Fixing the ‘Broken Rung’ for Women at Work

You’ve probably heard of the glass ceiling for women at work. But what we really should be focusing on is the broken rung.

That’s according to the Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org. The report debunks workplace myths about women (I wrote about its findings regarding women and ambition recently.) One of the biggest myths is that the glass ceiling is the biggest obstacle women face in reaching senior leadership. But what McKinsey and LeanIn found — and what we’ve observed firsthand here at Newberry Solutions — is that the barriers to women start far earlier in their careers.

Photo by RDNE Stock project

The broken rung discussed in the report is the fact that fewer women than men get that first key promotion to manager. That puts fewer women in the leadership pipeline, which ultimately leads to a shortage of female candidates for senior leadership positions. As the report states:

Because of the gender disparity in early promotions, men end up holding 60 percent of manager-level positions in a typical company, while women occupy 40 percent. Since men significantly outnumber women, there are fewer women to promote to director, and the number of women decreases at every subsequent level.

How big of a problem is the broken rung? McKinsey and LeanIn found that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 87 women were. The gap is even bigger for women of color: 73 were promoted to manager for every 100 men who were. This problem is not new. The Women in the Workplace report has flagged it for nine consecutive years. But we clearly need to do more to address it. As a firm that’s passionate about helping women succeed — and that has a strong track record of helping them get promoted — this is one of our top priorities. So we want to highlight McKinsey and LeanIn’s recommendations on fixing the broken rung — and add some of our own.

How to Help Women Get Promoted

• Realize that the problem is not with women and their ambition. Some leaders may brush off the broken rung by claiming that women don’t want promotions and are more likely to step away from work. But that’s outdated — and inaccurate — thinking. The Women in the Workplace report shows that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic. (We’ve seen the same thing in our work with high-performing women.) Roughly equal numbers of women and men want promotions. That’s even true for women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule.

• Address performance bias. All too often, women are hired or promoted based on what they’ve done, while men are hired or promoted based on potential. In their report, McKinsey and LeanIn recommend taking “de-biasing” steps. For example, require that managers give their rationale behind performance evaluations and recommendations for promotions.

• Make development more equitable. Do the current learning and development programs at your organization include enough women who have the potential to be promoted? And does the content of those programs focus on what women need to get promoted? For some inspiration, check out our case study “Empowering Women to Reach Their Leadership Potential.” It tells the story of how a Fortune 50 company used our New Lens® learning platform to prepare more women for promotions.

Research is clear that companies benefit from having women in senior leadership roles. But to accomplish this goal, you have to take action much earlier in the leadership pipeline. This is one of the reasons we created New Lens, and we’re excited that it’s becoming part of the solution for the broken-rung problem. To learn more and set up a demonstration, visit newlensleadership.com.

The Truth About Women and Ambition

True or false? During the Covid-19 pandemic, women have become less ambitious than men are.

False. Very false.

But if you answered “true,” I can understand why. Perhaps you’ve seen news articles about the “lazy girl jobs” trend or women leaving the workforce.

Photo by Jopwell

Those headlines, however, tell only part of the story. The Women in the Workplace 2023 report, from McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.org, fills in some gaps in the narrative. This report debunks myths about women at work, including the one that they lack ambition.

Because we’re a firm with a special passion for developing women leaders, the Women in the Workplace report is always required reading for us. We believe it should be for your organization as well. Over the next few weeks, we’ll take a closer look at the report’s findings, compare them with what we see firsthand through our work, and share recommendations on cultivating women leaders in your organization. And we’ll start with the myth of women’s declining ambitions.

8 Out of 10 Women Want Promotions

The pandemic was an enormous blow to women at work. More women than men lost their jobs, and women experienced more stress and burnout than men did. But the Women in the Workplace report found that women are actually more ambitious now than they were before the pandemic. In 2019, about 70% of women wanted to get promoted to the next level. Today, that figure is 81% — identical to the percentage of men who want to get promoted. Younger women and women of color are even more ambitious. Among women under thirty, 93% are aiming for a promotion, while 88% of women of color are.

