AN ESSAY ON LEADERSHIP
“If your boss has a solution to everything, what do we need you for?”
As a leader, I wanted to solve everything. Often, I did. And that was precisely the problem.
01 / 06
I like solving problems. When something is not working, I find it hard to leave it alone. I like understanding what is wrong, working out how it could work better, and then making it happen. This approach helped me a great deal in my work, and when I became a leader, I naturally brought it with me.
Sound familiar? Then read on...
I wanted my colleagues to have every opportunity to do good work. If they got stuck, I helped. If a problem came up, I looked for a solution. I often took on tasks myself because I thought it would help us move forward faster. I did not want to be the kind of leader who simply hands out work and then checks the results. I wanted to do my part to help the team succeed.
And it worked.
In the sense that I really did solve many problems. My colleagues could count on me, obstacles disappeared, and the work could move forward.
What could be wrong with that?
02 / 06
I solved the problem.
William Oncken and Donald Wass wrote about this back in 1974 in what has become a classic Harvard Business Review article. They described how leaders can unwittingly take over their colleagues’ problems. Someone comes to them with a question, and they say they will look into it. With that, the task changes hands. From then on, the colleague is waiting for the leader, rather than the other way around. If this happens often enough, the leader soon finds themselves working on everyone else’s tasks, with barely any time for their own.
Familiar?
But I do not think the overloaded leader is even the biggest problem here.
If a colleague gets stuck and I quickly solve the problem for them, the task gets done. They may be grateful for the help and glad they can finally move on. But what would have happened if they had found the solution themselves? What might they have learned? How would it have felt to succeed? And how much more important might their work feel if they knew the outcome came from their own idea, decision and effort?
03 / 06
Because we can take away more than someone’s opportunity to grow.
We can also take away the feeling
that their work has meaning.
After studying nearly 12,000 work diary entries, Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer found that one of the most important sources of motivation at work is making progress in work that feels meaningful. In their article How leaders kill meaning at work, they also show how leaders can undermine this experience, often without realising it.
For example, by taking away people’s control over their own work, or making their contribution feel insignificant.
And perhaps this is the most frightening part. As a colleague, I will not necessarily think that my boss has taken the meaning out of my work. I may simply become less enthusiastic, take less initiative, or eventually stop expecting much from my own work. I may not even be able to put into words what has changed. After all, my boss is helpful, solves problems, and everything seems to be happening to make my life easier.
You know the saying:
The road to hell is paved with good leadership intentions.
Or something.
04 / 06
It would be easy to conclude that, as a leader, I should teach my colleagues how to solve problems, work independently and take responsibility. But that may not be what they need, and I may not be the person they can learn it from. They may need different experiences, other people, or simply the chance to try things for themselves.
Being their leader does not necessarily mean I have the knowledge and experience they could benefit from the most.
As a leader, I do have a responsibility to create opportunities for my colleagues to develop, and to provide the conditions they need. To give them room to work independently, access to the support they need, and opportunities to learn from experience. That means I also need to pay attention and learn: to recognise what they need, where I can help, and when to make room for someone else.
People develop even when nobody else is “developing” them.
We work, try things, make mistakes, learn from each other, discover new things and find our own solutions. As a leader, I influence how much opportunity others have to do all this, even when it is not my job to “teach” them. If I keep taking over their tasks before they can reach their own solutions, I may be limiting their opportunity to develop.
Not knowing how to support someone’s development does not stop me from getting in its way. Even with the best of intentions.
Of course, this does not mean a good leader should never solve anything for their colleagues. There are situations where they need to make a decision, remove obstacles, or lend a hand. And leaving someone alone with their difficulties is not leadership either. But there is a huge difference between helping someone find their own solution and quietly taking over the problem.
This is especially hard to notice when I think I know the solution. When I think I could do it faster. When I can see how we could finish sooner. Yet as a leader, I may not understand the problem well, let alone know the solution.
05 / 06
And this brings us to what may have been the hardest thing for me to rethink:
What makes me successful,
if I am not the one solving the problem?
Earlier, it felt natural to find a sense of achievement in my own performance. I solved something, things worked better, and we achieved a result. As a leader, that can no longer be the only measure. The aim is not for my colleagues to feel they have a fantastic leader who rescues them in every situation. It is for them to feel they are a fantastic team. That what they do is valuable, their work matters, and their achievements are recognised.
That their own decisions, ideas and efforts have real significance.
That their work has meaning.
I think this is one of the most interesting traps in becoming a leader. Sometimes the very qualities that made us successful before become a problem. Not because they have suddenly become bad qualities, but because our role has changed. And if we do not notice this, we may keep working with the same energy and the same good intentions, perhaps against the very things that make work truly valuable to our colleagues.
For a long time, I was good at getting things solved.
As a leader, I had to learn that my role had changed.
06 / 06
Where do you recognise yourself?
Perhaps you often find yourself working on other people’s problems too. Perhaps you recognise contradictions in the way you operate in other situations. Or there may be things you have tried to do differently many times, yet you keep finding yourself in the same place.
I do not know what you need to change.
But as an outsider and a coach, I can help you find out for yourself.
In coaching, you can work with your own questions and insights. I listen, ask questions, reflect back what I notice, and support you in understanding more about how you operate. You then decide what you want to do with what you have discovered.
Do you feel you could be a better leader? Let’s meet for an initial conversation and explore whether there is potential for us to work together.
If you would like to know more about me and my experience, you can find it here: andras.digital.
