Help Your Team Solve Their Own Challenges

How do you help your team members handle challenges—without taking on their challenges for them?

In working through a challenge and learning from it, your team is able to grow. You might not even realize that you unintentionally take on their challenges.

We jump in to support or solve because we care, but one of the best ways we can show team members we care about them is by helping them build their skills to solve their own challenges. It took a mentor pointing this out to me many years ago to realize I did this.

One of the best ways we can show team members we care about them is by helping them build their skills to solve their own challenges.

When Support Turns to Solving

Think about the last time a team member told you about a challenge they had…and then somehow it was turned over to you to manage, or you picked it up and solved it. You might be so good at putting out fires you didn’t even realize it. 

I get it. I’m an action-oriented person. I love to solve problems. I love to support my team.

Now I help advancement executives confidently navigate these leadership moments with their teams.

So, let’s envision we’re having a coffee together and talking this through to help support you as a leader.

A Leader’s Role is to Coach, Not Carry

A leader’s role is to coach team members to solve their problems and handle difficult situations, not necessarily do it for them. 

I definitely learned this the hard way as a new leader.

First, I drowned in directly managing the team’s challenges plus my own. Then, I learned my efforts to help my team unintentionally showed them that only I can handle something, or to expect that I will.

I still take seriously my role as a leader to remove barriers and intervene, as appropriate—but I also remind my team members that I believe in their abilities.

Three Steps to Help Your Team Without Taking Over

Here are three steps to help your team members navigate their own challenges (with your support and encouragement, of course).

1. Ask questions

Ask your team member open-ended questions to help them think through the challenge. You might say, “What do you think the next step should be?” or “How might we approach this challenge?” One of the advancement executive clients I work with is practicing asking her team, “What have you tried before this?”

You want to draw out their perspective and demonstrate this is something you expect them to manage.

Start questions with How, What, and When to show support.

Asking a Why question (like “Why did you do it that way?” may make them feel defensive.

2. Determine your role

When your team member starts talking about their challenge, try to determine if they need to vent or need you to do something. Because I have a tendency to jump into things, I have to catch myself to ask if the team member wants feedback, support, or action.

If they request feedback, they’re showing they intend to manage through the challenge and would like a sounding board. Coach them accordingly by asking them share what they’ve tried already, where they got stuck, and where they specifically would benefit from your guidance.

If they request support, ask them to clarify what support they need. Keep in mind, the support doesn’t have to come directly from you.

If they request action, dig a little deeper before you take this on. Try to understand if they aren't confident in their choices and need reassurance, or if they're delegating the decision or situation to avoid managing it themselves. Even if it's a simple action for you, ask yourself if it really is your best and highest use of time, or if your team member could be best served by learning through the discomfort.

3. Reinforce your team member's strengths

Acknowledge your team member’s challenge—and their ability to get through it. You may remind them of how they successfully handled a difficult work situation in the past. Next time a team member comes to you with a challenge, try saying: “I believe in you, and I know you can figure this out. What do you see as the best next step?”

Most importantly, remember that the leader’s role is not to solve their team's problems. It’s to help their team become better problem solvers.

Shanna Hocking is the Founder and CEO of Hocking Leadership, a strategic advisory firm that supports university advancement executives in leading high-performing teams. She is the author of One Bold Move a Day and a national thought leader on women in higher education leadership.