Stop Solving Problems That Aren’t Yours

The greatest skill a leader can develop is the restraint to not immediately solve someone else’s problem.

If you’ve ever felt the urge to jump in and help someone with a task that would’ve taken you five minutes…

Or caught yourself clarifying what someone’s trying to say while they’re still circling the issue…

Or quietly fixed someone’s mistake instead of walking them through how to correct it themselves…

You, my friend, are not being helpful. You are over-functioning.  

On the surface it seems innocent.

But this type of behavior isn’t about generosity. It’s about intolerance. 

-Intolerance for slowness.

-Intolerance for discomfort. 

-Intolerance for watching someone struggle in a way that makes you uneasy.

People don’t build confidence by watching things get done for them. 

They build it through repetition. Trying something new, missing the mark, adjusting and having to work through the problem on their own. 

That cycle is what teaches nuance. It’s what turns “I don’t know if I can handle this” into “I trust I can figure it out.”

When a leader repeatedly removes friction, cleans things up early, or makes work “easier,” they remove the very experience that develops judgment, confidence, and problem-solving ability. 

Meaning: you rob them of their agency and the conditions required to grow. 

On the other side, you train everyone to rely on you to save them – turning you into the bottleneck. 

And that doesn’t feel like a problem until your calendar is full, your focus is split, and nothing moves unless you’re involved.

I’ve lived this. And occasionally, I still catch myself in the thick of it — which is how I’ve come to understand that this isn’t a one-time insight. It’s a practice. 

Internally, restraint feels wrong.

You feel unhelpful. Slow. Almost negligent.

Your nervous system lights up because you can see the solution and you’re choosing not to deliver it.

Externally, people feel it too. 

They get uncomfortable. Frustrated. Interpreting your pause as indifference instead or lack of support.

Questions start coming that sound like:

“Can you just show me?”

“What would you do?”

“Can you check this first?”

What most people don’t realize is this discomfort is the skill being built.

This is what it looks like when someone is learning to think for themselves instead of waiting to be rescued.

Not everyone will appreciate this style of leadership. Most won’t recognize its value in real time and some will actively dislike you for it.

The average person prefers a leader who steps in, fixes things, and makes everything feel easier – largely because they share the same intolerance for discomfort. It just shows up differently.

But ease is not the same as growth.

The leaders people remember years later are rarely the ones who made things comfortable in the moment. They’re the ones who trusted people enough to let them struggle, fail, adjust, and eventually figure it out.

The appreciation usually comes in retrospect.

Years later.

In a different role.

In a moment when they realize, “I can handle this because I’ve done harder things before.”

So you have a choice to make as a leader.

You can relieve discomfort now and create dependence.

Or you can tolerate discomfort now and create capability.

Not everyone will like you for the second option and many won’t understand it until long after they’ve left your team.

But if your goal is to make people better — not just calmer, faster, or more compliant — then resisting the urge to over-function isn’t unkind.

It’s required.