Effectively Dealing With Problems in the Workplace: It’s All in Your Perspective

Effectively Dealing With Problems in the Workplace: It’s All in Your Perspective

It’s understandably frustrating when inevitable problems arise in your business. Letting them upset you only causes further stress and can lead to a generally unpleasant workplace environment. The key to coping with - and hopefully overcoming - these challenges has a lot to do with the way you perceive them. You don’t have to become a victim of missteps, accidents, forgetfulness, errors, unexpected delays, unforeseen circumstances and other misfortunes that can and do befall your company. You can, instead, see them as opportunities for learning, reorganizing or updating. Think of a problem as an occasion to regroup, rethink and reframe the situation. Rather than anger or upset, try to react with curiosity when problems arise. Ask some probing questions, like these:

• What actually happened? Once you get over the initial shock of something going awry, step back and assess the entirety of the situation. Before all-out panic sets in, make a calm assessment; you may determine that it’s not as big a problem as you originally thought.
• In reality, how disruptive is this problem to the actual ongoing business? Does it represent a massive, costly, wide-ranging issue, or is it merely an inconvenience - or somewhere in between. Having an idea of the impact of the problem can help you take appropriate and effective actions to remedy and prevent it from occurring again.
• Can the problem be traced back to a core issue that could be easily and effectively remedied? Trace the root cause of the problem to determine if there are adjustments that could be made to processes and procedures that could prevent this from happening again.
• How could you minimize the fallout of this particular problem? What actions can you take now to ameliorate its effects and what procedures can you implement to help prevent this issue from arising in the future?
• Is this necessarily a negative thing? It’s a stumbling block for sure... but what does it mean that this happened? Can this problem be seen in a different light, for example, as a "happy accident" that presented a teachable/learnable moment or an opportunity to explore different procedures?
• Who was ultimately in charge of this issue? How could the systems/procedures this entity works within have broken down causing the problem at hand? Is the right person/team in charge of this? Do personnel need to be reallocated so as to avoid this occurrence moving forward?
• Were expectations reasonable for all parties concerned? Ascertain that no one entity was overtaxed or overburdened making it difficult or impossible to avoid a problem.
• Should - or could - you have been prepared for this? What, if anything, did you fail to account for - or was it a case of a convergence of unforeseen circumstances?
• How do others in the field deal with this issue effectively? How can you learn from them how to take this sort of issue more in stride or avoid this problem altogether?

When approached with curiosity, problems can be seen as opportunities to learn and do better. It’s inevitable that things will occasionally go amiss so the best you can do is have an effective coping strategy in place to deal with whatever comes in the wake of a problematic situation. With that curious eye peeled, you’ll learn to problem-proof your business and be less reactive when they do arise in the workplace.

How do you react when problems arise in the workplace?