so, what if instead of being asked to implement solutions, you were instead asked to solve problems?

a bad boss is that who thinks (s)he knows or is capable enough to take certain types of decisions by his/her own, hiding the actual problem from his employees, who then have to deal with a solution of his/her choice.

thing is, more often than not bosses are not there for thinking. in fact, bosses probably became bosses exactly cause they cannot solve these sort of problems (anymore). they do solve other types of problems, but not these. and the fact that they might believe they can, is often a problem (or leads to a non optimal solution).

so, a good boss is that who exposes the raw problem to his people and trusts their judgement and creative problem solving skills. that boss might even believe in people’s self-management. i think the formula is very simple – trust on your people’s experience, skills and intelligence and delegate on them. you as a boss take the other decisions, which you probably enjoy a lot doing, and on what you are in fact better than anyone else (that’s why you the boss). then you have good ingredients for success.

it’s always a good exercise to remember people to tell you in raw words what actually needs to be solved in the first place, not just what they thought it had to be done to solve it.