When clients insist on working with you personally, the bottleneck is rarely about your team’s ability. It is about two separate problems: your team needs your method translated into real training, and your clients need a clear, confident message that your team delivers the same standard you do. Lia walks through the exact moves to solve both sides, from codifying your secret sauce to publicly edifying your team members in front of clients. This episode is most useful for founders, consultants, agency owners, and service-based business leaders who are stuck as the face of every client relationship.
This episode is part of the Delegation, Bottleneck & Getting Out of the Weeds series. Browse all episodes →
Mic drop moments
“It’s better if your team members solve something better than you would have.”
“Your way is not the best way. Your way got you to where you are. And it might be a great, fantastic, phenomenal way. And it is rarely, if never the only way to solve a problem.”
Episode highlights
Why your problem-solving instinct works against your team
As a manager, you have spent your whole career solving problems. It feels good. It feels efficient. But when you solve problems on behalf of your team members, you are not teaching them how to fish. You are taking the fishing rod away. The result: they cannot solve that problem the next time it comes up, they feel micromanaged, and they never get to discover what actually works for them.
Even when someone walks up and says, “Can you help me? I’m stuck,” that is still a moment to exercise self-restraint. The ask for help is not a permission slip to take over.
The coaching move that replaces problem-solving
Instead of saying “Let me take care of this,” pause and ask open-ended questions:
– “Where are you feeling stuck?” – “What have you tried?” – “What has worked for you in the past?”
These questions keep the problem-solving in the team member’s court. They also surface what is actually getting in the way, which is often not what you assumed.
The event-planning story that proves the point
Lia shares a real example. A team member was planning a large company event and could not get people to sign up to volunteer. Lia had been there before and had her own playbook. But instead of handing over her strategy, she asked: “You’ve already tried email and it didn’t work. What else do you think you could try?”
The team member came up with two ideas Lia never would have suggested: walking the halls and chatting people up in person (authentic to her style), and setting up a contest with prizes for volunteers. That second idea? Lia had never thought of it. The result was more volunteers than Lia had ever recruited herself. By staying out of the way, she got a better outcome.
The danger of assuming you know what “frustrated” means
When a team member says they are frustrated, most managers jump straight to solving the frustration they imagine. But “frustrated” means something different to every person in every situation.
Asking “Why are you frustrated?” already bakes in your assumption. Asking “What’s showing up for you?” opens the door. The answers could be wildly different: exhaustion, being ignored, or a project that genuinely needs more support. Each of those requires a completely different response. If you skip this step, you will solve the wrong problem entirely.
When it IS your job to problem-solve
Stopping yourself from problem-solving does not mean going silent forever. There are legitimate moments for it:
– At the macro level: strategic decisions about how to focus the team, navigate competing priorities, or assess trade-offs. – Managing up: bringing your insights and ideas to your own manager. – Brainstorming sessions with your team, where you contribute ideas alongside everyone else rather than being the only voice feeding solutions.
The key distinction is whether you are problem-solving WITH people or FOR them.
Your way is not the only way
Lia closes with the reminder that matters most: your way got you to where you are. It might be great. It is almost never the only way. When you step in and say “I can do this with my eyes closed,” you are blocking a path that might actually be better. Let your team members try, get stuck a little, and find their own approach. That is how they become owners, not just executors.
Related episodes in this cluster
- Ep 233: Why you’re still the point person for everything (and how to fix it). Being stuck as the final decision-maker on everything is almost never a delegation problem. Before delegation can work, three things have to be in place: the right people, clarity on where you as the owner should focus, and simple systems that reduce noise. This episode is most useful for business owners and team leads who have already hired and communicated expectations but are still buried in the weeds.
- Ep 231: Why delegating keeps failing (and the shift that actually fixes it). Delegation fails when leaders dispatch tasks instead of handing off outcomes, keeping themselves as the bottleneck at every step. The fix is shifting from fetch-the-answer assignments to giving a team member ownership of a full result, with clear context, defined success, and agreed checkpoints. This episode is especially useful for leaders who know they should delegate more but still find everything coming back to them.
- Ep 225: How to stop being the bottleneck on every decision your team makes. When your team brings every decision to you for final sign-off, you are doing two jobs at once and your team is never building real ownership. Lia’s fix is to articulate your own decision-making process, then deliberately offload specific decisions with a simple communication system so you stay informed without staying in the weeds. This episode is especially useful for founders and team leads whose capable people are still waiting on them before moving forward.
- Ep 221: Clients keep asking for you by name. How do you hand off work without losing their trust?. When clients insist on working with you personally, the bottleneck is rarely about your team’s ability. It is about two separate problems: your team needs your method translated into real training, and your clients need a clear, confident message that your team delivers the same standard you do. Lia walks through the exact moves to solve both sides, from codifying your secret sauce to publicly edifying your team members in front of clients. This episode is most useful for founders, consultants, agency owners, and service-based business leaders who are stuck as the face of every client relationship.
Want to go deeper?
The Unstoppable Team. How to build a team that runs without you in the room.
