How To Help Others Solve Problems

Why It Matters

Adopting patience and empowering employees improves talent development and prevents leaders from becoming bottlenecks, which supports scalable, sustainable performance. Institutional practices like Chanel’s formal listening period can embed that mindset across an organization.

Summary

The speaker urges new leaders to stop doing their team’s work and instead coach employees to solve problems in their own way, resisting the temptation to 'swoop in' except in rare emergencies. Effective leadership requires patience and a long-term view, allowing staff to learn even if they are initially less capable. As an example, Chanel enforces a policy barring newly hired senior leaders from speaking in meetings for the first 90 days so they learn by listening. This institutionalized patience is credited with sustaining the company’s long-term success.

Original Description

Great leaders play the long game.

Instead of needing to be the smartest voice in the room, they choose to create space for others to grow.

Video from Urban Land Institute (ULI) 2024 with CRE investor and creator, Lynn King-Tolliver