How to Teach People to Think for Themselves

As a CEO or an exec­u­tive, are you unin­ten­tion­al­ly doing oth­er peo­ple’s jobs?

That could be a prob­lem — for you and for them.

Even if your inten­tions are noble, when you do some­one else’s job, you rob them of account­abil­i­ty, and insu­late them from learn­ing expe­ri­ences and stretch­ing their capa­bil­i­ties through the val­ue of fail­ure and the cel­e­bra­tion of success.

Stop Being a Chief Prob­lem Solver

I talk about this in chap­ter 12 of Your Oxy­gen Mask First. If you’re an answer dis­penser, you’re doing their job, not yours. And then you won­der why the com­pa­ny might not be per­form­ing and scal­ing at the lev­el that you hoped.

As an orga­ni­za­tion­al dis­ci­pline, you’ve got to learn how to teach peo­ple to think for themselves.

Here’s how:

• Park your ego

Know­ing all the answers is so self-val­i­dat­ing. Of course, you have the answers — you’ve been doing the job for 20 years. But your job is it to cre­ate a strong, inde­pen­dent team — to make every­one on it more capa­ble and inde­pen­dent – and to decrease the pres­sure on your shoulders.

• Don’t play in some­one else’s sandbox

Each role in the orga­ni­za­tion is con­tained with­in a sand­box of dis­tinct respon­si­bil­i­ties and account­abil­i­ties (KPIs and exe­cu­tion of pri­or­i­ties), owned by the per­son in that role.

As a man­ag­er, your job is to sup­port your team to get their jobs done – not to be over-involved and do it for them.

Note: If you’re a sup­port­ive per­son, watch for peo­ple who take advan­tage of you by mak­ing their issues yours, espe­cial­ly when there’s risk involved for them. You don’t want to rip them off by not hav­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stretch their capabilities.

• Train peo­ple to use their brains, not yours

Many lead­ers we work with require their direct reports to always come with rec­om­men­da­tions, nev­er just prob­lems and questions.

Train peo­ple to come to you with thoughts, rec­om­men­da­tions and solu­tions if they have issues, and dis­cuss it together.

Some­times it feels eas­i­er to answer their ques­tions, rather than teach­ing them how to fig­ure it out for them­selves, but you’ll con­tin­ue to have to answer ques­tions forever.

• Ask com­pelling ques­tions to help them to think more:
  • What do you recommend?
  • How can you solve this?
  • Who could help you to fig­ure this out?
  • How can we pre­vent this sit­u­a­tion, in the future?

Warn­ing: When you start doing this, peo­ple may be con­fused. So, first let your team know that, going for­ward, you want them to think for them­selves to increase their capa­bil­i­ty. Of course, you’ll still have to answer ques­tions, some­times, but you want them to think and come for­ward with recommendations.

By the way, A‑Players usu­al­ly don’t want you to answer ques­tions for them. They just want to be in sync with you at key points. Let them get on with it and then review their progress.

Remem­ber, your job as a leader is to grow the peo­ple around you.

If you answer all their ques­tions and do their job, then who is doing yours?

The Chal­lenge

• Where are you like­ly get­ting involved in doing peo­ple’s jobs?
• Who can you help to always come with recommendations?

Want to hear more? Lis­ten to Episode 98 of The Growth Whis­per­ers.

You may also want to read these blogs:

• Say Less, Say Last or Say Nothing
• Get Your Team Mak­ing Deci­sions on Their Own

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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