Full transcript (click to expand)
When we are managing our problem solving skills are deployed in getting real like surgical precision around what is showing up for our teens, but not pushing ’em out of the way and grabbing the reins and saying, I got this from here, because they will not learn how to solve problems from themselves. And you will cut them off from sharing their creative ideas so that they can explore something in a totally different way than you would, and it might be better.
And that’s even better. It’s better if your team members solved something better than you would have. Welcome to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where I bring a decade of experience working in some of the most influential companies in tech to help you navigate the ins and outs of being a people manager. From conflicts to feedback to delegating and more, we will leave no stone unturned when it comes to what makes us love managing, kind of hate it and everything in between.
Doesn’t matter if you’re a new manager looking for some tips. Or a seasoned manager looking up their game. Everyone is welcome to hang out with Managing Made Simple. Let’s go. Let’s go, let’s go. If you are not yet on my text list, what are you waiting for? Text the word MANAGER to 4 1 5 2 3 4 5 7 1 6. This goes right to me so you can send me any questions about anything we talk about.
On the show, you will get exclusive access to things like my Q&A sessions hosted over Zoom and my manager tip of the week. To get on that list, text MANAGER to 4 1 5 2 3 4 5 7 1 6. And I cannot wait to hear from you. Welcome back to the show, and today we’re gonna talk about one of my favorite topics, how to stop ourselves from problem solving as a manager for our teams. Now, problem solving is probably something you’re pretty good at.
As a manager, you spent your whole career solving problems. You might enjoy it, it might give you a sense of accomplishment and sense of satisfaction, but when we solve problems on behalf of our team members, We cause a number of problems for them. We don’t teach them how to fish. We take that away from them. So often they aren’t able to then solve that problem later and, and we can disempower them. It might lead them to feel like we’re micromanaging them because we’re always saying, Ooh, let me just take care of this.
When they actually came to us because they wanted to learn. So even if someone is asking you, Hey, can you help me with this? I need help. It is still a moment to exercise self-restraint and put on our coaching hat and not solve problems for our team members. Not to say, okay, let me take care of this. Let me send the email. Don’t worry, I’ve got this. But to stop and ask some open-ended questions, things like where are you feeling stuck, or what have you tried?
What has worked for you in the past? These kinds of open questions are going to keep the problem solving in the court of your team member instead of taking it on. And also help them learn, well, what’s getting in their way. So, lemme make sure an example. Once I was managing someone who was planning a big event for the team and she had some of the pieces in place, but was really getting stuck when was getting people to sign up to take on different volunteer responsibilities.
And we all know that when you are in a corporate or office job and you’re trying to launch a project and people need to volunteer to help out, that is a beast of a situation that’s often frustrating. And so, So I got it. I had been there and I really wanted to share with this team member some things that I had tried to get people on board, but I also knew that, you know, this was a great opportunity for her to see what worked for her.
I knew that what worked for me might be different because I had relationships with team members already. I had done this a number of times, and if I had just given her my strategy of what to do and she did them, then she isn’t really learning what works for her. So in this situation, I said, I’d love you to try two or three different approaches to get the signups. Okay. You’ve already tried sending an email and that didn’t quite work.
What else do you think you might be able to do? And she said, well, I love, you know, walking around the halls. This was when we were in the office. I loved walking around the halls and, and kind of just stopping by and saying hi to folks when I see them or, or chatting with people in the cafeteria. I said, awesome. Okay, well, why don’t you try that approach and see, you know, if this in-person thing works for you, what else do you think?
And she said, well, I kind of think a contest could be cool, and I was like, oh my God, a contest. That’s awesome. I never would’ve thought of that. And so she set up a contest for people, you know, if they volunteered and they completed X, Y, Z activities, they would get a prize. So by not jumping in and problem solving with her, for her, I should say, she ended up coming up with a ton of great ideas that were really authentic to her and her work style that ended up working great.
And at the end of the day, she had more volunteers than I ever had before because she did it in a way that was building on the foundation I had laid and got more avenues for getting people to be aware of the project. So this is why we really don’t wanna solve problems for our team members because it’s almost presuming we know better, not only for now, but for any situation that might follow, even if the conditions have changed.
So the moments in which are effective to problem solve for your teams are, I think when you are helping sort of at the macro level, well, how do we wanna figure out strategically how to, you know, focus our employees on different kinds of projects when it’s really your job? That’s where problem solving comes in the macro team. How do you wanna navigate competing priorities or assess trade offs? And, and what is your process for that? That’s a great time to deploy your problem solving skills.
Also, working up right, managing up with your own manager, problem solving where they’re getting stuck. Hey, how do we wanna try this different thing? What are some ideas where you’re really offering your insights and expertise? And when you’re with your own team members, when you’re managing down, problem solving can be helpful after they’ve generated some solutions. So it’s a really effective strategy to use when brainstorming or ideating. But you wanna make sure you are not the only person feeding the, the solutions or ideas, otherwise, it’s just your own idea generation, one way conversation.
