7 coaching techniques to stop solving your team’s problems

One of the biggest leadership traps is jumping in to solve every problem your team faces.

It feels helpful: you’re using your expertise, things get fixed quickly, and you feel valuable. But this approach creates long-term damage that’s hard to undo.

In this post, I’ll cover:

Why solving everyone’s problems hurts your team
The shift from problem solver to coach and enabler
7 practical coaching techniques to use instead
Real-world examples of coaching in action
Steps to make this transition successfully

Let’s explore why this common leadership mistake is so damaging and what you can do differently.

Why solving everyone’s problems is hurting your team

When you jump in to solve problems for your team, it feels helpful and efficient. But this approach causes several serious issues:

You create unhealthy dependency

When team members learn that you’ll swoop in with solutions, the path of least resistance becomes “ask the boss.”

This creates a cycle of dependency where your input becomes necessary for even routine decisions.

We’ve seen engineering teams that literally couldn’t deploy code without the manager’s review — not because of process requirements, but because they’d become conditioned to need that validation.

You stifle growth and learning

People develop skills through struggle and overcoming challenges.

When you short-circuit this process by providing ready-made solutions, you rob team members of crucial learning opportunities.

The engineer who never has to debug a difficult production issue never develops those debugging muscles.

The product manager who never has to handle a difficult client conversation never builds those communication skills.

You signal a lack of trust

Even with the best intentions, repeatedly stepping in to fix things sends a clear message: “I don’t think you can handle this.”

This undermines confidence and damages psychological safety. Team members become hesitant to take initiative or make decisions, fearing your intervention or criticism.

You become the bottleneck

As your team grows, the “manager solves everything” model simply doesn’t scale.

You become the constraint on your team’s productivity and autonomy. Every decision, problem, or question has to flow through you, creating delays and frustration.

You burn yourself out

Trying to do your strategic leadership work while also solving everyone’s tactical problems is unsustainable.

You end up working longer hours, taking on more stress, and eventually resenting the very team you’re trying to help. This level of involvement is simply not scalable as your team or responsibilities grow.

The shift: From problem solver to coach and enabler

The alternative to being the hero who solves everything is becoming the coach who enables others to solve their own problems. This requires a fundamental shift in how you view your role as a leader.

Here’s how to make that transition:

1. Ask questions instead of providing answers

When someone comes to you with a problem, resist the urge to immediately provide a solution. Instead, ask questions that guide them toward finding their own answer:

“What have you tried so far?”
“What options are you considering?”
“Where could you look for more information?”
“What do you think is the best approach?”
“What’s preventing you from moving forward?”

These questions encourage critical thinking and signal that you trust their judgment. They also help you understand their current approach and reasoning, allowing you to provide more targeted guidance.

2. Clarify problems and desired outcomes

Often, people get stuck because they haven’t properly defined the problem or what success looks like. Help them frame the issue clearly:

“What specifically are we trying to solve here?”
“What would a successful outcome look like?”
“What constraints are we working within?”
“How will we know if we’ve succeeded?”

By helping them clarify the problem and goal, you’re teaching a valuable skill while also making their path to a solution much clearer.

3. Provide resources, not solutions

Instead of solving the problem yourself, point them toward resources that can help:

Relevant documentation or code examples
Similar past projects or tickets
Subject matter experts who might assist
Training materials or courses
Tools that could facilitate the work

This approach empowers them to find solutions while teaching them how to leverage available resources — a skill that will serve them well throughout their career.

4. Delegate outcomes, not just tasks

When assigning work, focus on the desired outcome rather than prescribing the exact steps to get there:

“We need to improve our application’s response time by 30%” rather than “Implement these specific caching mechanisms.”
“Design a monitoring solution that alerts us within 2 minutes of an outage” rather than “Set up these exact alerts with these thresholds.”

This gives your team members ownership over both the problem and the solution, encouraging creativity and commitment.

5. Create safety for smart failure

For people to take ownership and solve problems, they need to know it’s okay to try approaches that might not work out perfectly.

Create an environment where productive failure is accepted:

Explicitly state that you value learning and experimentation
Distinguish between critical, zero-failure systems and areas where experimentation is welcome
When things go wrong, focus on learning rather than blame
Share your own failures and what you learned from them

6. Timebox the struggle

While struggle is important for growth, endless frustration is counterproductive. Set appropriate boundaries:

“Spend another hour trying to debug this. If you’re still stuck, let’s look at it together.”
“Try these two approaches first. If neither works, we’ll brainstorm other options.”
“Work on this until tomorrow afternoon, then we’ll reassess if you haven’t found a solution.”

This approach encourages persistence while providing a safety net, preventing team members from feeling abandoned or overwhelmed.

7. Recognize the process, not just results

Praise and recognize the effort, thinking, and approach—not just successful outcomes:

“I’m impressed with how methodically you approached this problem.”
“You did great research before making that decision.”
“The way you collaborated with the design team on this was excellent.”

This reinforces that you value their problem-solving process, not just whether they got the “right” answer on the first try.

Real-world examples of coaching in action

Let me share a few scenarios that illustrate this shift from solving to coaching:

The production outage

Solver approach: A critical service goes down. You immediately jump in, identify the issue, fix it, and save the day. The team watches you work your magic.

Coach approach: A critical service goes down. You ask the on-call engineer, “What alerts did we receive? What have you checked so far? What do you think might be causing this?” You guide them through the troubleshooting process, offering suggestions only when they’re truly stuck. They fix the issue, gaining confidence and knowledge.

The difficult client

Solver approach: A client is unhappy with a new feature. You take over communications, jump on calls, and work directly with them to address their concerns.

Coach approach: You help your product manager prepare for the client conversation: “What are their main concerns? What options can we offer them? How will you explain our technical constraints?” You might join the call, but you let your PM lead, only stepping in if absolutely necessary.

The performance issue

Solver approach: Your team’s service is running slowly. You spend the weekend optimizing the code and database queries, then present the improved performance on Monday.

Coach approach: You organize a performance review session where the team identifies bottlenecks together. You ask leading questions about where to look and what to measure. You assign different team members to explore different optimization strategies, then bring everyone together to implement the best approaches.

Making the transition

Moving from solver to coach doesn’t happen overnight. Here are some practical steps to help you make the shift:

Start small

Begin with lower-stakes issues where coaching is less risky. As you and your team build confidence, gradually extend this approach to more critical areas.

Be transparent about the change

Explain to your team that you’re intentionally shifting your approach to help them grow. This prevents them from feeling abandoned or thinking you suddenly don’t care about their challenges.

Practice patience

Coaching takes more time up front than solving. Remind yourself that this investment pays off in greater team capability and independence down the road.

Create support systems

Ensure team members have other resources besides you — documentation, peer support channels, mentorship relationships — so they don’t feel stranded when you stop solving everything.

Monitor outcomes, not activity

Focus on whether problems are being resolved effectively, not whether they’re being resolved exactly as you would have done it. Different doesn’t mean wrong.

Celebrate wins

When team members successfully solve problems independently, recognize and celebrate these achievements to reinforce the behavior.

Final thoughts

The shift from problem-solver to coach is one of the most difficult transitions in leadership. It requires resisting your natural instincts, embracing short-term inefficiency for long-term gain, and finding satisfaction in your team’s growth rather than your own heroics.

But the rewards are tremendous. Over time, you’ll build a team that’s more capable, confident, and resilient. Problems get solved without your involvement. Team members grow faster and feel more ownership. And you can finally focus on the strategic work that only you can do.

If you solve it, you get the win once.

If you help them solve it, everyone wins forever.

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Header photo by Rodion Kutsaiev