The report also refutes the perception that women who work remotely or on a hybrid schedule are less ambitious. In fact, they’re a little more likely to want promotions than women who work fully on-site. Furthermore, across all types of work schedules (remote, hybrid, on-site), women are just as likely to want a promotion as men in comparable arrangements.

What We’re Hearing from Women

The Women in the Workplace report’s findings on ambition track closely with what we’ve observed firsthand. Our work frequently involves helping top organizations cultivate women leaders. (For some examples, check out our case studies on how companies are using our New Lens® app to invest in women’s development.) We’ve coached countless women and spoken at events for women (such as the D CEO Emerging Women Leadership Network Program). Beyond  Newbery Solutions, I’m also involved with nonprofits and other entities that focus on elevating women, including Texas Women’s Foundation, the Senator Jane Nelson Institute for Women's Leadership at Texas Woman’s University, the United Way Fund for Women and Children, and 50/50 Women on Boards. So I have a lot of conversations with women about what’s happening in their careers and in their workplaces.

And what I hear from them echoes what McKinsey and LeanIn.org found. Women care deeply about their work and are constantly looking for ways they can make a bigger impact. They’re excited about flexible schedules that help them manage their personal lives without shortchanging their careers. The McKinsey/Lean In statistics aren’t the only findings that demonstrate women’s ambition. Women are starting more businesses than they did before the pandemic. Women are also more likely to attend college and obtain their degrees than men are.

Build a Pipeline of Women Leaders

As we celebrate women’s growing ambitions, we must also look for ways to translate these ambitions into gains for women at the top levels of leadership. While we’ve made some progress in closing the C-suite gender gap, women still hold less than one-third of these roles

The problem, according to the Women in the Workplace report, is a broken leadership pipeline. Women are less likely to get that first promotion to manager than men are. (And the gap is even bigger for women of color.) With fewer women than men rising through the ranks, it only makes sense that fewer women reach the highest levels of leadership.

 This discrepancy ultimately hurts organizations. We see in the McKinsey/Lean In report that there are great numbers of ambitious women out there who are eager to lead. When these women don’t get promoted, their employers miss out on untold potential. 

So how can we make our workplaces more equitable and help women get the promotions they aspire to?

• Talk about the Women in the Workplace report with your team. This discussion can help surface any misconceptions about women and ambition that your employees may have.

• Make leadership development training accessible to more employees. Companies rarely have budgets to provide coaching to everyone who wants it. It’s more likely to be reserved for senior leaders. That leaves out vast numbers of high-potential employees who could benefit. This was one of our main motivations for creating New Lens.

• Implement employee resource groups (ERGs) for women and women of color. According to the McKinsey/Lean In report, 93% of companies with strong pipelines of women leaders had ERGs with content tailored for women. That’s compared with 83% for companies overall. For women of color, the difference is even more dramatic: 61% of companies with strong pipelines have targeted ERGs, compared with 44% of companies overall.

Increasing the ranks of women leaders is a big topic, and one we’ll continue to explore in upcoming articles. Got questions? Please share them with me on LinkedIn. You could help shape our future content. In the meantime, check out the full Women in the Workplace 2023 report and explore how New Lens® democratizes access to leadership development.

Leaders, Are You Ready for 2024?

In my last article, we explored how your team performed in 2023 and what they might need to thrive in 2024. Today, I'd like to focus on you. These five thoughtful questions are designed to help you conclude this year on a positive note and set the stage for a successful 2024.

Photo by Rebrand Cities

1. What Can You Do for Yourself?

As the year winds down and we look toward 2024, consider what changes could simplify your life. If constant distractions and interruptions are a challenge, discussing ways to streamline communication with your team could be beneficial. Alternatively, if you find coaching your team challenging due to time constraints, our New Lens® app might offer the supplementary support you need.

