Supported Independence

Early in my leadership career, I kept making the same mistake:

I took on other people’s problems as my own.

It’s not leadership. And it’s a recipe for burnout and stagnation, limiting my own growth and, more importantly, those I’m leading.

If you don’t give someone the tools to solve their own problems, they never will. Even worse, if you keep solving problems for them, they’ll rely on you. I call this “Extreme Dependence.”

Problems like this become hydras: solve one and two grow in its place. You create compounding work for yourself.

To fix this, I started moving towards a sustainable system of support. Instead of solving their problem, I helped them frame the problem in such a way they could understand how to solve it for themselves. I call this “Supported Independence.”

I help them understand the problem by asking questions and digging deeper:

• What is the core problem?
• Why is it important to solve it?
• What is the one next step you can take?

Eventually they started to ask these questions before they talked to me. And to take it further, I encouraged them to write it out. Nothing clarifies thinking like writing. If you understand and care about the problem, writing will become your compass.

The best part? The act of writing usually gave them the clarity they needed. We didn’t have to frame the problem together—they already knew what to do. And the bonus is now there is a paper trail of thinking and context. We improve our decision making by understanding the decisions we’ve made: what worked, what didn’t, and why.

Moving from Extreme Dependence to Supported Independence made me a better leader, and it ignited compounding growth for those I led. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking it’s your job to solve other people’s problems. As a leader, you need to show them they’re capable of solving their own problems.