time. It does start to shift the culture.

It shifts the culture in a business, which I think is really important. Now I know when we run our leadership programs, we actually have a whole workshop around using a solutions focused approach.

I'm wondering, when you've run these workshops, have you got anything you can share with us that may have surprised you or challenged you in terms of how people have talked about solutions focused to you?

So I think sometimes there's a little bit of world weariness, if you like, when you start to think about a solutions focused approach, because it's a bit of a cliche that's been out in leadership and management for a long, long time.

So sometimes in my experience when I run this workshop, you know, people are a little bit skeptical about, it's just positive psychology or positive thinking.

But actually when you start to really go deeper into this and you expose people to the power of generative questions, you get them actually to coach each other inside the workshop and, you know, to focus on their strengths, to focus on what works well already and then ask them to peer coach each other on some of the challenges they're facing inside their job and take that meta and micro view. Actually, when people start to see in practice the energising impact this has on them, it really unlocks for them and opens up.

Actually, I could take a very different approach to managing my team.

And actually I need to take some responsibility for the narrative and the stories that I create and stop, if you like, buying in and colluding with my team's negative stories about what's going on.

And actually, you know, really good leaders and managers don't get locked in to the negative narratives and the negative Stories, they don't collude with their team stories. Actually, what they do, by taking a solutions focused approach, you reframe the culture of the team.

And actually, regardless of the organizational context, you can create a very positive environment inside your team. By taking a solutions focused approach, it.

Also changes your leadership presence, doesn't it?

Because rather than people seeing, rather than seeing you as the, the answer to all my problems, actually you're a resource to help me find a better way forward and gradually that will wear off. People will come to you thinking, I've already thought this through actually, because I know how you ask us questions around this.

I've already thought this through. How about this? How about that? So it does change the way that you influence your team and it does change your team's behavior over time.

Yeah.

And also for you as a leader and a manager, in terms of your future career as well, it frames you as a person who has positive impact and that would draw people to you.

And in my experience inside organizations, leaders that can track a positive way through highly challenging economic situation that we're in at the moment, those leaders are worth their weight in gold inside organizations.

Absolutely right. So I'm going to wrap this conversation up, Rich, go into some final reflections and takeaways.

So if I'm a leader, listen to this conversation and thinking, yep, these guys are saying something here which I want to tap into. I do want to lead in a more effective way. That point that you've just made, where's my starting point?

What would be your top tips as a starting point?

So one of my top tips would be don't collude in your team's negative stories and narrative. I think that's really important. So, you know, drive a fresh narrative and a fresh approach to the challenges that you face.

So we're not saying here that you dismiss the issues and challenges that you have, but actually what you're trying to do is by taking this solutions focused approach, you can drive a positive culture inside your team. So that's the first thing is don't collude in your team's stories. I think the second tip would be, I think really focus on, on your team's strengths.

It's very easy sometimes to focus on when people do stuff wrong and to jump on people when they make mistakes. And it's uncommon in leadership, I think, for leaders to focus on what somebody did well and what are their strengths.

So that can be very affirming and very confidence building. The final thing I would say is focus on taking small Steps, take the small step and build review into that.

So whether you do that personally or whether you do that with your team, you know, build that approach where you chunk stuff down into small steps and then build that positive, reinforcing learning cycle and learning reflection into the way that you do stuff.

Yeah, some really good tips there, Rich. I think I've got a couple of extra ones that I've written down here. Listen to you talk this morning. Number one is ask better questions.

Ask questions of your team or the people around you you're trying to influence that unlock energy. I think if you can energize a conversation, it's so much more positive.

Yeah, absolutely. I think just very simply, I would say ask, don't tell.

Yeah, okay. That's a good. That's a good idea.

And the second one for me, and it goes back to that, how I frame this at the very beginning is create some space for future focused conversations. We will never get out of being in that urgent and important box if we don't create some space for some future focused conversations.

It might seem like you're adding time to your diary or not, actually. You're going to save yourself so much time in the future.

Yeah. I mean, being future focused is not a luxury. It's a must have. It's a must have.

Yeah.

And for anyone who thinks the point you made earlier on that solutions focused leadership is just this sort of soft and fluffy, you know, positive psychology nonsense, it's not. It's a very strategic skill and a very important skill in the world that we now work in. So, Rich, thanks for the conversation today.

Really, really important.

Thank you.

My invite to anybody listening to this is just have a little reflect on the leadership conversations that you're having with your team, with people that you're trying to influence in your business or even outside of your business.

And please, if you find this episode helpful, please share it with anybody who feels stuck, who feels overwhelmed, or just somebody who's looking for a fresh way to lead in their business.

Now, next time when Rich and I are going to be together, we're going to talk about a different topic altogether, which is actually what we call stakeholder focused leadership. That's for next week, but for today, Rich, thank you so much.

Thank you.