Why Leaders Should Ask More and Tell Less

There’s a moment in every leader’s development where the skill that got them promoted becomes the habit that holds them back.

Having answers.

I’ve watched this pattern play out so many times. A high-performing individual contributor gets promoted into leadership. They’re smart, decisive, and efficient. They solve problems fast.

And that’s exactly what starts breaking things.

When I was COO, I had a direct report — brilliant operator — who ran every meeting like a solution factory. Problem comes in, answer goes out, next item. His team stopped thinking.

Why bother? He was faster. They brought him every decision, every escalation, every question. He was the bottleneck, and he couldn’t see it.

The pattern: the more answers you give, the less thinking your team does. The less they think, the more they depend on you. The more they depend on you, the more convinced you become that they can’t handle it without you.

It’s a loop. And it only breaks when the leader makes a counterintuitive move: asking more and telling less.

When you’re always providing answers:

→ Your team stops developing their own judgment

→ You become the single point of failure for every decision

→ People bring you problems instead of recommendations

→ You miss perspectives that could change your thinking

→ You exhaust yourself doing work that isn’t yours to do

The shift from expert to leader requires letting go of being the smartest person in the room — or at least acting like it.

Try this week: before you give direction, ask, “What do you think we should do?” Then wait.

Don’t rescue them from the silence.

What surfaces might change how you lead.