Your Business Doesn't Need You to Have All the Answers

Insights from the coaching room

Being the person with the answer can feel like good leadership.

Someone walks into your office with a problem.

You understand it immediately.

You've probably seen something similar before.

Within a few minutes, you've explained what needs to happen.

Problem solved.

They leave.

You get back to work.

Efficient?

Absolutely.

But there's a question I think business owners should ask themselves:

What did the other person learn?

Because if the answer is simply:

“Come and ask me next time”

then solving the problem may have created another one.

Knowing the Answer Isn't the Same as Leading

Many business owners are extremely good at what they do.

That's often why the business exists in the first place.

They understand the customers.

They know the product.

They've dealt with difficult situations.

They can spot problems quickly.

They've accumulated years of experience and judgement.

So when somebody asks a question, giving them the answer feels entirely logical.

And sometimes it is.

If the building is on fire, this probably isn't the moment for a developmental coaching conversation.

But most business questions aren't fires.

And there's a difference between getting today's problem solved and developing somebody who can solve tomorrow's problem without you.

The first is usually quicker.

The second is leadership.

The Problem With Being Helpful

This is where it gets interesting.

Because the behaviour creating the problem often comes from a good place.

You're trying to help.

Someone asks:

“What should I do about this customer?”

You tell them.

“Which supplier should we use?”

You tell them.

“How should I respond to this?”

You tell them.

“What would you do?”

You tell them.

Each interaction might save five or ten minutes.

But repeat it hundreds of times and the business learns something:

Thinking happens at the top.

Everyone else gathers information and takes it to the person who decides.

Then owners become frustrated:

“Why doesn't anyone take more initiative?”

Perhaps because, without meaning to, we've trained them not to.

Every Answer Can Steal a Thinking Opportunity

That's the part I think leaders sometimes miss.

When someone brings you a problem, they're also bringing you an opportunity.

An opportunity for them to:

• assess the situation
• weigh up the risks
• consider alternatives
• make a recommendation
• make a decision
• learn from the outcome

If you immediately provide the answer, you remove most of that process.

You've solved the issue.

But you haven't necessarily developed the person.

This is why one of the simplest leadership questions can also be one of the most powerful:

“What do you think?”

Not aggressively.

Not as a test.

With genuine curiosity.

The Silence That Follows Matters

Ask someone who is accustomed to receiving answers:

“What do you think we should do?”

and you may initially get silence.

That's useful.

Resist the temptation to fill it.

They may genuinely never have been expected to answer that question before.

Eventually you might hear:

“Well, I suppose we could…”

Now they're thinking.

Follow it with:

“What other options do you have?”

Then:

“What do you think is the best option?”

And perhaps:

“Why?”

The conversation takes longer.

That's the difficult part.

Giving the answer might take two minutes.

Helping somebody develop their own answer might take ten.

But those extra eight minutes aren't wasted.

They're an investment in future capability.

Short-Term Efficiency Can Create Long-Term Inefficiency

This is one of the paradoxes of leadership.

Doing something yourself is often faster.

Making the decision yourself is often faster.

Answering the question yourself is often faster.

Today.

But leadership shouldn't only optimise for today.

If you answer the same type of question every week for three years, you've created enormous inefficiency while appearing highly efficient in each individual conversation.

The better question is:

“How do I respond today so this question is less likely to need me tomorrow?”

That changes the objective completely.

Your Team Doesn't Need a Quiz

There's an important warning here.

Asking questions can become irritating if it's done badly.

Imagine an employee asks:

“Can you remind me where we keep the stationery?”

And you respond:

“Where do you think we keep the stationery?”

That's not coaching.

That's annoying.

Nor should every straightforward request become a 20-minute exploration of someone's inner thinking.

The point isn't to stop giving answers.

It's to become more deliberate about when an answer helps and when an answer creates dependency.

Sometimes people need information.

Sometimes they need instruction.

Sometimes they're learning a new task and need clear direction.

Sometimes the consequences of getting something wrong are too significant to experiment with.

And sometimes they already have enough knowledge to think for themselves.

Good leadership is knowing the difference.

Not Every Person Needs the Same Leadership

Someone new to a role may need considerably more direction.

They don't yet have the experience to make a good judgement.

So teach them.

Show them.

Explain why.

Give them clear boundaries.

But as their capability increases, your leadership should change too.

If you continue treating an experienced manager as though they're in their first week, don't be surprised if they stop taking ownership.

The question evolves from:

“Here's what I want you to do.”

to:

“How do you think we should handle this?”

and eventually:

“You own this. Let me know what you decide.”

That's development.

And it's why delegation isn't simply giving people more tasks.

It's gradually transferring judgement.

Ask for Recommendations, Not Just Problems

One practical change I often encourage is incredibly simple.

If somebody brings you a problem, don't allow the conversation to stop at the problem.

