we face an interesting challenge when people have let us down or behaved badly we have this natural tendency that's a little bit dangerous and the tendency is this we want to fix stuff we want to jump in and just fix it we see somebody let us down we go well I can fix this problem that's what we do we get paid for it we're fixers the problem is do we know what we're really fixing we need to take a moment to diagnose before we prescribe fact I want you to think of it this way imagine that you're sick that you're just really sick you're feverish you're achy all over I hope nobody out there is like that right now but just imagine you're in that situation so you go to the doctor to get some help the nurse takes you into the examination room you wait in there for a little while for the doctor the doctor walks in hands you a prescription and says here do this it doesn't ask you any questions it doesn't take any vital signs but gives you a prescription says that'll take care of you need leaves now what kind of potential problems does that create okay first for starters on the light side maybe it doesn't fix your problem but on a more serious side it could create some additional problems even some more dangerous problems than what you've already got but do we do that when we're seeing the behavior of other people when we see somebody let us down do we stop and diagnose or do we just jump in and prescribe let me give you an illustration of how this happens in life and it's an illustration from my son now there's something you need to know about one of my son's he is a percussionist let me define percussionist for you percussionist play anything that they can hit and and then they actually make it sound musical at the same time so that that's he's a percussionist and he knew that he wanted to be a percussionist pretty early in his life so when he was in high school he was in all sorts of different musical groups so the boss of the high school percussionist is who the band teacher right we got an email about middle of his junior year from the band teacher and it went like this he said your son's doing great in percussion ensemble and in drumline and he's helping a lot with our window castra he just doesn't seem to care about jazz band now listen for the diagnosis here the diagnosis that the band teachers making he said he's not doing it right and I try to explain to him what he needs to do differently and he just doesn't seem to care and he's not getting any better so I've tried talking to him about it nicely I've tried yelling at him I've tried taking him off the song and putting another student on to play in his place and nothing's working he's just not getting any better now what's the diagnosis that the band teacher made there why does he think that my son is not performing well in jazz band yeah he doesn't care he's not sufficiently motivated so he pulls out his motivation tools right and he's gonna tell him why it's important or he's gonna beat him up with it a little bit or he'll put him in kind of punishment mode where he takes him off and put somebody else on curious so my wife and I sat down with our son and said here's the email that we got from your band teacher help us understand your perspective on this now diagnosed with me he kind of rolled his eyes inside and he said I have no idea of what he wants me to do differently he keeps telling me you need to do that better and I said what's better and he says just do it right now what you need to know the first thing this is the band teachers first year teaching okay he's also focused on saxophone he's a saxophone player and he understands what jazz drumming is supposed to sound like but he can't quite explain how to do it to my son so diagnosed with me what is the real issue what's the real reason that my son's not performing well in jazz man what do you think yeah he doesn't know how he has an ability problem not a motivation problem now think about this the band teacher sees it as a motivation problem pulls out his motivation tools and what's the impact on the problem doesn't help does it yeah because I've got the wrong diagnosis or I got the right solution for the wrong problem okay now it doesn't help fix the ability problem but what does it do to the motivation it actually takes it down instead of bringing it back up do we do that with the people that disappoint us in life and in business we see that they let us down we jump immediately - I got to motivate this person we're gonna be much more effective if we take that pause before we start to prescribe to diagnose to ask why that's the first mistake we make is we forget to ask why the second mistake we make is we ask why do we come back with an overly simplistic answer and go it's because they don't care and we don't open ourselves up to could it be motivation or ability or a combination of both those things and once we've diagnosed we're going to be much more effective at solving the problem and maintaining strong relationships by making that diagnosis first