How to Become a Better Problem-Solver: 10 Science-Backed Strategies

Problem-solving ranks among the top five in-demand skills for 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. Yet most people approach problems the same way they did a decade ago—reacting instead of responding, solving symptoms instead of causes.

The difference between average and exceptional problem-solvers isn’t intelligence. It’s method. Whether you’re navigating workplace challenges, managing a crisis at home, or simply trying to make better decisions, developing strong problem-solving skills transforms how you handle life’s inevitable obstacles. The good news? These skills can be learned and strengthened with practice. This guide will show you exactly how to become a better problem-solver using research-backed strategies that work.

What is Problem-Solving?

Problem-solving is the process of breaking down challenges to find solutions. It typically follows four stages: identifying an issue, establishing a plan, executing the plan, and finding a resolution.

However, problem-solving can begin before problems occur. Crisis management, for example, includes pre-planning for situations that might arise—a proactive approach that separates reactive firefighters from strategic thinkers.

What is the Importance of Problem-Solving?

Problem-solving allows you to evaluate challenges, seek deeper understanding, develop execution plans, overcome obstacles, and find resolution. Those resolutions lead to concrete benefits:

• Fixing what’s broken
• Improving performance
• Increasing productivity
• Building confidence
• Avoiding risk

Research suggests that 60% to 90% of strategic initiatives fail^{1https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-office-of-strategy-management} due to poor execution—not poor strategy. The ability to solve problems effectively separates teams that achieve goals from those that spin their wheels.

Real-World Problem-Solving Examples

In the workplace: A common challenge leaders face is low employee engagement. With strong problem-solving skills, you can determine the root cause, identify where understanding breaks down, outline steps to improve engagement, and involve the right people in finding solutions.

In a crisis: Your partner has been in a car accident. With good problem-solving skills, you can quickly assess the situation, contact authorities, locate a hospital within your insurance network, and manage family logistics at home—all while staying calm enough to think clearly.

In everyday life: What’s for dinner? With solid problem-solving skills, you can assess what you have on hand, factor in time constraints, consider others’ preferences, decide who’s cooking, and make a decision without the usual 30-minute debate.

What Are the Characteristics of a Good Problem Solver?

Strong problem-solvers share the ability to understand issues clearly, rally others together, and empower the right people to execute solutions.

Core analytical skills:

• Identifying risk and opportunity
• Planning ahead
• Thinking objectively
• Making sound decisions

Interpersonal skills:

• Communicating clearly
• Listening actively
• Emotional intelligence
• Recognizing others’ strengths

Execution skills:

• Accountability and discipline
• Collaborating effectively
• Creative thinking

Now let’s examine how skilled problem-solvers put these abilities into practice.

10 Tips and Strategies to Become a Better Problem Solver

1. Get Clear About What the Problem Actually Is

People often go around in circles trying to solve a problem until they realize they weren’t on the same page from the start. As educator John Dewey noted, “A problem well stated is half solved.”

If your problem involves multiple people—and most do—clarify the issue before attempting solutions. Start with these questions:

• What is your perspective on the problem we’re trying to solve?
• What is your perspective on how we got here?
• What do you perceive that I’m thinking about the issue?
• What are your motives for solving the problem?

After gaining clarity, you may discover multiple problems on the table. If so, solve one at a time. Trying to address everything simultaneously leads to solving nothing well.

2. Identify What Needs to Happen

Once you’re clear about the problem, identify your next steps and the goal. This approach mirrors the evidence-based WOOP method (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettingen. Research shows that contrasting your desired future with present reality improves goal attainment significantly.

The WOOP method works in four steps:

1. Wish: Identify what you truly want to achieve
2. Outcome: Visualize the best possible result
3. Obstacle: Identify the internal obstacles that might get in your way
4. Plan: Create an “if-then” plan to overcome those obstacles

Structure your thinking this way:

Problem: Our sales team is frustrated that they don’t receive enough leads from marketing.

Ideal outcome: Our marketing system generates enough qualified leads to increase sales over the next year.

Obstacle: Our current lead generation process lacks clear qualification criteria and follow-up systems.

Method: Analyze what’s not working in the current system and reorganize or implement a new lead-generating process with specific if-then protocols.

This framework prevents the common trap of jumping to solutions before understanding what success actually looks like. By naming obstacles explicitly, you prepare yourself to handle them when they arise.

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3. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Lack of clarity and communication often sit at the root of problems. To identify what went wrong and how to fix it, gather data from everyone involved.

Keep questions open-ended. Closed yes-or-no questions risk sounding accusatory and limit the information you receive. Open-ended questions promote deeper cognitive processing and reveal answers you might not have anticipated.