2. Are You Getting the Support You Need?

In our fast-paced lives, it's easy to neglect our personal connections. These relationships, however, are crucial, especially during busy or stressful periods. Don't hesitate to reach out proactively for support. For instance, you might ask a partner to encourage you to start your day with a walk or run if they notice you're overworking and becoming irritable.

3. How Will You Balance Results and Relationships?

As high performers, it's common to focus intensely on results, sometimes at the expense of nurturing relationships. Remember, effective leadership is about achieving goals through and with others. To build stronger relationships in 2024, consider setting aside 15 minutes each week for relationship-building activities, such as sharing articles or making introductions.

4. How Much Did Your Behavior Reflect Your Intentions?

It's important to realize that others assess not only your accomplishments but also the experiences others have working with you. Your intentions are vital, but if they are not reflected in your interactions, they may fall short. Regular feedback from peers can be invaluable in ensuring your behavior aligns with your intentions.

5. What Team Issues Did You Play a Role in?

Every team faces challenges, such as conflict, low performance, or stress. To prevent these issues from spilling into 2024, it's helpful to reflect on your contribution to your team's dynamics. For example, I advised a leader who was inadvertently enabling a problematic dynamic by taking over urgent tasks. By helping her team reprioritize instead, she made a positive change.

What insights did you gain from these questions? Were there any surprises? As you continue to develop your leadership skills, consider exploring our range of products and services, including the innovative New Lens® app, designed to make leadership coaching more accessible.

Here’s to being intentional in shaping what your leadership journey looks like in 2024!

What Does It Mean to Coach Your Team?

Over the past year, we have been delivering a coaching workshop globally to help leaders build critical thinking skills of their teams. We’re seeing a huge demand for this topic, and it’s no mystery why. A survey by the Association for Talent Development found that 90% of organizations expect managers to coach direct reports. At the same time, though, more than half said that a lack of coaching skills stood in the way of their goals.

To become a better coach to your team members, the first step is understanding what coaching really is — and isn’t. And that’s what I want to explore with you today.

Photo by Christina Morillo

Coaching ISN’T Advice or Feedback

I’ve found that many leaders think they’re coaching when they are actually advising or giving feedback. Developing your team members involves all of these activities at one time or another. But they aren’t the same thing.

Advising is defining or directing the action an employee should take to solve a particular problem or issue. Advising is the best option sometimes — for example, in a high-stakes or crisis situation under a tight deadline. But it’s also easy to overuse, since solving an issue for your team member is often the quickest way to get it off your plate.

Delivering feedback is describing past performance with a focus on acknowledging strengths and ways to improve. Meaningful feedback is crucial to keeping your team members engaged. Like coaching, delivering feedback can fall by the wayside when things get busy. But it doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Get in the habit of sharing what you noticed a team member doing as soon as possible after you observe it. Even a couple of minutes after a meeting to point out what worked well and what would have been more effective can go a long way.

Coaching involves listening, asking thought-provoking questions and acknowledging the employee’s perspective, which empowers them to problem-solve and take action. Each part of that definition is important:

• Active listening helps you understand what’s really happening with your team member and the situation.

• Asking questions helps your team member develop their own solutions. A common mistake here is asking leading questions that nudge the employee toward what you would do. Leading questions negate the benefits of coaching.

• Empowering your team member means that you are laying the groundwork for them to handle situations on their own in the future instead of coming to you for answers.

Empowerment is at the heart of why coaching is so important. Your team members will never develop to their full potential without coaching that challenges their thinking, broadens their perspective and helps them get unstuck. Learning and growth enhance performance and engagement, which is good for employees themselves and for the organization.

But coaching also benefits you. As we touched on earlier, giving employees solutions when they come to you with a question or issue might save time in the short run. But, in the long run, you’re setting yourself up for spending yet more time “putting out fires.”

This week, think about how often you are taking advantage of coaching moments with your team members and start looking for more opportunities. I also invite you to check out our New Lens® app, which we designed to arm your team members with high-impact strategies and facilitate manager coaching. Bimonthly one-on-one meetings between managers and participants are part of the program, and we make it easy by providing a discussion guide for managers to use.