And people aren’t really learning from that piece. So again, when someone comes to you and says, I’m feeling stuck. I’m really frustrated. I don’t know how to move forward. Can you help me with this? Even if it’s really, really tempting, I get it. We wanna pause, we wanna listen more, we wanna gather more information so we know actually how to approach the situation. When someone says they’re frustrated and we don’t ask a follow up question and we go, oh gosh, I know this would be so frustrating, or Why are you frustrating?
Or What’s frustrating, you know about this? When we don’t ask them first, what do you mean by frustrated? What’s showing up for you? Wow. That’s a very different question than why are you frustrated? Because when we say, why are you frustrated? We are already assuming we know what they mean by frustrated, and then we’re gonna solve a problem using that definition. That’s our definition of frustrated. Instead. What does frustration feel like to you, or what’s showing up for you?
They might say, well, I’m really frustrating because I have been staying up too late. I’m tired at work, or No one’s responding to me, or This project’s too hard and I need help. Each of those three answers are wildly, vastly different and would cause you to take a whole different direction in how you’re gonna manage that person. So instead of problem solving and making assumptions, we wanna collect more information first and foremost, and then we can ask these open-ended questions.
Have the person. Put forward solutions and ideas and then we can coach and guide them through that. But again, if we don’t understand what the sort of problem is and how it shows up for them, we can’t really support, help and guide them because they might be proposing solutions or ideas that actually have nothing to do with solving the problem that they had in the first place. Going back to my example with this person planning an event and being frustrated because no one’s signing up to volunteer.
If she had just said she was frustrated, I might have thought, oh, she doesn’t like event planning, or she needs another person to help her out. Or Is this person the right person to drive this project? Those are all actually not what was going on. So if I had assumed I know what she means by frustrated, because frankly I don’t really like planning events, then I would’ve cut her off from actually the real meat, which was generating solutions on how to find volunteers.
Instead, we dug into it. I’m frustrated because no one is signing up to volunteer. Boom, that’s the place to focus. So when we are managing our problem solving skills are deployed in getting real like surgical precision around what is showing up for our teams, but not pushing ’em outta the way and grabbing the reins and saying, I got this from here. Because they will not learn how to solve problems for themselves. And you will cut them off from sharing their creative ideas so that they can explore something in a totally different way than you would.
And it might be better. And that’s even better. It’s better if your team members solve something better than you would have. I wanna leave you with that. Your way is not the best way. Your way got you to where you are. And it might be a great, fantastic, phenomenal way. And it is rarely, if never the only way to solve a problem. So when we come in, they’re like, I know how to do this. I can do this with my eyes closed, move over.
We actually don’t know that there might be a better way. And if someone keeps getting stuck and they need a little more handholding, okay, but let ’em try. Let ’em. Let ’em play around a little bit so that they can feel like an owner. So that is all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you’d like support on how to refrain from problem solving, empower your team to step up as owners, please reach out.
You can find [email protected] or [email protected] or reach out on LinkedIn. See you next time. That’s all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple Podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn. See you next time.
Questions this episode answers
How do I stop myself from solving problems for my team members?
When a team member comes to you stuck or frustrated, resist the urge to jump in with your own solution. Instead, ask open-ended questions like 'Where are you feeling stuck?' or 'What have you tried so far?' This keeps the problem solving on their side of the table. You are there to coach and guide, not to take over. Even when someone asks for your help directly, that is still a moment to ask questions first and let them generate the ideas, not a green light to hand them your answer.
Why is solving problems for your team members actually bad for them?
When you solve problems for your team members, you rob them of the chance to figure out what works for them. They do not learn how to handle similar situations on their own later. It can also feel like micromanaging, even when you mean well. Your approach got you to where you are, but it is rarely the only way. A team member who solves a problem in their own way might come up with something better than what you would have done, and that is actually the goal.
What questions should I ask instead of giving my team the answer?
Start with questions that draw out their thinking rather than replace it. Try 'Where are you feeling stuck?', 'What have you already tried?', or 'What has worked for you in similar situations?' These questions put the problem solving back in their hands. You can also ask 'What do you mean by frustrated?' or 'What is showing up for you?' before assuming you understand what the real issue is. Getting clear on the actual problem first means you are coaching toward the right thing.
When IS it okay for a manager to step in and solve a problem themselves?
There are two good places to use your problem solving skills directly. The first is at the macro level, things like how to allocate the team across projects, how to navigate competing priorities, or how to assess trade-offs at the team level. The second is when you are managing up, offering your insights and expertise to your own leader. With your direct reports, even during brainstorming, make sure you are not the only one feeding in ideas. Otherwise it is just your idea generation, and they are not really learning.
How do I find out what my team member actually needs before trying to help?
Do not assume you know what they mean when they say they are frustrated or stuck. Ask a clarifying question first, like 'What is showing up for you?' instead of 'Why are you frustrated?' The answer could be they are tired, no one is responding to them, or the project feels too hard. Each of those points to a completely different kind of support. If you skip that step and solve based on your own assumption, you might address a problem they do not even have.