A few months ago, I was on a call with my coach, Sarah, throwing myself a full pity party.

Frustrated. Stuck. Absolutely certain the whole thing was worse than it actually was.

She let me go for a while. Then she said, “You need to put Sally in the back seat. She’s driving your car right now, and Sally is being entitled and grumpy.”

I laughed.

Then I put Sally in the backseat and it worked.

Here’s what I see with the people I work with. When you lead people, you can sit across from someone on your team, listen for ninety seconds, and see their answer clearly. You’d bet money on it.

Then you take your own problem home and chew on it for three weeks and get absolutely nowhere.  That’s not you being bad at problem-solving…it has a name.

Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross call it Solomon’s Paradox. Named for the king who handed out brilliant judgment to everyone in his kingdom and made a total mess of his own house.

In their research, people reasoned more wisely about a friend’s dilemma than their own. Same facts. Same situation. Different POV.
The reason is actually distance.

When it’s your problem, your fear is in there. Your ego is in there. What people will think of you is in there. All of that sits on top of the facts, and you cannot see around it.

When it’s someone else’s, you just get the facts.

The same research found the fix, and it is almost annoyingly simple.

When people stepped back and looked at their own situation from the outside, then the gap closed. They thought about themselves as they would a friend.  This helped them find an objective solution.

Two things to try this week.

Name her. Or him. Give the version of you who shows up frustrated and entitled a name that isn’t yours. Mine is Sally.

Now when she starts driving, I catch it faster, because I’m watching someone else drive badly instead of just being the bad driver.

You can figure this out.  Just don’t let Sally in the front seat.