Free Leadership Development Event

Since we’re talking about ways to develop your team members, I wanted to remind you about our upcoming Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success. This is a rare opportunity to get insights from four dynamic and accomplished business and HR leaders, all in just a couple of hours and for free. The Micro Summit happens 11 a.m.-1 p.m. CST on Wednesday, October 25. Please sign up while we still have open spots. You can register here and share this link with your team members and other colleagues. I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Are You Using These 3 Types of Coaching?

Coaching is becoming a bigger and bigger part of the job for leaders. As someone who is all about helping companies and leaders achieve high performance, it’s exciting to see in Harvard Business Review that employees want more coaching, and organizations want managers to spend more time providing it. 

As a Master Certified Coach and creator of a leadership development app, I’ve seen the powerful benefits of different types of coaching. That’s why we integrated three types into our New Lens® app. Read on to learn about the different forms that coaching can take, and how each one can benefit you and your team.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Individually Working with a Certified Coach 

This is what many people picture when they hear the word coaching. If you are looking for a coach, whether for yourself or for others in your organization, research candidates carefully. Look for a coach who has formal training and certifications. The International Coach Federation advances the coaching profession by setting high professional standards, providing independent certifications and building a network of credentialed coaches. There are three levels of ICF certifications: Associate Certified Coach (ACC), Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Master Certified Coach (MCC).

I also recommend asking a coach these types of questions before engaging them:

• What is their coaching philosophy and approach?

• What types of clients do they work best with? 

• What kind of results can you expect?

• What examples of success do they have from past clients?

To learn more about our approach, check out the executive coaching page of our website.

While one-on-one coaching delivers powerful benefits, it may not be affordable or accessible to all the employees in an organization who want or need it. New Lens addresses this by providing targeted coaching within the app that focuses on some of the most impactful tools, exercises and strategies to drive high performance. 

Peer Coaching

Even if working one-on-one with a coach isn’t within reach right now, there are other ways you or your team can experience the benefits of coaching. One of those ways is peer coaching. Through our work with client companies that have used New Lens and our other programs, I’ve seen firsthand how effective peer coaching can be.

Peer coaching can take many forms. For example, in the New Lens Program, participants meet monthly with a cohort. The experience is designed to strengthen relationships, create a safe place to share challenges, amplify the power of the content, and promote sharing of best practices. Recent research by Rob Cross shows that peer relationships have a bigger impact on inclusion, advancement, and retention than relationships with managers.

Remember that you can also create your own methods to take advantage of peer coaching — for example, setting up coaching partnerships or small groups.

Peer coaching has its own set of advantages. It’s less expensive than working with an executive coach, so more people in your organization can benefit. Peer coaching is also usually easy to implement. 

Manager Coaching

Of course, your team members also need coaching from you. This can feel difficult sometimes. I don’t have to tell you how busy leaders’ schedules are these days. On top of that, many leaders have not been trained on how to coach effectively.

However, giving your team more coaching is probably easier than you might think. A great first step is looking for coachable moments as they arise during your day. When you identify good opportunities for coaching, remember to practice active listening. Pay attention to what your direct report is really communicating and don’t just wait for your chance to talk. By listening deeply, you can identify questions that can help employees develop their own solutions.

We designed New Lens to facilitate manager coaching. Bimonthly one-on-one meetings between managers and participants are part of the program, and we make it easy by providing a discussion guide for managers to use.

A Powerful (and Free) Event to Share with Your Team

At Newberry Solutions, we’re always looking for new ways we can help you steer your team’s growth and development. That’s why I’m so excited about our upcoming Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success. This virtual event is easy to fit into busy schedules. In just a couple of hours, you’ll gain valuable, actionable strategies for success from four incredible business and HR leaders. It all happens 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. CST on Wednesday, October 25. Please join us while we still have open seats. You can register here and share this link with your team members and other colleagues.

