How to Manage Employees Without Being the One With All the Answers

Speaker A: If your team asks you questions all day long, here's something I want you to consider. Maybe the problem isn't that they don't know the answers. Maybe they've learned that asking you is easier than making the decision themselves. And if you've spent years being the person who knows what to do, solves the problems, makes the calls, that makes complete sense. But if you want a team that can think and make decisions without you, something's got to change. And it starts with what you do the next time they ask you. What should I do here? Welcome to the People side of Business, the podcast for female founders learning how to lead, manage, and scale a team with confidence. I'm Lindsey White, leadership coach, team strategist, and fractional HR expert. And each week, we tackle the real leadership challenges business owners face every day. From difficult conversations and employee performance issues to. To hiring mistakes, team dynamics, and building a workplace culture that actually supports business growth. Because the truth is, nobody teaches founders how to lead people when their business starts to grow. And figuring it out the hard way can be exhausting. This show is here to change all that. So if you're ready to become a stronger leader, make better people decisions, and build a business that doesn't depend on you carrying everything alone, you're in the right place. Let's do this. Hey, my friend. Welcome back to the People side of Business. I am, uh, so glad that you are here with me today, because we're going to talk about something I see with a lot of founders, maybe you've done this. Maybe you've got a really smart team. You've hired great people. They're capable, they're motivated, you really trust them, and yet somehow you're still answering questions all day long, maybe into the evening, and on the weekends, you're approving things that you don't think should need your approval. You are making decisions you know someone else is perfectly capable of making. And at some point, it starts to get really frustrating because you're thinking in your own head, why don't they just make this decision? Like, why does everything have to come back to me? And here's where I want to challenge you a little bit. If that's starting to happen in your business, I don't want you to start by looking at your team. I, uh, want you to start by looking at the pattern. Because if you spent years being the person with the answers, you've probably taught the people around you that bringing the decision to you is exactly what they're supposed to do. You haven't done that intentionally, my friend. I know that. But every time someone brings you a problem and you solve it, you're reinforcing something. You're creating a pattern. Every time someone asks, what should I do? And you tell them you're reinforcing that pattern. Every time a decision comes back to you and you make it because it's just faster, you reinforce that same pattern. Every answer you give teaches your team something about what you expect them, um, to bring back to you. You are teaching them. And if you're realizing as you're listening that you have become the place where every question, decision or problem is always going to land, that's exactly what we're going to work through in my upcoming beyond the Bottleneck masterclass. That's going to happen on September 30th, and I'll tell you more about that later. But today we're going to start a little smaller because I, uh, want you to leave this episode with one change that you can actually go and make in your business with your team this week. So let me give you an example. I have a client we're going to call Sophia. Sophia has a team that she really loves working with. And when she talked about them in our coaching sessions, she talks about how smart they are, how motivated they are, how much they care about their clients, and about doing really great work. So this isn't a situation where Sophia was coming to our coaching saying, I don't think my team is capable. Quite the opposite. She knew they were capable. And that was part of why she was so frustrated, because her team kept bringing decisions back to her. And these weren't meaningless decisions. They were important, often very client related decisions. But Sophia knew her team. She knew their experience and their expertise, and she genuinely believed that, uh, they had enough knowledge, they had enough background to make many of these decisions without her. And the problem was that they weren't. So her days were constantly being interrupted. A question here, slack message there. Can you look at this? What do you think we should do? Which option is better? Can you approve this? And individually, none of these things seemed particularly significant. But it might take five minutes to answer something, maybe 10, maybe only 30 seconds. But when it happened over and over again, something else was getting pushed aside. For Sophia. That was the strategic work. The work she knew would actually move her business forward. And she was still getting it done, but it was happening on evenings and weekends. And it was really actually interfering with her ability to have a life and her ability to grow the business in a meaningful way. The work that really required Her CEO brain was getting relegated to the margins because so much of her working day was being spent making decisions inside work that she really felt like other people owned. And it was starting to interfere with her ability to get the rest and the recharge that we all know is so important. And it was also starting to create something else. Resentment. This is what we uncovered in our coaching. And I think we need to be honest about that, my friends, because I think that's a very normal reaction. You're sitting there thinking, I hired really smart people. Why am I still doing this? Why am I still handling this? Why won't they take ownership? Why are they putting this work back on me? And that's when Sophia and I really started looking at the loop that she was in. So here's what we discovered that was interesting. Her team would bring her a decision, and Sophia would make it. So