Try these:

• What is your perspective on what happened?
• Where do you think this problem stems from?
• What do you think would help solve this?
• What feels unclear about the problem?
• What do you think is misunderstood by others?
• What story might you be telling yourself about this situation?

For leaders: Don’t limit questions to fellow senior leaders, especially if the problem affects a wider group. Ask at all levels. Employees working in everyday processes often know the issues but may feel unsure about raising them.

This connects to what Harvard professor Amy Edmondson calls psychological safety—the belief that you won’t be punished for speaking up with ideas, questions, or concerns. Research found that 85% of employees^{2https://hbr.org/2016/01/can-your-employees-really-speak-freely}reported at least one occasion when they felt unable to raise a concern to their bosses. Create safety by rewarding honest feedback, not shooting the messenger. When people feel psychologically safe, they share problems earlier—before small issues become major crises.

4. Avoid the Knee-Jerk Reaction

When presented with a problem, take a beat to assess the situation before reacting. Unless you’re facing a life-threatening situation—a house fire, physical attack, or baseball heading straight for your head—pause.

There’s neuroscience behind this advice. Psychologist Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack” to describe what happens when your brain’s emotional center overrides your prefrontal cortex (the logic center). During high stress, your threat response takes over, impairing complex problem-solving. Your amygdala evolved to protect you from physical threats, but it can’t distinguish between a tiger attack and a difficult email from your boss.

Researchers also identify a phenomenon called action bias—the tendency to prefer doing something (even if ineffective) over doing nothing. In one study of soccer penalty kicks, goalkeepers who stayed in the center had a 33% chance of stopping the ball. Yet they jumped left or right 94% of the time. Doing something felt better than waiting, even when waiting was statistically smarter. This same bias drives us to send reactive emails, make hasty decisions, and implement solutions before we understand problems.

Common knee-jerk reactions to avoid:

• Blaming someone else immediately
• Getting defensive
• Jumping to conclusions
• Expressing baseless anger
• Making regrettable decisions

To counter these impulses and give your prefrontal cortex time to engage:

• Take several deep breaths (this activates your parasympathetic nervous system)
• Walk to clear your head and get blood moving
• Analyze your initial reactions before acting on them
• Write down what you know, don’t know, and what confuses you
• Set a “response delay” rule—wait 24 hours before responding to emotionally charged situations

The goal isn’t to avoid action entirely. It’s to ensure your actions come from your thinking brain, not your reactive brain.

5. Think and Plan Proactively Using the Premortem Technique

No one is immune to problems. Plan for potential challenges down the road, even if you don’t think they’ll happen. This proactive approach is essential for effective crisis management.

This is where the premortem technique becomes powerful. Developed by psychologist Gary Klein, a premortem asks you to imagine that your project has already failed, then work backward to identify why.

Research by Mitchell, Russo, and Pennington found that this “prospective hindsight”—imagining an event has already occurred—increases your ability to identify reasons for failure by 30% compared to simply trying to predict what might go wrong.

Here’s how to run a premortem with your team:

1. Gather everyone involved in the project
2. Ask them to imagine it’s six months from now and the project has failed spectacularly
3. Have each person write down all the reasons they can think of for the failure
4. Share and discuss the reasons as a group
5. Develop prevention strategies for the most likely failure points

In your proactive planning:

• Identify potential threats. What could make things harder?
• Identify weaknesses. If something happens, do we have the ability to face it?
• Plan responses to scenarios. If this happens, then we do that.
• Set up communication channels. If something occurs, who communicates what, and how?
• Establish crisis management protocols. Who makes decisions when things go wrong?

The question “What’s the worst that could happen?” isn’t pessimism. It’s preparation. Teams that anticipate problems solve them faster when they arise.

6. Stay Open to Feedback and Ideas

When facing a problem, your instinct may be to solve it quickly so you can move on. But reactive problem-solving often produces bandaid solutions and more issues later. Give yourself time to stay open to feedback and ideas.

This leverages what researchers call cognitive diversity—differences in perspective and information processing. Studies show that cognitively diverse teams solve problems faster and more accurately than homogeneous groups. McKinsey research^{3https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters}indicates that companies in the top quartile for diversity are 35% more likely to outperform competitors.

Cognitive diversity isn’t just about demographics. It includes differences in how people think, what experiences they bring, and how they process information. A team of people with identical backgrounds and thinking styles will generate fewer solutions than a mixed group.

To access diverse perspectives:

• Ask people outside your team. Someone in IT might have insights for an HR problem.
• Study leaders facing similar challenges. What approaches do they use?
• Study leaders facing entirely different challenges. How someone solved a logistics problem might spark ideas for your customer service issue.
• Seek out people who disagree with you. Dissenting voices often spot blind spots.