How to Develop Your Team When Time, Budgets Are Tight

As a leader, one of your most important responsibilities is helping your team members develop to their full potential. But that raises a big question: How are you supposed to accomplish this when all of you are busy and your training budget is small? Today I want to give you some quick, affordable and easy ideas to encourage your team members’ learning and growth. Be sure to read to the end of the article, where I’ll tell you about a free leadership development event you can share with your team.

Photo by Christina Morillo

Leverage What You Already Have

It’s easy to forget about the existing learning and development opportunities at your organization, especially when your schedule is full. But this is a great place to start when you’re looking for ways to develop your team. For example, does your workplace have a cross-training program? Are there affinity groups? What about tuition reimbursement? If you’re drawing a blank, get together with other leaders so you can pool your knowledge about current resources.

Help Team Members Learn from Each Other

So what’s your #1 existing resource? Your people themselves. Take a moment to think about the strengths of each of your team members. You’ll probably be impressed by the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience on your team! Now consider how you can tap into each person’s expertise. Some options include lunch-and-learn events and peer-to-peer coaching.

Build Learning into Every Day

All too often, we think of learning as something that happens in addition to our regular jobs. But some of the most powerful learning actually happens through our work experiences.  Leadership expert Josh Bersin calls this “growth in the flow of work,” and research has shown it delivers real results. According to Camille Preston, a business psychologist and leadership expert: “The most innovative leaders and organizations are seeking ways to integrate leadership development into everything they do.” You can help your direct reports grow by helping them join a cross-functional team, present in front of senior leaders or take on a special project, just to name a few examples.

Coach and Give Feedback

I get it: You’re really busy. But you can provide more coaching and feedback without taking too much time out of your day. Get in the habit of sharing what you noticed about your team members’ behavior right after you observe it. Even a couple of minutes after a meeting to point out what worked well and what would have been more effective can go a long way. If you want to start coaching more but aren’t sure how to begin, I contributed to an article for Forbes Coaches Council that provides some “baby steps.”

Our Free Leadership Development Event

I hope the ideas in this article will help you create more development opportunities for your team members. Making learning more accessible is one of our key values at Newberry Solutions. That’s why we created our award-winning New Lens® app. And it’s why I’m so excited about our upcoming Micro Summit: 4 Core Leadership Strategies for Success. Like New Lens, this virtual event is easy to fit into busy schedules. In just a couple of hours, you’ll gain valuable, actionable strategies for success from four incredible business and HR leaders. It all happens 11 a.m.-1 p.m. CDT on Wednesday, October 25. I invite you to register here, and to share this link with your team members and other colleagues. 

Are You Leveraging Your Coaching Skills?

In the past few years, we’ve seen a big shift in expectations for leaders. Previously, leadership largely followed a “command and control” model. Leaders figured out what to do and told others to do it. But today we value a new kind of leader — one who’s skilled at coaching employees to find their own solutions.

“Increasingly, coaching is becoming integral to the fabric of a learning culture—a skill that good managers at all levels need to develop and deploy,” Herminia Ibarra of London Business School and leadership trainer Anne Scoular wrote in Harvard Business Review.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Honing your coaching skills benefits your team members and the organization as a whole, as well as your own career path. (In fact, we believe so strongly in the power of coaching that we created the New Lens app to make coaching easier for leaders and more accessible to employees at all levels.) In today’s article, I’ll help you assess where you are now with your coaching skills and how you can coach more frequently and more effectively.

How Coaching Pays Off

As an executive coach myself, I can tell you that coaching delivers real results, including:

• Greater self-awareness

• Improved critical thinking skills

• Less turnover (94% of employees would stay longer at a company that helps them learn)

• Improved engagement and motivation

But providing regular coaching can be a challenge for managers. With recent workforce cuts at many companies, schedules are tight. Furthermore, according to Chief Learning Officer, managers may lack the skills to be effective coaches: “Most managers are hired or promoted based on their tenure with the organization or past experience in non-managerial roles. They’re chosen based on legacy rather than skills. They may have what it takes to run the business, but they often lack the ability to support, motivate and empower a team.”