Ask:

“What do you recommend?”

This changes the quality of the conversation.

Instead of:

“We've got a problem with the Smith account. What should we do?”

you begin to get:

“We've got a problem with the Smith account. I've looked at three options. I recommend we do this, for these reasons.”

That's a very different employee.

Or manager.

But that behaviour doesn't appear because you've told people to “take more ownership”.

It develops because you've repeatedly expected them to think.

Questions Reveal More Than Answers

There's another advantage to resisting the urge to answer immediately.

You learn more about your people.

If I tell somebody exactly what to do and they do it, I know they can follow an instruction.

Useful.

But I don't necessarily know how they think.

Ask them what they would do and suddenly you discover:

What have they noticed?

What have they missed?

How do they assess risk?

Do they understand the commercial implications?

Are they considering the customer?

Do they understand the wider business?

Where are the gaps in their knowledge?

That's incredibly valuable information for a leader.

Because now you know what to develop.

What If Their Answer Isn't Your Answer?

This may be the hardest part.

You ask:

“What would you do?”

They give you an answer.

It's perfectly reasonable.

But it isn't what you would do.

What happens next?

Many owners immediately say:

“No, I'd do this…”

And we're back where we started.

Before overriding them, ask another question:

“Would their approach work?”

Not:

“Is it exactly how I'd do it?”

There may be several perfectly good ways to achieve the outcome.

If you require every decision to mirror your own judgement, people aren't really being empowered.

They're being asked to guess your answer.

That's exhausting for them.

And for you.

Allowing Different Doesn't Mean Accepting Bad

None of this means lowering standards.

Empowerment without boundaries can become chaos.

People need to understand:

• the outcome required
• the standards that matter
• the financial parameters
• what authority they have
• which decisions need escalation
• what genuinely cannot be compromised

Within those boundaries, there should be room to think.

That's very different from:

“Do whatever you want.”

The aim is not independence from the business.

It's independence within a clear framework.

The Owner Doesn't Have to Be the Smartest Person in Every Conversation

As businesses grow, I think this becomes increasingly important.

There comes a point where the owner's job isn't to know more about every subject than everybody else.

In fact, if you're building the right team, you should eventually have people who know considerably more than you do about parts of the business.

Finance.

Sales.

Operations.

Marketing.

Technology.

People.

That's not a threat to your role.

It's evidence that the business is becoming stronger.

Your value increasingly comes from something different.

Setting direction.

Creating clarity.

Asking good questions.

Challenging assumptions.

Connecting different parts of the business.

Making the decisions that genuinely belong to you.

And developing the people around you so they can make the decisions that don't.

This Requires Restraint

There is a leadership skill that doesn't receive enough attention:

Not saying what you know.

You may already know the answer.

You may have spotted the solution three minutes ago.

But if the other person can reach it themselves, sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is stay quiet for a little longer.

I recognise this in coaching too.

It can be tempting to hear a client's problem, recognise the pattern and immediately offer a solution.

But if I solve it for them, whose thinking have we developed?

Sometimes the breakthrough comes from another question.

Then another.

Then some silence.

And eventually the client says:

“Actually, I think I know what I need to do.”

That's very different from being told.

Because the decision is theirs.

So is the ownership.

A Practical Experiment

For the next week, notice every time someone asks you a question.

Before answering, pause.

Then decide which of these four responses is most appropriate:

1. Tell

They genuinely need information or clear instruction.

2. Teach

They need to understand how or why something works.

3. Ask

They probably have enough knowledge to work out the answer.

4. Empower

The decision belongs to them and they should make it.

You don't need to stop answering questions.

You need to stop answering the ones your people should increasingly be able to answer themselves.

And when someone brings you a problem, try three questions before offering your solution:

“What do you think?”

“What options have you considered?”

“What do you recommend?”

Then listen.

You may be surprised by the quality of the answer.

The Real Test of Leadership

It's easy to feel valuable when everyone needs you.

You know the answers.

You solve the problems.

You make the decisions.

And there may have been a stage in the business when that was exactly what was required.

But leadership has to evolve as the business evolves.

Eventually, your success can't be measured by how many questions you can answer.

A better measure might be:

How many capable people are learning to answer important questions without you?

Because the aim isn't to prove that you're the smartest person in the room.

It's to create a room full of people capable of thinking.

Final Thought

The next time somebody brings you a problem and you immediately know the answer, try not to give it to them.

Not yet.

Pause.

Ask:

“What do you think?”

You may still need to guide them.

You may still need to challenge their thinking.

You may ultimately need to make the decision.

But give them the opportunity to think first.

Because every time you provide an answer, you may solve one problem.

Every time you develop somebody's ability to find the answer, you may solve hundreds of future ones.

Your business doesn't need you to have all the answers.

It needs you to build people who can think.