Why solving problems for others creates dependency, not capability
Early in my career, I prided myself on being the person with all the answers. When team members came to me with problems, I’d jump in immediately with solutions. It felt good to be helpful, to be needed, to be the one who could fix things.
What I didn’t realise was that I was creating dangerous patterns. My team stopped thinking for themselves. They’d bring me every small decision, waiting for my verdict like supplicants at an oracle.
I was exhausted. They were stagnant. And I had no one to blame but myself.
The turning point came when I was overseas for three weeks. My phone buzzed constantly with questions that should have been easy calls. That’s when I understood: I hadn’t been helping my team. I’d been handicapping them.
Key Takeaways
- Rescuing creates dependency: when you solve problems for others, they stop thinking independently.
- Coaching builds capability: questions and silence allow teams to develop real problem-solving skills.
- Authenticity requires trust: true leadership means trusting your team in the dark, not managing by presence.
The Rescuer’s Trap
We fall into rescuing because it feels like good leadership. Someone has a problem, you have experience, so you share the solution. Simple, right?
Wrong. Every time you rescue, you rob someone of the chance to think. You reinforce that their role is to identify problems, whereas yours is to solve them.
Here’s what the rescuing pattern looks like in practice:
- A team member presents a challenge
- You immediately offer your solution
- They implement it without question
- They return next time with a similar issue
- The cycle repeats endlessly
In my experience, this pattern doesn’t just limit your team’s growth. It creates a ceiling on your impact. You can only scale as far as your personal capacity to solve problems allows.
The alternative isn’t abandoning your team. It’s shifting from leader as coach rather than problem-solver-in-chief.
The Coaching Question Framework
Real coaching isn’t complicated. It’s mostly about asking good questions and then shutting up long enough to let people think.
I learned these lessons the hard way. After that disastrous overseas trip, I started experimenting with a simple approach: answer questions with questions.
The basic framework I use:
- ‘What have you already tried?’
- ‘What options are you considering?’
- ‘What would you recommend if this were your decision?’
- ‘What’s the worst that could happen if you chose wrong?’
- ‘What support do you need from me to move forward?’
The silence after these questions is crucial. Fight the urge to fill it. Let people think. Some of my best team members needed thirty seconds of quiet before their best thinking emerged.
What I learned over time is that people almost always know the answer. They’re just seeking permission or validation. When you give them the space to articulate their thinking, you build critical thinking capability that compounds over time.
Building Psychological Safety for Coaching
Coaching only works when people feel safe to think aloud. If your team fear judgement, they’ll keep seeking your answers rather than developing their own.
Psychological safety isn’t about being nice. It’s about making it safe to be uncertain, to explore ideas, and to be wrong.
Here’s how I created that environment:
- Openly acknowledged when I didn’t know the answer
- Celebrated good thinking, even when it led to wrong conclusions
- Never punished people for decisions made with sound reasoning
- Made my own mistakes visible and discussed what I learned
One team member once made a call that cost us three days of work. But her reasoning was solid given the information available. I told her exactly that. Six months later, she was making complex decisions independently that saved us weeks of effort.
The return on that investment in safety was enormous. But it required me to genuinely trust people to fail productively.
When to Coach Versus When to Direct
Pure coaching isn’t always appropriate. There are times when you need to be directive, and pretending otherwise is dishonest.
I use a simple mental model: crisis versus development. In a genuine crisis, I give clear direction. In development situations, I coach.
Times when I’m directive:
- Safety or ethical issues are at stake
- The decision requires information or context the team doesn’t have
- Time pressure makes exploration impossible
- Someone is completely outside their area of capability.
Times when I coach:
- The person has enough knowledge to reason through the issue
- The consequences of being wrong are manageable
- Building capability matters more than immediate efficiency
- Multiple valid approaches exist
Early in my shift towards coaching, I worried this distinction would make me inconsistent. What I discovered was that people appreciate clarity about which mode you’re operating in. Simply saying ‘I’m going to be directive here because…’ creates understanding rather than confusion.
The key is that directive should be your exception, not your default. If you’re constantly in crisis mode, you’ve got bigger problems than choosing your coaching moments.
The Delegation-Coaching Connection
There is a deep connection between effective delegation and coaching. You can’t truly delegate if you’re going to rescue people the moment things get uncertain.
Real delegation means giving someone both the decision and the thinking that leads to it. That’s uncomfortable. You have to watch people solve problems differently than you would.