The Definition of Coaching

To strengthen your coaching skills, let’s take a look at how often you’re currently coaching. To do that, we have to first understand what coaching is — and isn’t.

The International Coaching Foundation defines coaching others as “a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

This definition of coaching from tennis coach Timothy Gallwey also applies to coaching in the workplace: “"Coaching is unlocking a person's potential to maximize their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them."

Many of the common interactions we have with our reports do not qualify as coaching, including:

• Telling someone exactly what to do.

• Giving them advice on what to do.

• Offering them performance feedback.

Instead, coaching is more about listening and asking powerful open-ended questions to help someone else challenge their thinking, broaden their perspective and get unstuck.

Based on these definitions, how are you doing as a coach to your direct reports? How often are you asking coaching questions vs. giving directions or providing feedback?

Listen and Ask Questions

Now let’s think about how you can coach more frequently. A good starting point is to keep an eye out for coachable moments as they arise during your day. You don’t have to coach constantly. It’s not the right solution in every situation. For example, in a high-risk, high-visibility scenario, it’s probably safer to give direct instructions in the moment and then coach later.

When you identify good opportunities for coaching, remember to practice active listening. Pay attention to what your direct report is really communicating and don’t just wait for your chance to talk. By listening deeply, you can identify questions that can help employees develop their own solutions. A common mistake here is to ask leading questions that are more about nudging the person to the solution you would choose. Instead, your questions should sound more like these:

• “What’s most important to you about this issue?”

• “What problem are you really trying to solve?”

• “What have you tried already, and what did you learn from that?”

A New Way to Coach

In addition to the coaching you provide, you can also look for other ways to offer your team members more coaching. Technology now makes the benefits of coaching more accessible than ever. Our New Lens app, for example, can supplement your own coaching with content that’s targeted to common situations we’ve seen our clients face. Schedule a demo now.

How to Create ‘Growth in the Flow of Work’

For a long time, there’s been a gap between the development opportunities that employees want and what companies actually offer. Amid the Great Resignation, closing that gap has taken on greater urgency. Employees are more likely to stick with an organization that helps them grow. But with so many development options and strategies to choose from, which approaches actually get results? That’s an important question for everyone from company executives and HR departments to team leaders and individual contributors.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

And a recent report from analyst Josh Bersin has a clear answer. “A New Strategy For Corporate Learning: Growth In The Flow Of Work” has insights that will help you whether you are thinking about learning strategies for your organization, team, or your own development. Here’s what stood out to me from the Bersin report and some ideas for how to put these findings into action.

What Kind of Development Drives Results?

According to “Growth in the Flow of Work,” these are the learning and development areas that have the biggest impact on business results:

• Career growth programs

• Leadership development 

• A culture of learning

• L&D innovation

With my focus on leadership development, I want to share a few of Bersin’s insights in that area:

Developing leaders at all levels. As an executive coach, I’ve seen that, all too often, organizations invest in leadership training for senior leaders and high potentials, but overlook other employees. That damages an organization’s leadership pipeline. Research has revealed new managers felt unprepared for leadership roles. In fact, more than 60% failed within their first couple of years on the job. “This is because many first-time supervisors are thrown into the deep end of the pool, with little guidance or direction, and with little or no formal training in leadership skills,” leadership coach and facilitator Steven Howard writes. 

Teaching leaders to develop others. One of leaders’ most important jobs is helping others achieve their full potential — in other words, developing future leaders. When leaders are skilled at teaching and coaching, it makes development accessible to more employees. It also makes development more effective because it’s relevant to each employee’s work. As the report puts it: “Yes, we each need granular skills to do our jobs. But we can’t really use these skills, hone them, or apply them unless we have context, experiences, mentoring, and wisdom.” To learn more about how leaders can develop team members, check out my articles “How to Stop Fixing and Start Coaching” and “Put Your Coaching Skills to Work.”

