Are Your Leaders Solving Too Much?

Are your leaders solving too much?

It sounds like an odd question. We want leaders who can make decisions, remove roadblocks and help their people move forward. Solving problems is part of the job.

I ask it partly because I've fallen into this trap myself, more than once. Looking back, it wasn't just the moments I jumped in to solve something. It was staying in the weeds on matters I could have empowered others to handle.

That's the downside most leaders don't see coming, and it usually starts with the same instinct that got you promoted in the first place.

Why Leaders Solve Too Much

Most leaders don't take over a problem because they want control. They do it because they built their careers on being exceptional problem-solvers. They know the business, they have the experience, and they can usually spot the right answer in thirty seconds. So when someone brings a challenge, the default reaction is to help by solving it.

I see this dynamic in almost every team I work with, and in one-on-one coaching, it's often the first thing a leader names as their own frustration. It feels efficient in the moment. Repeated over months, though, it creates an invisible bottleneck. Decisions quietly move upward, the leader's calendar fills up, and the people around them never get the reps they need to build their own judgment.

The Coach Approach: Notice Who's Doing the Thinking

Here's a simple way to check where you stand as a leader: when someone brings you a problem, who is doing the thinking?

An employee walks in with an issue. You ask a couple of questions, quickly understand what's happening, and start offering solutions. It feels productive. But notice who did the thinking in that exchange. One of the shifts that happens when a leader takes more of a coach approach is that the question changes, from "How do I solve this?" to "How do I help this person think this through?" That doesn't mean withholding an answer when one is genuinely needed. It means not assuming the answer is always the best thing to offer.

You can see the same pattern in your 1:1 meetings. Ask yourself honestly: who does most of the talking? I put that question to leaders regularly, and after a pause, the answer is almost always the same. They do. Most of the talking, most of the prep, most of the thinking. When that's the case, the leader ends up doing the thinking their team member needs the practice doing. It's an easy pattern to fall into, and it's one only the leader can shift, not by pulling back, but by handing the agenda, the update and the thinking over to the person it belongs to.

A conversation I had after posting this idea on LinkedIn has stuck with me. A fellow coach made the point that the most important factor isn't even what happens in the 1:1, it's whether it happens at all, consistently. He's right, and it reminded me of two very different experiences of my own. In one job, the scheduled weekly 1:1 was really the only chance to connect, and it followed a fairly fixed agenda. In another, my manager's door was genuinely always open, and the 1:1s themselves were more engaging and productive as a result. The quality of the relationship outside the meeting shapes the quality of the meeting itself.

When to Coach and When to Give Direction

None of this means every moment calls for a question instead of an answer. Take an emergency room. When someone arrives with a serious injury, nobody wants the physician pausing to ask, "What options have you considered?" In that moment, clear direction is the right call.

But most leadership moments aren't the ER. Someone brings you a decision they're fully capable of making, and the answer isn't obvious. Sometimes a person needs an answer, sometimes the situation calls for clear direction, and sometimes a decision simply needs to be made by you. The trap is jumping in with the answer because it's faster, easier or just a habit, and missing the moment to build someone's judgment in the process.

The real skill in leadership isn't learning to coach every conversation. It's recognizing when your people need your answer and when they need your questions.

Building Accountability and Ownership on Your Team

The ability to solve problems is often what makes someone a leader in the first place, and it can also be what gets in their way as they grow into the role. None of that makes solving, helping or answering bad leadership. But when they become the default, leaders unintentionally create dependency instead of ownership.

Picture your team hiking up a mountain together, and picture who's carrying the heavy backpack. It's a question I ask clients often, and they see the answer instantly. They're the one carrying the full pack, while the people around them are climbing with light packs, or none at all. That raises an obvious question: what would it take to move some of what's in your pack into theirs?

That question is exactly why I built Coaching for Accountability, a half-day leadership development workshop for people leaders at every level. It's designed for leaders who want their teams bringing more thinking, ownership and accountability into everyday conversations, not just the big ones. Leaders work through real workplace situations rather than hypothetical ones, the same situations that show up again and again in team meetings and 1:1s.

If you're working on this with your leaders, or thinking about building stronger coaching capability across your team, reach out and I'll share the workshop outline.