My framework for coaching through delegated work:
- Define the outcome clearly, not the method
- Ask what success looks like from their perspective
- Identify where they want input versus autonomy
- Schedule check-ins based on their needs, not your anxiety
- Resist the urge to ‘improve’ working solutions
I once delegated a client presentation to someone who organised it completely differently than I would have. My instinct was to reshape it. Instead, I asked how she’d arrived at her structure. Her reasoning was sound and based on aspects of the client relationship I’d overlooked.
The presentation was excellent. More importantly, she’d developed confidence in her own judgement. That capability served us both for years afterwards.
Coaching Remote and Hybrid Teams
Coaching becomes more challenging when you can’t read body language or create those casual corridor moments. But the fundamentals don’t change.
What does change is that you need to be more intentional. You can’t rely on proximity to create coaching opportunities.
Strategies that worked for my distributed teams:
- Regular one-to-ones focused on their thinking, not just status updates
- Asynchronous coaching through written questions on shared documents
- Video calls where I stayed silent and let people work through problems aloud
- Clear documentation of decision-making frameworks people could reference
- Public recognition of good independent thinking in team channels
The advantage of remote coaching is that it forces you to be more explicit. You can’t rescue someone who isn’t physically present, so you build coaching habits by necessity.
One team member told me she preferred remote coaching because it gave her time to think before responding. She could work through coaching questions on her timeline rather than feeling pressure to perform insight instantly.
Measuring Coaching Success
How do you know if coaching is working? The metrics aren’t always obvious, but they’re observable if you pay attention.
Signs that coaching is building capability:
- Fewer questions that could be answered with existing information
- People bringing solutions alongside problems
- Team members coaching each other without prompting
- Decisions being made at lower levels than previously
- Your calendar having more open time for strategic thinking
The hardest part is that these changes happen slowly. You won’t see transformation in a week. But over months, the pattern becomes clear.
I monitored a straightforward metric: the number of decisions made without my involvement each month. Over eighteen months, that number tripled. The quality of those decisions remained high, but my time commitment dropped by half.
That allowed me to concentrate on the tasks only I could perform. Meanwhile, my team grew into the future-proof professionals they deserved to become.
Preventing Your Burnout
Here’s something nobody tells you about being the rescuer: it’s a fast track to exhaustion. When you’re everyone’s answer key, you’re always on call.
Coaching isn’t just better for your team. It’s essential for your own sustainability. When you build problem-solving capability in others, you create space for yourself to think and rest. You can focus on what genuinely needs your attention.
The connection to burnout prevention is direct. Every person you coach towards independence is one less person draining your core energy with solvable problems.
My energy levels changed dramatically when I stopped rescuing. I had capacity for strategic thinking. I could take actual holidays without my phone buzzing constantly. I slept better because I wasn’t the single point of failure.
This isn’t selfish. A burnt-out leader serves no one. Building coaching capability is how you ensure both your team’s growth and your own longevity.
Wrapping Up
Moving from a ‘rescuer’ to a ‘coach’ is a powerful transition. It transforms your leadership style and encourages a truly capable, engaged team. By stepping back and asking, you empower others to step up and lead. This approach builds a foundation for long-term collective success and individual professional development.
🌱 Coach, Don’t Rescue: The Growthenticity Connection
The core ideas explored in this article aren’t just isolated concepts; they deeply resonate with the principles of what I call ‘Growthenticity’:
‘The continuous, integrated process of becoming more oneself (authentic) through leading with questions, learning through action, and growing by embracing uncertainty and imperfection, all fuelled by curiosity.’
Embracing the ‘coach, don’t rescue’ mindset directly fuels purpose-driven growth. It requires leaders to lead with questions, trusting their team’s capacity for answers rather than providing them. This act of intentional questioning encourages both leader and team to learn through action, by trying, failing, and iterating. It cultivates the courage to embrace imperfection and uncertainty, knowing that struggle is a vital part of true development. Ultimately, it’s all fuelled by harnessing curiosity, both in oneself and in others, to unlock deeper learning and authentic progress.
👉 Check out my free and paid Substack offerings at Lead, Learn, Grow. You can further explore concepts like ‘Growthenticity’. You will also gain access to practical tools and connect with a supportive community. This community focuses on encouraging authentic and impactful growth.
Join us as we unpack these ideas and support each other on our journeys.
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Your Turn
What is one coaching question you can start using today to encourage your team to solve their problems?
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