13. Are You Blocking Your Team's Growth? The Danger of Over-Helping

All leaders want their teams to be independent, autonomous, and accountable. Yet, in my experience coaching high-level leaders, it’s surprisingly easy to undermine these very goals.

If you find yourself frustrated that your team lacks initiative or resist your ideas, it may be time to take an honest look at your approach.

The golden question: Are you offering too much help?

How Over-Helping Stifles Growth

It’s easier to do too much for people than just enough.

You may be owning tasks that belong to others or spelling out solutions before they’ve had a chance to think things through (which likely takes them longer than it takes you).

Over-helping can also come in the form of directing too much. If you’re constantly giving insights and instructions, you deprive people of the chance to connect the dots themselves and self-lead.

Unknowingly, you might be taking charge— isn’t that what leadership is about? That’s a resounding NO!

Great leadership is more about facilitating other people’s processes than directly helping. It's more about creating an environment where they can think for themselves, take ownership, and grow. True leadership isn’t about having all the answers but about guiding others to discover solutions on their own.?

Often the best thing to do is to step back and let others step up.

The High Cost of Over-Helping

The intention behind helping is benign— to ensure success, speed things up, or make life easier for our reports or colleagues. But this approach has a dark side: it may be causing the very problem you’re trying to fix.

Keep in mind two striking consequences (incidentally, this can hugely improve your parenting and all other relationships):

When you do things for people that they could have done themselves, you take away their experience of success and accomplishment. And with it, a sense of improved self-regard.

When you think through problems for people, it takes away their responsibility for finding their own solutions. And with that, the elation they would have felt at reaching the insight themselves.

Struggling through challenges and overcoming them builds confidence and mastery. Mistakes are part of learning—there’s no shortcut. There is no higher learning than struggling through analysing an issue, brainstorming solutions and seeing the consequences of one’s choices. Learning doesn’t happen just by being told; it happens through direct experience, even if it involves inefficiencies and missteps.

The more you intervene, the less your team practices independent thinking and doing, making them reliant on you instead of developing their own problem-solving skills. In essence, you are creating a dependency that you might later regret —one that is often unnecessary and, at worst, detrimental to both the relationship and the outcomes.

Analyse how you are with them both at the action level and the thinking level.

The Sweet Spot: Finding the Right Balance

So, does this mean leaders should step back completely?

Not at all. The key is calibrating your support—ensuring help is empowering, not stifling. Like a volume dial, you need to adjust it to each person and situation so that each person can do as much as they can on their own and guide them along just a little bit to further their development.

Instead of solving things for people, it’s far more effective to guide with open-ended questions and genuine curiosity. You simply don’t know what people understand and don’t, or how their knowledge is structured in their heads.

A process of shared investigation is more fruitful most of the time.

My clients commend me on being really hard core about this, but I take this approach of not-solving because it catapults their learning and because I really trust them to find better solutions. I am clear the responsibility is theirs and it is not my job to make life "easy" for them, gentle and sweet as I am. It is a disservice to think this way.

When people feel supported enough and free enough to make their own choices and find their own solutions, they feel trusted—and that in itself motivates them to step up. I have seen this often.

It’s the paradox of helping less, it is often more helpful.

Of course, it does take some practice to lead by doing less and enabling more.

The psychological impact of offering just the right amount of help—no more, no less—is profound. As Maria Montessori discovered, when people reach insights and solutions on their own, they experience a deep sense of capability, confidence, and self-motivation.

Over-helping robs people of that essential growth process. Helping the precise amount that is sought and useful optimises growth.

The Path Forward

Try these ideas that have helped my clients.

• Be less directive in practical matters—ask more, tell less.
• Avoid solving issues for people, let them find their own solutions.
• Support without over-helping—let them struggle just enough to think and learn.
• Develop patience for imperfection, mistakes, and slower processes.
• Let people experience the consequences of their choices- help them reflect about what happened—what worked, what didn’t, and what were the consequences?
• Use positive reinforcement—acknowledge their successes and ideas with genuine affection to build trust and motivation.

Leader’s Corner

A senior leader I coached faced great resistance from her team—experienced managers who thought they knew best and who were resisting her being hired to begin with. A really tricky situation that many leaders find themselves in.

They simply could not accept that she had a broader vision and experience. So, every time she offered advice, they pushed back and the team was very ineffective.

Out of sheer frustration, she shifted her approach. Instead of directing and leading with solutions, she asked thoughtful questions that encouraged them to reflect on key points. She listened a lot more, and a lot more openly. She started letting go of producing solutions and instead facilitated the team process towards a shared solution.

Within months, the resistance faded. They trusted her, engaged more openly, and aligned with her vision—not because she told them what to do, but because she respected their thinking process and ideas.

Leadership is shifting toward a partnership model—trusting people’s capacities and supporting their potential. The real work starts within you and spreads outwards in ways you can’t even imagine.

Hello, I'm Nati

Nice to have you here and thanks for reading to the end. I am a leadership coach with experience in neuroscience research, specialising in creating transformational experiences so that leaders can elevate their leadership from the inside out. I have my own methodology, blending Nonviolent Communication, neuroscience, mindfulness and positive psychology.

I am currently taking on a select number of executive coaching clients, do DM me if you want to transform how you relate and communicate, I’d love to explore your situation together.

You can read more about how to calibrate your help and the theoretical underpinnings in my Spanish book (soon to be in English): Mi Cerebro solo se Construye una Vez: ?Actúa Ahora!

Thanks for reading!

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