they'd bring her another one, and she'd make that one, too. And they'd ask what she thought, and she would tell them. And she was doing that for all of the right reasons. She wanted to help. She knew the answer. She could make a decision quickly and ultimately, really cared about her clients and wanted them to have a great experience. And let's be honest, sometimes explaining your thinking feels like it's going to take longer than just giving somebody the answer. So that's what you do. You answer, and everyone just gets back to work. And it seems really efficient. Right. Except the next time something similar happens, where does the decision go? Well, it goes right back to you. And that's where we started to see that Sophia wasn't simply experiencing a team problem. She was actually participating in a pattern. And that's an important distinction. This isn't about blaming you as the founder, and it certainly wasn't about blaming Sophia. It's not about, uh, blaming the team. Everybody involved is doing what worked in the system that they created. Sophia's team had learned that when they weren't sure Sophia was available to make the call. And Sophia had learned that when somebody brought her a problem, the fastest way to move forward was to answer it. Both behaviors make perfect sense, but together, they created a business that was too dependent on Sophia. And if you're trying to figure out how to lead a team that can think independently, this is where your own leadership skills become incredibly important, because you can't keep responding in exactly the same way and expect your team to suddenly behave differently. Right. The definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Right. So we started with something very simple. This came out of my conversations with Sophia. We decided to try a little experiment and the next time. So somebody brought Sophia a decision they were capable of making. She wasn't going to immediately answer it. So instead what we decided is that she would ask, what do you think we should do? And then she would listen. Or she might say, what options have you already considered? Or m. What would you recommend? Now, I don't want you to walk away from this episode thinking that the great leadership revelation is that you need to ask better questions. I mean, that's part of it, my friends, but it's not the whole thing. The questions matter because they change who is doing the thinking. If I bring you a problem and you immediately solve it for me, I don't actually have to do very much thinking. But if I bring you a problem and you say to me, okay, what are you going to like? What would you recommend? Or what have you been thinking about? Now I have to engage differently. I have to assess. Yes, I may be considering options. I've got to use my experience and expertise and exercise some critical thinking and some judgment. And I have to come to you with something more than just the problem. That's how we start developing decision making capability. And it's the piece I really want you to remember. Every time you give your team an answer that they could arrived at by themselves, you may be solving today's problem while reinforcing tomorrow's dependency. Sometimes the best leadership move is not to give the answer, it's to return the thinking to them. And yes, initially that's going to take longer and that's okay. You're building capacity, you're developing leadership at another level in your organization and you're helping someone get better at make decisions so that they can eventually not need you to make them all. And if you're listening and you're thinking, oh, wow, I have this exact pattern in my business. This is one of the things we're going to go much deeper into in the beyond the Bottleneck masterclass. Because being the bottleneck is rarely just a delegation problem. You've likely already delegated a ton of work to your team. So the bigger question is whether you've actually delegated enough of the thinking and decision making that goes with it. Uh, we're going to unpack that together. The Masterclass is on September 30th at 1pm Mountain Time, which is about 3pm Eastern. And the registration link is in the show notes if you want to go and sign up. But there's Another piece we need to address here because I don't want you leaving this episode and simply responding to every question with another question. Your team will think that that is incredibly annoying, and it still doesn't solve the underlying issue. So this is where Sophia and I went next in our coaching. We needed to identify an area where she was actually ready to give her team decision making authority. Not every decision, not the entire business, but one category where she could feel really comfortable. And we looked for that area where she already had the most trust in her team's judgment. So for Sophia, that was in terms of client satisfaction. She already knew and deeply trusted that her team was really caring with their clients. She'd watched them solve client problems before. They understood the work, the relationships. She had seen them demonstrate really good judgment in the past. So there was already a foundation of trust. And that's where I would encourage you to begin, too. If m you want to try this in your own business this week, don't start with the decisions that keep you awake at night. Start somewhere where you already believe, my team can do this. Because trust matters here. And you can't tell someone they own a decision and then spend the entire time waiting for them to get it wrong. That's not the purpose here. And the truth is, that's not ownership. That's a test. We want to create a real opportunity for them to exercise judgment. So Sophia got really clear with her team. Client satisfaction was an area they could own. They were free to make the right choice in the moment for the client. But, and this is really important, we didn't stop there, because handing someone ownership without defining the boundaries can create just as much confusion as not handing it over at all. So we really defined the guardrails here. And Sophia's team needed to know not only what can I decide? But they also needed to understand when should Sophia be