On leadership, the reflex to solve, and the deeper value of stepping back.
There’s a version of leadership that feels productive because it’s constantly busy. This blog asks what that busyness is actually costing.
If I shifted more of my time from ad hoc requests to coaching my team, the value I would create would be stronger team capability, greater individual growth, and better long term business performance.
There’s a version of leadership that feels productive because it’s constantly busy. Someone needs a decision – you make it. Someone hits a blocker – you clear it. Someone needs an answer – you provide it. The day fills up, the requests keep coming, and at the end of it all, you feel useful.
But I have been sitting with an uncomfortable question lately: what is all that availability actually costing?
The invisible trade
Every time you step in to solve something your team could work through themselves, You are making an invisible trade. You are exchanging their development for your short term helpfulness. You are choosing the quick resolution over the slower, stickier learning that builds real capability. And you are quietly signalling, however unintentionally, that you don’t fully trust them to figure it out.
Every quick fix is a quiet message: “I don’t think you can handle this without me.” We rarely mean it that way. But the signal lands regardless.
The Gestalt prompt at the heart of this reflection is deceptively simple: if you shifted more of your time from ad hoc requests to coaching your team, what would actually change? The honest answer is: quite a lot. Not immediately. Not visibly. But over time, in ways that compound.
Gestalt lens
In Gestalt, we speak of retroflection, when we do to ourselves, or do for others, what might better
be left for them to do. The leader who solves everything is not simply being helpful; they are also
absorbing something that belongs to the other person. The team member’s agency, their struggle,
their growth, these get quietly taken over, however kindly. The
relationship stays comfortable. The development doesn’t happen.
Why coaching feels less productive
Coaching looks less productive in the moment. It takes longer to ask the right question than to give the right answer. It requires tolerating a little uncertainty, sitting with the discomfort of watching someone work something through rather than just solving it for them. There’s a patience to it that the pace of most working days doesn’t naturally encourage.
And there’s something else. For many leaders, the reflex to step in and solve is not just about efficiency. It’s about identity. Being the person with the answers, the one who clears the path, the one who keeps things moving, this can feel like what leadership is. Stepping back can feel,
uncomfortably, like abdication.
Gestalt lens
This is where the awareness cycle becomes relevant. The impulse to step in and solve is often sensation and immediate action, with the awareness phase skipped entirely. We feel the request, and we respond, without pausing to ask: what does this person actually need from me right now? What would serve their development, not just the immediate situation? The pause between stimulus and response is exactly where coaching lives.
A small experiment
Next time someone comes to you with a problem, try pausing before you respond. Ask yourself: couldthey work this out themselves, with the right question from me? Then try: What have you already considered?’ or What feels like the next step to you? Notice what happens. Notice what it costs you to wait. That discomfort is worth attending to.
The compounding effect
The compounding effect of coaching is entirely different from the compounding effect of solving. A team that can think, decide and act without needing a leader at every turn is a team that grows. Individuals build confidence. Problem solving muscles develop. The reliance shifts, not away from each other, but toward something more mutual and more sustainable. And crucially, it frees the leader to think at the level they are actually supposed to be operating at.
That last part matters more than most leaders admit. When you are fielding ad hoc requests all day, you are not doing strategy. You are managing the immediate at the expense of the important.
The business doesn’t just lose the coaching in those moments. It loses the leadership.
This is not a small thing. The capacity to think at the level of where the organisation is going, what it might be missing, what is emerging, what needs to be navigated, is precisely the thing that gets crowded out when the diary fills with reactive availability.
Gestalt lens
In Gestalt terms, what’s being described here is the difference between figure and ground. The adhoc requests are always figure, present, immediate, demanding attention. The strategic, developmental work sits in the ground, important, but not urgent, and therefore perpetually deferred. The leader who never challenges this arrangement will find that the ground never becomes figure. The important never gets its turn.
A different kind of presence
The shift required here isn’t dramatic. It’s not about withdrawing or becoming hard to reach. It’s about changing what happens when someone comes to you.
Less solving, more asking. Less providing the answer, more helping them find it. It’s a different kind of presence, one that takes more skill and more intention, but creates far more lasting value.
What this looks like in practice
It looks like replacing ‘here’s what I think you should do’ with ‘what do you think is going on here?’
It looks like tolerating the silence after a question, rather than filling it with an answer.
It looks like noticing when you are about to solve something and asking, before you do: whose problem is this, really? And what would it mean for them to own it?
It looks like having the occasional honest conversation about development, not just task completion, with the people you lead.
None of this requires a leadership overhaul. It requires awareness, intention, and a willingness to sit with the discomfort of doing things slightly differently.
Reflection practice
Take an honest look at your last week. Think about the requests that came to you, the decisions made, the blockers cleared, the answers given. Then ask:
- Which of these could my team have worked through themselves, with the right support?
- What stopped me from coaching rather than solving in those moments?
- What is my identity as a leader built on, and does always being available serve that, or limit it?
- What would I have been able to think about, if I would have that time back?
- What is one situation this week where I could try a question instead of an answer?
The ad hoc requests will always be there. The question is whether you keep letting them crowd out the work that matters most and whether you’re honest with yourself about the cost when you do.
The question worth sitting with
Availability is not the same as leadership. Usefulness in the moment is not the same as value over time. And the most helpful thing a leader can do is not always the most immediately satisfying thing.
There is a version of leadership that is genuinely generative, that builds something, develops people, creates capability that outlasts the individual leader’s involvement. It is slower, less meaningful sense, more valuable.
The question isn’t whether to be available. It’s what you make yourself available for and what that choice, made daily, is quietly building or quietly costing.”
What would shift for you, if you made this same move?