If you’re like most leaders, you maybe believe you’re training your team well.
BUT, I’ll bet you’re continually dealing with frustrations around developing employees with autonomy that can problem solve!
If you take a step back and really look at how you onboard and develop your people, there’s a good chance you’re not actually training them; you’re just instructing them.
You show them their role. You walk them through their tasks. You give them a checklist, a process, a set of expectations. You make sure they know exactly what to do in their seat.
In other words, you’re training them on “B” – the tasks or processes they have to perform.
And while that feels productive (and let’s be honest, efficient in the moment), it’s also where things quietly start to break down.
When you focus only on what someone is responsible for in their role, you’re unintentionally limiting how and the extent as to which they will think and problem solve.
So when something doesn’t go according to plan—and it never does exactly, no matter how “buttoned up” your process is—they don’t have a framework to work through it.
They’ve been trained to follow, not to think.
That’s when you start hearing things like:
- “This isn’t how I was shown.”
- “I don’t know what to do here.”
- “Can you take a look at this?”
And just like that, the issue comes right back to YOU as the leader… right when you thought you finally had five minutes to focus on something else.
You step in. You solve it. You move things forward.
But what’s really happening is that you’re becoming the central point of problem-solving in your business again—the human version of IT support.
Not because your people aren’t capable, but because they were never given the full picture.
I like to refer to this with our clients as being the drug dealer.
When people come to you for the fix because they can’t critically think or problem solve (probably because they don’t understand the why and big picture), you know exactly what’s going to happen… They’re coming back for more next time it happens again!
When you train only on “B,” you’re skipping the context that allows people to make good decisions.
You’re not helping them understand What should be happening before something reaches me (A)? and How does my work and how do my processes impact what comes next and everyone down the line (C)?
Without that, they’re operating in a vacuum.
They might execute their task well when everything is clean and predictable, but the moment something is off, they don’t know how to adjust because they don’t understand where the breakdown is coming from or where it’s going.
So they pause.
Or worse, they push it through and hope for the best (which, as you know, is not a strategy).
Most leaders say they want a team that takes ownership, solves problems and thinks proactively.
But if you’re only training on B (the tasks and processes for the seat), what you’re actually building is a team that waits for direction.
Ownership doesn’t come from knowing tasks. It comes from understanding how work fits into the bigger system and the core processes in the organization.
When someone understands A, B and C, they start to see patterns.
They begin to ask better questions.
They notice when something upstream isn’t right.
They anticipate how their work will affect someone else downstream.
And instead of pausing when something feels off, they adjust without needing to “check with you real quick” every time for confirmation or to answer questions they’ve probably asked a hundred times before already.
When you start training people beyond just their role, the shift is noticeable.
You’re no longer the first stop for every problem.
Your team starts catching issues earlier because they understand what “good” should look like before it even gets to them.
They make better decisions in real time because they know what’s at stake for the next step in the process.
And perhaps most importantly, they begin to think like owners, and it’s not because you told them to, but because they finally have the context to do so.
Which, coincidentally, is when your calendar starts to feel a little less like a game of whack-a-mole.
Here’s your test:
Think about someone on your team right now. And maybe it’s the person constantly coming to you for the fix.
Ask yourself:
- Do they understand where their work is coming from and what should be true before it reaches them?
- Do they understand not just what to do, but why it matters?
- Do they understand how their output impacts the next person or next stage?
If you’re being honest, there’s probably at least one gap there.
And if there is, that gap is where your future bottlenecks are quietly forming.
So how do you start fixing this?
You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight, but you do need to be more intentional.
Start by walking your team through the full process, not just their portion of it. This starts immediately during onboarding.
Help them see how work flows from beginning to end.
And be sure to present the big, high-level steps FIRST before you take them into any of the detail. The human brain has to understand the whole before it can make sense of the parts.
Introduce them to the people upstream and downstream from them so they can understand how everything connects.
Show them real examples of what happens when something is done well versus when something is off and how that ripple effect plays out.
And most importantly, create space for them to ask questions outside of their immediate responsibilities. Curiosity is what turns task-doers into problem-solvers.
Here’s my final thoughts…
Right now, you may feel like you’re training your people efficiently by focusing on what they need to do in their role.
But what you’re really doing is training them to depend on you or another leader when things aren’t perfect.
If you want a business that runs without you being in the middle of every decision, every issue and every fix (and maybe even lets you take a vacation without your phone lighting up every hour), then you have to expand how you train.
You have to stop focusing only on what your people do.
And start helping them understand the system they’re a part of.
That’s when things begin to change.
____
Enjoy this? Subscribe HERE to The Greenhouse Growth Ecosystem™ weekly newsletter to get more of the exact tools we use with business owners to start growing your business to the next stage.
Follow Patrick Metzger on LinkedIn.