Hey Reader,

"You need to turn off work, Dusty. I need you to be 'husband Dusty' right now."

My wife Tara tells me that more often than I'd like to admit. I'm a professional fixer, and my whole career has been built on building and fixing things.

So I'll flip into coach mode in a nanosecond, and almost nothing makes her madder. She didn't ask for a coach. She asked for a supportive, loving husband. Last week my peer group discussed the difference between listening and fixing, and I've been chewing on it ever since. The same pattern sits under the struggle I hear about most from leaders: delegation. I hear it from first-time managers, and CEOs of multi-hundred-million-dollar businesses.

Here's what I'm chewing on.

First, it's a clarity problem, not a personality problem. At home, the hard part is knowing whether Tara wants to talk or wants me to fix it. I don't think that's a gender thing. It's clarity and alignment. At work, it's the same question: does this person need your answer, or do they need to find their own?

Second, fixing is faster, and that's the trap. It's almost always faster for you to fix it, especially when you've walked the path and know every pitfall. A study of 60 newly formed teams found the same pattern: teams with directive leaders performed better at first, but teams with empowering leaders improved more over the rounds that followed. Fixing wins the first round. It doesn't help the people you lead to grow and learn.

Third, the skill that earned you this seat isn't the one the next seat needs. Fixing is how many of us earned the job. The role you'll hold a year or three years from now needs something different, and so does the identity of the person in it. Less ultimate doer. More mirror. And a few thoughtful questions from a coach who helps your people see what they can't see yet.

If I had to pick today, it's the third. Here's the twist home keeps teaching me: coaching isn't always the answer either. With Tara, coach mode is the wrong role entirely. So the skill you need isn't fixing or coaching. It's deciding, before you walk in, which role the moment needs from you, then living that role on purpose.

What I'm watching.

Last week I sat with a leadership team that's impressive by any measure. Over the next several years, each of them has to spend less time in the weeds and more time coaching the leaders who own the results. I want to see whether the ones who prepare for those conversations make that shift faster than those who wing it.

Here's your move. Sweep your calendar this week and pick one meeting where someone's likely to bring you a problem you'll want to solve.

Prepare with three questions, two before and one after:

1. What's likely to come up where I'll want to fix it before I understand it?
2. What do I need to ask so I stay out of the work and they stay in it?
3. Afterward: what worked, what didn't, and what will I do next time?

Don't skip the third one. A 2021 review of 61 studies found that after-action reviews like it improved training results, with a large effect. Reflect before and review after. That's how your behavior changes, and how the outcome you want comes to pass.

dusty

P.S. If you were promoted for solving problems, Episode 30 of Leadership Unlocked is about you: why great problem solvers struggle to build great teams.