Giving leaders ‘Power Skills.’ Bersin defines Power Skills as behavioral skills such as adaptability, time management and communication. Power Skills are the most important skills for driving business results, but they are also more complex to teach than technical skills. I have some articles that can help you with this area, too, whether you are helping others develop their Power Skills or cultivating your own:

• “Making the Most of Transition”

• “How to Lead With Purpose and Have More Impact”

• “Stop Clashes That Stall Your Team”

• “Communicating From a Position of Strength”

• “5 Ways to Feed Your Creativity”

I encourage you to read the full “Growth in the Flow of Work” report and think about how its findings apply to your career and your organization. How can you start weaving more learning and development into daily work experiences? 

It’s exciting to see that our learning platform, New Lens, is aligned with the ideas in the Bersin report. News Lens allows you to deliver the coaching and connection that employees crave, and seamlessly fits into the workday with bite-size lessons and practical action steps. We would love to support your company. Schedule a New Lens demo now.

How to Stop Fixing and Start Coaching

As a high performer, you're good at solving problems. But do you ever feel too good at it?

I'm hearing from a lot of leaders lately that they're spending their days putting out fires, dealing with crises and answering questions for their team members. 

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

If that sounds a lot like your days, too, you may feel like you're stuck in this situation. Things are still busy and unpredictable. There's no end in sight for problems that need solving. But maximizing your impact as a leader does not mean always jumping in and coming to the rescue. Today I want to give you some alternate strategies that will benefit both you and your team.

The Downside of Solving

It's easy for leaders to get into the habit of being the fixer or the solver, especially in stressful times like these.

After all, you're a leader because you've proven that you can efficiently solve problems. When team members come to you with a quandary or crisis, you can probably identify a solution quickly. You really want to get this problem off your plate, and coaching your direct report through it seems a lot more complicated than dealing with it yourself. So, once again, you become the solver.

But while you are saving time and stress in the short term, you are setting yourself and your team members up for longer-term problems. When you regularly leap to solving instead of coaching or delegating for development, here's what can happen:

• You lose time for your most important work. As a leader, your priorities should include big-picture thinking and helping your team members develop. When you're neglecting these priorities to do the work your reports could be doing, you aren't adding all the value you can as a leader.  

• You get caught in an unproductive pattern. The more you solve for them, the more your team will ask you to solve. And the less time you will have for anything else.

• Your team members miss opportunities to grow. By over-relying on you, they're hampering their own career development.

• You sow discord on your team. If you're always solving problems for some team members instead of helping them develop, the rest of the team will notice — especially if their colleagues' underperformance creates more work for them. On the other hand, your direct reports who need development may not understand why others are your "go-tos" for important assignments.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself

So how can you balance the short-term concerns of getting things done quickly with the long-term concerns of strengthening your team, developing its members and maximizing your own leadership? Here are a few questions that can help you move from solving to coaching and developing.

• What is your role? Even if you complain about being "the solver," does your ego get a boost from playing this role? Becoming aware of this can help you get unstuck and start finding better ways to use your expertise.

• How do you want to show up? How do you want others to see you as a leader? If you’re always in the details problem-solving, you’re less likely to be viewed as someone with the capacity to move up and contribute more strategically.

• How capable is your team? If you feel nervous delegating to certain team members, is it because of their competence? If so, identify the need for additional training beyond coaching from you.

Making the Shift

With your answers to these questions in mind, what's one small shift you can make to go from short-term problem-solving to investing in your team’s longer-term development? For example, it might be as simple as pausing when someone comes to you with an issue and reminding yourself that this person has the ability to learn and that you can coach them.

As you do things differently, others might not know what to make of your changes in behavior. So remember to connect the dots for them by framing your actions, "I trust you and want to give you a chance to grow. I'm here to help, but I'm going to step back to let you own this project."

From time to time, you will find yourself in urgent situations where you need to jump in and take action. But you can still coach even in these cases. After the problem is resolved, meet with your team member to talk through what you did and prepare them to handle similar scenarios in the future.

As a leader, preparing your team members to lead is one of the most important things you can do. And it shows your own readiness for a bigger role. For more strategies like these, pick up a copy of  "Building a Strong Team" from my Leadership EDGE℠ Series.