Imagine someone on your team comes to you with a problem. Before they've finished explaining it, you've already worked out what you'd do.
You know who to call. You can see the email that needs sending. You could probably sort it out before your coffee goes cold.
So you say, “Leave it with me.”
They leave feeling relieved. You leave with another job. Very helpful of you. Slightly less helpful for your afternoon.
Sometimes taking over is the right call. There might be a genuine emergency, a decision only you can make or something the person simply hasn't been taught yet. But if there's room for them to work through it, jumping straight to the answer can mean missing a useful opportunity.
The question I want to explore is: how do you help someone move forward without quietly making their problem your responsibility?
A good place to start is surprisingly ordinary.
“What do you need from me to move this forward?”
They might need information. They might need permission. They might have a perfectly sensible plan and just want to check it with you. Or they might genuinely have no idea where to start.
Those are different situations. It helps to find out which one you're in before delivering a very confident answer to the wrong problem.
First find out what kind of help they need
There's a version of coaching that seems to involve responding to every question with another question.
“What do you think?”
“How does that feel?”
“And what do you think about how that feels?”
If someone just needs to know who can approve an invoice, this could become quite a long morning.
Give people the information they need. Explain a process they haven't learned. Be direct about safety, compliance and decisions outside their authority. You don't need to turn every conversation into a coaching session.
When there is time to think, and the person has enough knowledge to contribute, try:
- “Talk me through where you've got to.”
- “What have you already tried?”
- “Is there something only I can clarify or approve?”
Listen to the answers. They will tell you much more than assuming the person is either incapable or trying to hand you their work.
The approach below draws on coaching research, but it's a practical conversation guide, not a sequence that's been tested as a complete intervention. Use your judgement about what the situation needs.
Catch the story you're telling yourself
Before we get too busy improving someone else's thinking, it's worth checking our own.
“They need me to fix this.”
“They should know this by now.”
“It'll be quicker if I do it.”
That last one might even be true today. The question is whether doing it yourself is the most useful response this time.
This is where I would use Catch–Challenge–Change.
Catch your first interpretation. What are you telling yourself about the person or the problem?
Challenge it. What do you actually know? What are you filling in? Could they be asking for approval rather than an answer?
Change your response based on what you learn. That could mean asking another question, explaining something, giving permission or stepping in.
You don't have to go through this out loud. A small pause before “I'll do it” might be enough to ask, “What have you got in mind?”
You may discover they've thought it through. You may uncover a gap they need help with. You may even find out that your first answer wouldn't have worked. Always a useful discovery before you've sent the email.
Understand their thinking before offering yours
Let's use a hypothetical example. Someone says another department “never follows through” and asks you to intervene.
You could immediately call that department. But first, what actually happened?
Ask which handover was missed, what was agreed and whether the other team had what they needed. Their frustration may be completely justified. You're checking the detail so you can respond to the actual problem.
Then explore the result they're trying to achieve:
“What would a workable outcome look like?”
“What options do you see?”
“Which would you try first, and why?”
Give them time to answer. If you're already preparing your next question while they're talking, you may miss the part that changes the conversation.
And notice the difference between “They didn't reply to Tuesday's email” and “They don't care about our team”. One is an observation you can check. The other is an interpretation. There might be evidence for it, but you haven't heard that yet.
I've explored this further in Why the Best Leaders Ask Better Questions. The useful part is being genuinely interested in how someone reached their view, including when you think they're wrong.
What the research can tell us
There is research supporting questions about possible solutions, although the findings need a bit of care.
In a 2012 randomised study of 225 university students, Anthony Grant found that solution-focused written questions led to greater immediate gains in confidence and perceived progress, and more proposed action steps, than problem-focused questions. This was an online exercise, not a manager coaching a team member at work. Read the study.
A 2022 study with 183 medical residents and PhD students found benefits for immediate mood and motivation to approach a goal, but no advantage for confidence, action planning or goal attainment. Again, participants answered written questions rather than working with a coach. Read Solms and colleagues' study.
My practical takeaway is to make room for “What could you try?” without rushing past “What's actually happening?” A useful question can help someone think. It doesn't remove the obstacles they're dealing with or guarantee a better result.
Share what you know without making them guess it
You are allowed to contribute. If you can see a risk, say so. If you know something they don't, share it.
What gets awkward is hiding your preferred answer inside a question.
“Don't you think you should call them?”
There is a question mark there, but there's not much curiosity.
You could be clearer:
“One concern I have is that another email might leave the handover unclear. A call could help you agree who owns the next step. Is there anything I'm missing?”
Now they can consider your reasoning and add context. Perhaps they've already tried calling. Perhaps the other department needs a written record. Perhaps your suggestion is exactly what they needed.
If the decision is yours to make, make it. Explain why, then be clear about what they can still decide. People shouldn't have to keep guessing until they arrive at the answer you've already chosen.
Make ownership specific
“Great. You own it.”
Fine. But what does that actually allow them to do?
Can they change a deadline? Commit money? Ask another team to do something differently? Or are they going to get halfway through and discover they needed your approval all along?
Before you finish, agree:
- The next action, who will take it and when.
- What they can decide without checking with you.
- Any limits around cost, timing, quality or commitments to other people.
- What help you will provide.
- When you'll review it and what would mean coming back sooner.
In our handover example, they might be able to organise the conversation and agree an internal checklist. Changing a promise to a customer could still need your approval. If nobody in the other department can take responsibility, that's a clear reason to involve you.
Your part matters too. If you've promised an introduction or access to information, follow through. Asking someone to take ownership while leaving them without the tools to act is going to be frustrating for both of you.
A small workplace study by Hardré and Reeve provides some relevant evidence. Five weeks after managers received autonomy-supportive training, their employees showed better engagement and less controlled motivation than the comparison group. The detailed findings did not establish a clear increase in intrinsic motivation. This was one company, with a short follow-up, and it didn't test whether employees became better independent problem-solvers. Read the 2009 study.
For a day-to-day conversation, I'd take a straightforward lesson from that: listen to the person's perspective, explain the reason behind what you're asking and make the choices available to them clear.
Come back to what they learned
When you check in, go beyond whether the task is finished.
“What happened?”
“What would you do the same way next time?”
“Where would you still want support?”
Be specific with feedback. If they checked an assumption, considered another option or raised a problem early, explain why that helped.
And if it didn't work, look properly at why. Maybe the next step wasn't clear. Maybe they didn't have the authority. Maybe the workload made it unrealistic.
If the problem is a missing resource, another thoughtful question won't make it appear. That would be a very useful trick, but we still need to sort out the resource.
Use what you've learned to adjust the support next time.
Try one small change in your next conversation
You don't need to overhaul every one-to-one this week.
Choose one manageable problem where there's room for the person to think and act. Before you offer your answer, ask what help they need. Hear their reasoning. Share what they are missing. Agree the next step and the support around it.
Then ask yourself a fairly revealing question:
“Who left that conversation with the work?”
Sometimes it should be you. But if it's nearly always you, there may be a small change worth trying before the next “Leave it with me.”
Practise the conversation with your team
My Leadership Mindset workshop gives managers time to work through coaching conversations, decisions and ownership together. The Human Advantage keynote introduces the wider thinking around assumptions and how we respond under pressure.
If this is something your team is working on, tell me a little about the challenge. We can explore what would be useful for your leaders.
