Hey, executive team leader: your job is not to rescue. So please stop it. Even if it makes you feel good.
Here’s the truth: we want to help people. It makes us feel good, useful, valuable. We want to rescue.
But too often in our effort to be eternally helpful, we take away someone else’s opportunity to grow. This is especially true when it comes to the hard conversations.
I remember a time when a member on my team came to me, frustrated about a peer.
“They’re impossible to work with!” she said.
I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to talk with them. But not only would me talking to them not solve the problem—it would make it worse. The issue was between the two of them, not me.
“Have you had a direct conversation with them yourself?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
She admitted she hadn’t.
This was the perfect opportunity for a coaching moment. “Would it help if we prepped for the conversation together?” I asked. We then walked through what to say and some thoughts on how to say it.
Not surprisingly, she had the conversation, and the relationship improved.
(I may have also said “You and I aren’t having this conversation again until you’ve talked to him directly.” Boundaries.)
As leaders, our instinct is often to solve the problem. The real leadership work—the stuff that really moves our teams forward—is helping others build the capacity to solve it themselves.
This is true of teams at all levels, including executive teams. In fact, I see it playing out in exec teams all too often where leaders want to not just rescue, but think they’re solving more quickly by rescuing. But it’s just not sustainable.
When leaders can’t have direct, respectful conversations with their peers, the entire organization suffers. Every avoided conversation becomes a bigger problem down the line.
As much as we like being problem-solvers ourselves, when we take that opportunity off someone’s plate, we take away an opportunity for them to learn and grow.
Your job isn’t to solve every interpersonal challenge. It’s to build people who can solve them themselves.
Coach your team. Support them. But don’t rob them of the moment where confidence is built—where they navigate the challenge themselves.
How do you avoid the instinct to rescue?
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