These past few weeks, I’ve been leading a team responsible for a key aspect of an international conference.
It has meant arranging logistics and operations, fielding questions, providing clarity and trying to anticipate the things which could go wrong before they actually do.
Then, earlier this week, someone wrote me saying:
“I can’t tell you how comforting it is knowing that you are leading the team! I appreciate your leadership!”
I cherished that.
But it also brought back a very familiar feeling.
For much of my career, I was the person people came to when they needed to figure something out. They would say:
“Mrs Fletcher, do you have a minute?”
Over time, that became practically an occupational hazard.
Sometimes, after explaining the problem and hearing my response, came the confirmation:
“You see…I knew you would have an answer.”
And, unfortunately, I often did.
Even the CEO would sometimes call early in the morning:
“Monica, bring your coffee and come. I want to run this by you. “
I won’t pretend I didn’t enjoy that part.
Being someone whose judgment was trusted gave me access and influence well beyond the boundaries of my formal responsibilities. As executives brought different problems for us to think through together, I learned more about almost every area of the Bank.
I became better at connecting the dots, seeing how one decision affected another and fitting apparently unrelated pieces together.
My capability grew partly because people kept bringing me things which stretched it.
But there was another side.
Capability can earn trust, access and influence. It can also make other people’s problems surprisingly good at finding you.
Eventually, I was trying to deliver on my own responsibilities while being constantly interrupted to help other people deliver on theirs.
Sometimes they would start the fire and then come looking for me to put it out.
Looking back, I can see something I didn’t fully understand then. They weren’t the only ones creating the pattern.
I was participating in it too.
Because I could usually get to the answer quickly, I did. It was efficient. Problem solved. Decision made. Everybody moved on. Except something else hadn’t necessarily happened.
They hadn’t necessarily become any more capable of solving the problem the next time.
That distinction has become much clearer to me through coaching.
Giving someone an answer and developing someone capable of finding the answer are not the same thing.
Sometimes the most valuable part of solving a problem isn’t the answer. It is the thinking required to get there.
The questions. The uncertainty. The weighing of alternatives. Even getting something wrong and having to think again.
When I continually provide that thinking for someone else, my competence may solve today’s problem while quietly interfering with the development of theirs.
And perhaps that’s why I’ve become much more alert when I hear some version of:
“What should I do?”
Sometimes the person genuinely needs my expertise. Sometimes they need clarity. Sometimes leadership requires me to make the decision.
But sometimes the better response is simply:
“What do you think you should do?”
That applies outside the workplace too.
Helping does not always require taking responsibility for something another person is capable of carrying.
That’s something I understand differently today.
There was a time when being the person with the answer was an important part of my value. Today, I’m increasingly interested in something else.
Can my capability help develop yours?
Because perhaps the more capable we become, the greater our responsibility to discern when our competence is genuinely needed and when it has simply become convenient.
Sometimes leadership requires providing the answer.
And sometimes the most useful thing we can do for another person’s becoming is to hand the thinking—and the responsibility—back.
Reflect & Apply
1️⃣ What responsibilities regularly find their way to you simply because people know you can handle them?
2️⃣ Where might you be using your competence to solve problems while unintentionally reducing someone else’s opportunity to develop theirs?
3️⃣ What might change if, before providing the answer, you asked: “Is this mine to solve, or theirs to become the person who can solve it? ”
📘 Be the Person You Dream of Becoming explores how our thinking, choices and daily experiences shape not only the results we create, but the person we become. It is available on Amazon, in RIK Bookstores nationwide, or directly through me.
Through Becoming Conversations, I work with leaders, professionals and organisations who recognise that greater capability isn’t simply about having more answers. Sometimes it begins with seeing more clearly what is ours to carry, what belongs to someone else, and what our leadership may need to develop in them.
It takes a lifetime of Becoming to live a life.
Perceptively,
Monica Rogers-Fletcher
Listen to When Competence Becomes Convenience