involved. So we made that really clear. If they had genuinely worked through two viable options and just couldn't determine the best path, Sophia could help. But she wanted to understand what was their best choice. She wanted their opinion. If something was so weird and wonderful that nobody on the team had encountered it before, then she wanted in on that. If the situation fell outside an established policy or procedure that might require her input. And there was also a financial guardrail. The team had the authority to make decisions in an agreed range. But if the decision was going to cost more than $1,000, Sophia needed to be involved. Now, what they created is something very different. The team isn't thinking, I guess I'm supposed to make more decisions now. They know what they own. Um, they know where the boundaries are. They know when they're expecting, expected to act, and they know when it's completely appropriate to ask for support. And that's what real ownership looks like, my friends. Because if we're holding employees accountable for outcomes, they need enough authority to influence those outcomes. And we can't just say, you're accountable for client satisfaction, it's yours. And then require the founder to approve every meaningful decision that affects the client experience. Those two things don't match. Accountability without appropriate decision making authority is incredibly frustrating for people. But when we put structure around ownership, people can actually step into it. Now, here's where your behavior matters again, because your team has years of muscle memory, you've had one conversation about decision rights. Fantastic. That doesn't mean nobody's going to ask you questions tomorrow. They will for sure. And this is the moment when the pattern either starts changing or we snap right back into our old place. Someone brings you something that sits clearly inside the area you've just given them authority to own, and they say, what should I do? Your gut instinct is going to be to answer, don't. I'm, um, telling you. Resist the urge. You can remind them, hey, you own this one. Tell me what you're thinking. That's very different from abandoning them. You're available, you're interested, you could even coach in this space. But you're not automatically taking the decision back. Maybe they tell you their recommendation and you say, great, walk me through how you got there. Now you're helping them strengthen their thinking. Maybe you see something they've missed, you can help them notice it without necessarily stepping in and taking over. Maybe they tell you what they want to do and you think, that's exactly what I would do. Great. Tell them, reinforce it. Because feedback is a really important part of this process. And this was another important piece of Sophia's plan. When the team made good decisions, she was going to acknowledge that not just good job, good job doesn't really mean much, but really reinforcing the judgment she wanted to see more of. So something like, I really like the way you handled that. You understood the client need, you stayed within the guardrails and you solved it, uh, without making the process more complicated. Now the employee knows what worked and why it worked and what happens when they make decisions and the outcome isn't quite what we've hoped for. We learn doesn't mean we immediately say, okay, clearly this didn't work. I'll make all the decisions. Again, again, resist the urge. If every imperfect decision results in you as the founder, taking authority back, your team will very quickly learn that ownership is only safe when they can guarantee the right outcome. Nobody can guarantee that. You can't guarantee that. That's not possible. So instead, look at the outcome together. Understand what happened. What information did they have? Was there something missing? Was the decision reasonable based on what they knew at the time? Maybe we need to look at our processes, or there's got to be a different guardrail. Or do we need to share something with the rest of the team so everyone gets better? That's how we build judgment and how we develop our people. We look at what went wrong and we learn. And that's how leadership starts. Existing at every level in the organization rather than living exclusively with you as the founder. Okay, so here's what I want you to do this week. Because I promised you there would be something you could take away from this episode, and I don't want it to just happen next quarter. Uh, not when you've rewritten every job description and redesigned your org chart. Uh, I want you to think about doing this this week. Okay? That's your challenge. I want you to identify one category of decisions your team is capable of making that you're still making for them. Just one. So it could be client decisions, like Sophia and her team. Maybe it's scheduling or approving routine expenses within a specific budget. Uh, maybe it's how that deliverable gets executed. Or the particular category of customer issue. Whatever makes sense in your business. Choose something where you already have evidence that your team has the knowledge and the judgment to handle it. Then make the ownership explicit. Tell the person or the people involved this is yours to decide. Give them the guardrails. Talk to them about when they can act independently. When do you need to be involved? Are there financial limits or policy issues where there does need to be escalation? And talk to them about the situations that genuinely require your expertise or authority. Make it really explicit and clear. And then comes your part. The next time they bring you one of those decisions, resist the urge to immediately answer. I know. It's so hard. I, uh, want you to return to the thinking and ask, what do you think we should do? What have you already considered? What are your recommendations? And then let them make the decision. That's it. That's your experiment for this week. One category. Clear ownership. Clear guardrails. And a different response from you. All right, so let's get back to Sophia, because this wasn't Some massive organizational transformation. She didn't disappear for two weeks and come back to discover that her