Your team member walks into your office — or pings you on Teams — and says the four words that trigger something primal in almost every leader I know:
“I have a problem.”
And before they finish the second sentence, your brain is already three steps ahead, sorting through solutions, cross-referencing past experience, preparing to deliver the answer. You know how this story ends. You’ve lived this before. You know what to do.
So you tell them.
And here’s the part nobody talks about: in that moment, you just accidentally trained them to keep coming back to you with every problem they face. You handed out fish instead of a fishing lesson. And now you wonder why your team can’t operate without you.
Here’s the thing: the instinct to solve isn’t a character flaw. It’s actually the reason you got promoted in the first place. You were good at figuring things out. Fast, sharp, reliable. Your boss trusted your judgment. So you climbed.
But there’s a brutal irony hiding in that success. The very skills that got you to a leadership role — your ability to solve problems quickly — can become the ceiling for everyone around you.
Think about it like a chess grandmaster Coaching a junior player. If every time the student faces a tough position, the coach leans over and moves the piece for them, what happens? The student never wrestles with the board. Never builds the pattern recognition. Never develops the judgment muscle that only comes from sitting with hard choices and working through them. The coach feels helpful. The student stays dependent.
That’s not coaching. That’s babysitting.
The same thing is happening on your team when you jump to the answer too fast.
The shift I’m talking about isn’t complicated. But it takes discipline, especially in the moment when the answer is sitting right there on the tip of your tongue.
When someone brings you a problem, your first move should be questions, not solutions. And not sharp, interrogating questions — curious ones. The kind a good mentor asks when they genuinely want to understand how the other person sees the situation.
Here are three questions that work in almost any scenario:
1. “What have you already tried?”
This one does double duty. First, it shows respect — you’re acknowledging that they’ve probably already put some thought into this. Second, it’s a genuine diagnostic. Sometimes you’ll learn they’ve already tried two of the three ideas you were about to suggest. More importantly, it gets them thinking out loud about their own process, which is where the real learning starts.
2. “What do you think the root issue actually is?”
Not the symptom they brought you — the root. This question is deceptively powerful. Most people show up with the presenting problem, not the underlying one. When you ask them to dig for the root, you’re modeling the kind of systems thinking that separates average leaders from great ones. You’re also — quietly, without lecturing — teaching them how to diagnose before they prescribe.
3. “If you had to guess at the best next step, what would it be?”
Watch what happens here. A lot of people, when asked this question, will pause, think for a second… and then answer it. They had the answer. They just needed someone to create a safe space for them to trust it. Your job in that moment isn’t to confirm or correct — it’s to explore. “That’s interesting, what makes you lean that direction?” And then you’re in a real conversation.
I’ll be direct about something: a lot of leaders have this backwards. They think their value to the team is measured by how many problems they solve. The faster they respond, the better they’re leading.
But here’s what I’ve noticed over the years: the most effective leaders I’ve coached aren’t the quickest to answer. They’re the most skilled at asking.
Think about a doctor who prescribes medication the moment you walk into the room. Before you’ve described your symptoms. Before the exam. Before any real questions. They’ve just seen a hundred patients with what looks like your problem, and they know the answer.
Would you trust that doctor?
Of course not. We’d call that reckless. We’d say they aren’t really listening.
But when a leader does the leadership equivalent — skipping the questions, skipping the diagnostic conversation, and going straight to “here’s what you should do” — we call that decisiveness.
It’s not. It’s the same reckless shortcut, just wearing a better suit.
I’m not suggesting you never share your knowledge or experience. You should. That expertise is real and it matters. The question is when and how.
The shift looks like this:
Before, when someone brought you a problem, you’d spend 20 seconds listening and 5 minutes talking. Now, you flip it. You spend more time listening — and asking — than you do talking. You let them wrestle with it a little. You stay curious rather than jumping to conclusions.
When you do share your perspective, it lands differently. Instead of “Here’s what you should do,” you say something like: “Here’s an approach I’ve seen work in a similar situation — what do you think about that given what you know?” You make it a dialogue, not a directive.
And here’s the part that’s genuinely exciting: over time, something shifts. The people on your team start coming to you differently. Less “I have a problem, fix it” — and more “Here’s what I’m thinking, can you push back on this?” That’s Growth. That’s exactly what you want.
So here’s the question worth sitting with:
Think about the last three times someone on your team came to you with a problem. How did those conversations go? Did you find yourself doing most of the talking? Did you offer the solution before they’d finished laying out the situation?
And if so — what did they walk away having learned? Not about the problem. About how to think through a problem.
That’s the real job. Not the answer. The capability.
The best coaches I know — whether on a sideline or in a boardroom — aren’t the ones who know every play. They’re the ones who’ve taught their people how to read the field on their own.
Your team is waiting to be coached. Not just managed.
What’s your go-to question when someone brings you a tough problem? I’d Love to hear what’s working for you — drop a comment below or share this with a leader who needs to hear it.
If this resonates and you’d like to go deeper on building a coaching culture inside your organization, I’d love to talk. Grab a free 20-minute discovery call and let’s figure out what that could look like for your team.
The post Stop Problem-Solving Everything — Your People Need a Coach, Not an Answer Machine first appeared on Servant Leadership Coaching | Practical Leadership Development | Doug Thorpe.