Unexpected tip: Ask a child what they would do. You might hear an outside-the-box idea you’d never generate yourself. Even if you don’t use their suggestion, it can spark new thinking.

Want to level up your people skills? Check out our resource:

7. Identify the Best Players to Solve the Problem

Leaders don’t need to solve all problems themselves. One of the most empowering things a leader can do is provide resources and space for people with the right strengths and skills to do what needs to be done.

A McKinsey survey^{4https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-frontline-manager-of-the-future}found that effective frontline managers focus on coaching and anticipating problems rather than personally fixing everything.

To identify the best players:

• What skills and strengths are needed to solve this problem?
• Who on the team best fits those requirements?
• If the skills exist outside the team, where can you find talent?
• How can team members complement each other’s strengths?
• What resources are needed?
• What must you learn more about to solve this well?

8. Create Clear Execution Plans

Once you’ve identified the problem, figured out what needs to happen, and determined the best players, create the execution plan.

If you’re the leader and you’ve identified who should solve the problem, delegate the execution and resource them well. Micromanagement at this stage creates a whole new set of problems.

Chris McChesney’s 4 Disciplines of Execution^{5https://pages.franklincovey.com/4d-landing-pages-execute-goals-create-breakthrough-results-guide-nw.html}framework offers a proven structure:

1. Focus on your most important goal. What single achievement matters most for solving this problem?
2. Identify key tasks that drive results. What activities will actually move the needle?
3. Track progress visibly. How will you know if you’re getting closer to your goal?
4. Build regular check-ins for accountability. How will you report, review, and plan for ongoing success?

As McChesney notes, “The biggest reason people fail to execute on goals is ‘the whirlwind’—the day-to-day urgency that destroys execution of larger goals.”

9. Lead Courageously and Humbly

Good problem-solvers face problems directly instead of ignoring, avoiding, deflecting, or denying them. They approach challenges with humility and curiosity. You can do this whether or not you have a leadership title.

“A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes and has the courage to develop that potential. Leadership is not about titles or the corner office. It’s about the willingness to step up, put yourself out there, and lean into courage.”

—Brené Brown, Ph.D., MSW

In her book Dare to Lead^{6https://brenebrown.com/book/dare-to-lead/}, Brené Brown identifies four skill sets of daring leaders:

• Rumbling with vulnerability: Willingness to engage fully, even facing uncertainty
• Living into values: Walking the talk about what you believe
• Braving trust: Being reliable, accountable, maintaining boundaries, showing integrity
• Learning to rise: Getting curious about what you feel and why

Courageous leadership also means creating psychological safety for your team. When people feel safe to admit mistakes and raise concerns, problems surface earlier and get solved faster.

Want to assess your leadership courage? Take Brené Brown’s Daring Leadership Assessment^{7https://daretolead.brenebrown.com/assessment/}.

10. Train for the Future

Everyone faces problems. But equipping yourself with problem-solving skills now makes you far better prepared when challenges arise. Invest in your future self with these resources:

• The 4 Disciplines of Execution^{8https://www.amazon.com/Disciplines-Execution-Achieving-Wildly-Important/dp/145162705X}by Chris McChesney
• Fixed: How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving^{9https://www.amazon.com/Fixed-Perfect-Fine-Problem-Solving/dp/0063004844}by Amy E. Herman
• Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen^{10https://www.amazon.com/Upstream-Quest-Problems-Before-Happen/dp/1982134720}by Dan Heath
• Problem-Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People^{10https://www.amazon.com/Upstream-Quest-Problems-Before-Happen/dp/1982134720} by Ken Watanabe

Problem-Solving Takeaways

Becoming a better problem-solver is within your reach. Here are the key strategies to remember:

1. Clarify the problem first. Ask questions to ensure everyone understands the actual issue before attempting solutions.
2. Use the premortem technique. Imagine your solution has already failed, then work backward to identify risks—this increases your ability to spot problems by 30%.
3. Pause before reacting. Counter your brain’s action bias by taking a breath and letting your prefrontal cortex engage.
4. Ask open-ended questions. Create psychological safety so people feel comfortable sharing honest perspectives.
5. Leverage cognitive diversity. Seek input from people outside your immediate team or industry.
6. Delegate to the right players. Identify who has the skills to solve the problem, then resource them well.
7. Create clear execution plans. Focus on one important goal, track progress visibly, and build accountability check-ins.

For more on developing strategic thinking abilities, explore How to Master Strategic Thinking Skills in 7 Simple Steps.