A leader once described a problem to me that I hear in different forms all the time.
“I keep being asked to help. And the problem is...I always do.”
At first, that doesn't sound like much of a leadership problem. Helping people is good. Being responsive is good. Supporting your team is part of the job.
The problem is when helping quietly becomes rescuing.
An employee brings you a decision, so you make it. They run into a problem, so you solve it. They're unsure how to respond to something, so you tell them exactly what to say.
In the moment, this can feel incredibly efficient. In many cases, it is more efficient because you have more experience and can probably solve the problem faster.
But speed isn't the only outcome that matters.
Every time we immediately take the problem back, the employee learns something about how work happens: when I'm unsure, bring it to the leader.
Repeat that pattern enough times and we've unintentionally trained dependence. Then leaders become frustrated and start asking, “Why does everybody need me for everything?”
Sometimes the answer is uncomfortable: because we've taught them to.
There are obviously situations when employees genuinely need an answer. Leaders shouldn't turn every two-minute question into a 45-minute coaching session just to prove they're developing people.
But there are also plenty of moments when the best help is resisting the urge to provide the solution.
“What do you think?”
“What options have you considered?”
“What would you do if I weren't here?”
“What are you leaning toward?”
And sometimes the most developmental response is simply, “You decide. I trust you.”
That sentence can be uncomfortable for both people. The employee now has to own the decision, while the leader has to live with the possibility that it won't be handled exactly the way they would have handled it.
That's part of development.
If our standard for delegation is that someone must do everything exactly the way we would, we haven't really delegated. We've just found another set of hands.
The challenge of coaching is providing enough support for someone to grow without providing so much support that we remove the opportunity for growth.
The goal isn't to become less helpful. It's to become more thoughtful about what help actually looks like.
Sometimes helping means answering the question. Sometimes it means teaching. Sometimes it means asking a better question, and sometimes it means getting out of the way.
If you're constantly overwhelmed because everyone needs your help, don't only look at the people asking.
