Joan Tafoya, Former Director at Meta, Intel & Sandia: Why Swarming Every Problem Slows Teams

From People Solve Problems by Jamie Flinchbaugh

June 10, 2026 · 23 min

About this episode

Joan Tafoya discusses the challenges of coaching problem solving in teams and her evolution as a leader.

Joan Tafoya joins Jamie Flinchbaugh on People Solve Problems for a conversation built around one deceptively simple question: how do you coach problem solving when the person in front of you is difficult to coach?  Joan, a former director at Meta, Intel, and Sandia National Laboratories with nearly 38 years of experience, brings a perspective shaped by leading large, globally dispersed teams and by watching problem-solving succeed and fail at scale. Joan opens by describing her own growth as a leader. In her early years as an engineer and manager, she was focused on results and often grew frustrated when people did not solve problems the way she would have. Over time, she recognized that she could not advance until she taught others to think differently, not to think like her, but to think more deliberately about problem-solving itself. She points to a turning point while running a manufacturing line at Intel, where a constant stream of people asking for the next step left her burning out. The shift she made was to narrate her own thinking out loud so others could follow it, and to ask people what they were thinking rather than supplying every answer. That experience leads…

People in this episode

Host: Jamie Flinchbaugh

Guest: Joan Tafoya

Topics covered

coaching
problem solving
leadership
team dynamics
communication

Keywords

coaching
problem solving
leadership
team alignment
communication

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Meta, Intel, Sandia National Laboratories