Let Them Think First

When someone on your team asks a question, it’s tempting to jump right in with an answer. It feels helpful. Efficient. Supportive.

But over time, answering too quickly can quietly train people to stop thinking or solving for themselves.

In this Two-Minute Tip, I offer three specific things you can do instead of immediately answering when an employee comes to you with a question.

These small shifts help build stronger thinkers, increase ownership, and reduce over-reliance on you as the solver.

If you want a practical, real-world way to coach your team without slowing things down, take two minutes to watch.

• Read the video transcript

  I recently temporarily banned my daughter from asking questions, and it reminded me that in leadership, if we answer every question, we might actually be slowing our teams down.

  Now my oldest daughter is very smart, and yet it's so funny, she asks the silliest questions, questions she already knows the answers to. We have coined them "Kennedy questions" in our house, and typically we laugh them off.

  But one night it was getting too extreme and I was about to head to pick up our other daughter from basketball and I said to her, "Hey, Kennedy, you are not allowed to ask Dad any questions while I'm gone. In fact, if you ask a question, you owe us 25 cents for each question."

  Now, obviously this was extreme. We want our kids and our employees to be able to ask us questions,

  But the issue is we often jump in too quickly to answer and solve.

  We think we're being helpful and supportive, but in fact, when leaders solve too quickly, employees stop solving altogether. And kids too.

   So here's what you can do instead.

  First, when an employee comes with a question that you think they might know the answer to, I want you to pause before answering. Just give yourself a pause.

  Second, I want you to shift from "answer giver" to "thought partner". This could sound like: Well, what do you think? What's the goal here? What options have you already tried and how did they go? Or if I weren't here, what would you do?

  You're still being supportive, but without doing the thinking for them.

  And then number three, I want you to normalize the struggle that comes with learning.

  It might sound like, I want you to wrestle with this first. It's not going to be perfect at first, or why don't you bring me your recommendation after you've thought about it. All of these phrases give them permission to struggle and help lower their expectation on what the end result should be.

  In the end, if you want stronger thinkers on your team and maybe stronger thinkers in your children at home, you have to give fewer answers.