Dr. Nido Qubein says that, “What makes a leader successful is their ability to solve problems.” Think about that for a moment and you’ll realize how true that is. We aren’t good leaders because we make more money. We aren’t good leaders because our company is growing. We aren’t even good leaders because we give great motivational speeches.

We are good leaders because we solve problems. And in solving problems, we make more money for our companies. Our organizations grow. Our speeches are motivating because we’re solving our listeners’ problems. Everything that we do as a leader is based on us solving our own, our team’s, our organization’s or someone else’s problems.

The difference between the successful (or good) leader and the less than successful leader is how well we can solve problems. It’s really that simple.

Some of us are very good at temporary fixes. We can see the short term need and we get it taken care of. I remember an old car I had. The radiator leaked a bit. But that was easily “fixed” by putting in some chemical that sealed the leak. (I’m not a mechanic, so forgive me for not knowing what that was.) One thing I was smart enough to do was to buy a lot of that chemical. Every few weeks, I’d add a bit more because there were more leaks. Is that how you lead?

In my experience, we had leaders that were very good at fixing the leaks. They could handle every day-to-day problem really well. The only problem was that many times, today’s problem was the same one we had last week and the month before that and the 3 months before that, and on and on. Here’s the key question: did they really fix the problem?

Of course not.  They patched the problem. 

But a successful leader knows how to fix the problem so that it is unlikely to occur again, and if it does, there is really a different aspect to it that hadn’t been apparent before and was unknowable at the time.

Your ability to fix problems…and fix them permanently…will make you the valuable employee that your organization will not want to ever lose.  They know they have a gem and will not give it up easily. 

So how do you become this gem?

There are only 7 steps required to make you a fantastic, and successful, leader:

1. Identify the problem
2. Analyze the problem
3. Describe the problem
4. Look for root causes
5. Develop solutions
6. Implement a decision
7. Measure results

Dr. John Reeb is the President of the Colorado Leadership Institute, a licensee of Crestcom International. He conducts leadership and management development training monthly, producing confident and effective leaders and managers, leading to higher productivity, less turnover, less stress and greater profit. Feel free to contact him at john@leadershipcolorado.com for more information.