Have you ever asked someone to take on a job, only to have them hand it back to you the moment it got hard?
This happened to me recently and it really bothered me.
It reminded me of the Harvard Business Review article “Who’s Got the Monkey?” and made me realize that no matter how hard you work at delegation, people don’t always take ownership and follow through.
So here’s what happened. I was running a big event and the day before, the person who was supposed to handle a very important piece of the puzzle told me she no longer could because she ran into a technical issue. The technical issue doesn’t even warrant a detailed explanation because it is the kind of banal problem that could be easily solved by 99.9 percent of the population. To make matters worse, the technical issue should have been discovered a week ago when I asked the person to complete the preliminary task and test, not a day before the event.
Her notification was a classic: “I’m sorry but I ran into this technical issue and I am too busy to deal with it so I won’t be able to complete that very important task I agreed to complete two weeks ago.”
And here was my favorite part: “Can you handle it?”
In two sentences, a problem that was hers became a problem that was mine.
What is really happening when someone hands the work back
This is one of the most common and draining things a leader deals with. An employee hits an obstacle and, instead of solving it or finding someone who can, they bring it back to you. In their mind they aren’t being lazy or difficult. They are fully convinced that solving the problem related to their assignment isn’t theirs to solve, so they pass the work and the problem back to their manager.
Once the manager solves that problem for them it reinforces their reasoning and they do it again and again.
Over time, they learn that if they describe the problem clearly enough, their manager will pick it up and fix it for them, because in the moment, we can solve it faster than we can coach them through it.
So here is the subtle shift
Stop solving the problems your people hand back to you. Start handing them the next move instead.
Here is what that looks like in the moment, when someone tries to give the work back:
- Acknowledge the obstacle and emphasize ownership. “I hear you, getting locked out is a real pain. You still need to get this covered. Who are you going to ask to take this on for you?”
- Respond to a problem with a question. When someone brings you a problem, resist the reflex to solve it. Ask, “What’s your plan?” or “What do you want to do about it?” If the next step is theirs, leave it with them.
- Offer support without taking the work, and if you want to help, be generous with the part that is genuinely yours and firm about the part that is theirs. “I can grant access to whoever you choose. Send me the name, and I’ll set them up.”
- Require a solution for every problem. Make it a standing expectation that nobody brings you a problem without at least one idea for solving it. That single habit changes how your people think before they ever walk into your office.
- State and restate what successfully done looks like. Most last-minute scrambles are set in motion days earlier. “By Friday, send me a screenshot showing that you were able to log in and test the procedure.” This turns a vague promise into something you can check while there is still time to fix it.
One last point. When you do all of this and someone still doesn’t deliver, you no longer have a one-off problem to rescue. You have a conversation to have about someone’s unwillingness or inability to follow through and problem solve.
So the next time someone tries to hand their problem back to you, pause before you catch it and hand them the next move instead. Then hit reply and tell me how it went, or share a technique that works for you. I always enjoy hearing about the subtle shifts you are making.
