MANAGEMENT roles and responsibilities have dominated our discussions last week with a group of young executives.
Those ladies and gentlemen bombarded me with questions from all over the place: questions about delegation, coaching, recognition, motivation, planning .the whole lot.

Being my normal self, I reversed and relayed the majority of the questions they asked. One clever observer among the group, a young lady physician as it was, made the remark, ?you are not giving us answers, you seem to help us provide the answers to our problemsî. I agreed. I suggested that the best answer(s) to the question often comes from the person most involved in the scenario. I went further by encouraging all the young executives to ?involveî their staff in providing solutions and possible actions. To a great extent, it seemed to me that there was a bit of polite reluctance. After all, they thought ?we are the new managers who need to prove ourselves especially that many of our subordinates are former colleagues!î What makes the manager a better decision-maker in business? More experience, skills and awareness of organisation's vision and mission. A managerial job, however, is to cascade that knowledge to his/her subordinates. When and if this happens, that will represent a portion of people development process. The other portion is, of course, the knowledge and skills required to complete the work. But assuming all that has taken place, the next logical thing for you, dear manager, is to develop the decision making process within the subordinates' minds. That is the most challenging challenge many managers can not face! Some managers take pride in saying statements like ?they can not do anything without meî, ?I have to do it all myself to ensure it's rightî, ?we don't have the right caliber for that yetî, ?whatever they do, I will have to review it at the end?î My reaction to this is harsh, because it lashes back at the managers. Quality taught us that 80% of organisations' problems are in the hands of management! I'm afraid, it's your fault, and you don't even have to brag about it. How do we develop decision making into team members? I have given several examples over the years for this. The key concept that puts all those effective models together is to get the people to practice thinking, not just implementation. Ask. Ask. Ask. Ask what happened, how, when, where and why. Now you and your subordinate are nearly on equal foot regarding the information in the case at hand. Turn to developing creative thinking; ask for solutions, actions, thoughts. Resist the temptation to offer your solutions. Don't even attempt to check if your solution is good or bad. (It must be good, you're the boss, right?!) If your subordinate is not responsive enough, ask narrower questions to help. A question likeî What should we do?î might be too broad for some. Narrow it down to, ?where could we get some supportî, or ?what do you think the customer would like to see?î, or even ?Last time you had a satisfied customer, what did you do?î You subordinate will develop solutions and approaches. Support their ideas, add to them, put deadlines, quality checks and a feedback process. Summarize and end your communication. Standardize your approach of seeking input and new ideas to maximize customer satisfaction and employee development. Turn those applications into success stories in your meetings. Get your subordinates to stand up and deliver their message. Inject pride and individuality into every achievement they do. Remind them that your job is finding out their solutions, asking for alternatives, not providing actions. Finally, do you really think you are always the one with best ideas for solutions? Let's start learning from subordinates, customers, suppliers as well as ten-year-old son. They all have their stories. Attar, an independent management consultant and organisation development authority, delivers seminars in the United States, Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Far East. e-mail:sherifattar@hotmail.com