team was running the company without her. That's actually not the goal here. What happened was smaller and it was incremental, but it was incredibly meaningful. Her team started owning how they cared for their clients. They felt really great about it. They knew Sophia trusted them and they had enough structure to make decisions confidently without feeling as though they'd been left alone to figure everything out. And Sophia started getting some capacity back. Not overnight, but some. Again, it was incremental. And that's important because the goal here isn't for you to stop being involved in your business. Absolutely not. The goal is for your involvement to happen where you create the most value. Sophia didn't need to spend her days making every client related decision. Her team could really do that. Sophia needed time and the mental capacity to do the strategic work that only she could do as the CEO. And every decision that no longer had to come back to her created a little bit more space for that. And that's how we start moving beyond the bottleneck. Now, I want to be careful here because this one change can make a meaningful difference, but it probably won't solve every bottleneck in your business. It's not going to take you right out of the middle, I'm afraid, because if everything still depends on you, changing how you respond to questions is only one piece of the solution. Being the bottleneck is rarely just a delegation problem. You may have already delegated plenty. You may have hired really smart people and handed over enormous amounts of work. Somehow you're still answering the questions, approving the decision, solving all the problems. Maybe you're checking people's work, making sure everything gets across the finish line. That's a bigger system problem. Sometimes it's about how you're leading. Sometimes responsibility and decision making haven't been structured clearly enough across the team. Or your culture has unintentionally taught people that bringing things back to you as the founder is the safest or, uh, the fastest thing to do. And that it's often a combination of all of the above. My friends, that's exactly why I created the beyond the Bottleneck masterclass. We're going to talk about how to build a team that can think, decide and deliver without everything coming back to you. Again, I'm going to be teaching this live on September 30th at 1pm Mountain 3 Eastern. And we're going to look beyond the advice to just delegate more because I'm going to assume you've probably already heard that. Let's probably not working. Instead, we're going to uncover where your business has become too dependent on you, why work keeps finding its way back to your desk, and what needs to shift in your leadership, your people, strategy, and your culture so your team can make meaningful ownership decisions that, uh, really help you scale your business. You'll also complete the bottleneck scorecard that's going to help you identify where your biggest bottleneck actually lives. Is it how you're leading? Is it in how responsibility and ownership have been designed across the team? Or is it something happening in the way you work together that's teaching people to bring decisions or problems and the work back to you? Because once we can diagnose what's actually happening, we can start to do something about it so that your team can help you scale your business. So check out the link in the show notes to reserve your spot. So, before you move on with your day, let's come back to that one question that I really want you to take away from the episode, because I want this to be actionable for you. What is the one category of decisions that your team is capable of making that you're still making for them? Want you to start there. You don't have to hand, uh, everything over tomorrow. I'm sure that that feels terrifying. You don't have to suddenly become a completely different leader. Choose one area, define the ownership, set those guardrails that are going to make sense, and then pay attention to what you do when the decision comes back to you. Because leadership is not about having all the answers. It's about building the capability around you so you don't have to. And if you're ready to take it further again, come and join me at the beyond the bottleneck masterclass on September 30th. I'd love to have you. Uh, the podcast episode is giving you the one shift that you could start making today. The masterclass will help you look at the bigger picture and begin building a business where you no longer need to be the person with all the answers. You're going to find that registration link in the show notes. So, my friend, your people are incredibly capable, but the capability needs somewhere to go. Give them the clarity, give them the guardrails, give them the opportunity to really think and solve those problems, and then give yourself permission not to be the answer to every question. All right, well, thank you so much for spending your valuable time with me this week, and I'll see you on the next episode of the People side of Business. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the People's side of Business. If this conversation resonated with you, make sure to subscribe to the show and share it with other founders in your world. And keep coming back each week for practical leadership strategies to help you lead, manage and scale your team with more confidence. And if you're sitting in the middle of people challenges right now, whether it's leadership team dynamics, hiring culture, or difficult conversations, and you're realizing you don't want to figure it out alone, I'd love to support you. You can book a leadership strategy session with me through the link in the Show Notes or@highvoltageleadership.ca. i'd love to hear what you learned from today's episode, so come connect with me on Instagram, ah, hivoltleadership or on LinkedIn. And remember, the People side of Business is the business. I'll see you next time.

Speaker B: Um, this podcast is produced, mixed and edited by Cardinal Studio. For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit www.cardinalstudio.co or email mikeardnostudio. Co. You can also find the details in the Show Notes.