Unless you have a solution...

re-thinking a popular workplace motto on employee empowerment

We’ve all heard (and probably said): “Don’t come to me with a problem. Come with a solution.”

I understand the intent: to encourage ownership, initiative, critical thinking.

But in my experience, that’s not always what the phrase teaches.

The leadership question isn’t, Why didn’t you solve this before bringing it to me? It’s, What kind of problem is this, and what does this person need in order to move forward?

Sometimes the answer is simple: there is a known solution that just needs to be applied. They need information, a resource, a connection, or clearer expectations. Sometimes they already know what to do, and the conversation is about what’s getting in the way.

Other times it is not so simple…nobody knows the answer.

These moments require something different: What’s really happening here? Who does it matter to? What need isn’t being met? What choices do we have? What would better look like?

If my son came to me and said, “The dishwasher is broken,” I’d be glad he told me. I would not want to discover it three days later and learn that he knew but kept quiet because he didn’t know how to fix it. Maybe I’d ask him to figure out who can repair it. Maybe we’d troubleshoot it together. Maybe I’d take it from there. The important thing is that the problem surfaced before it became a bigger one.

Now imagine he says, “I’m struggling to keep up in my college classes.” I don’t want him waiting until he has developed a three-part recovery plan before telling me. I want to understand what’s happening, help him see his choices, support him in making them, and be clear about my own boundaries. That doesn’t make it my job to solve college for him. It means I have confidence that he can learn to navigate it.

There is a difference between taking responsibility away from someone and helping them develop the capacity to take responsibility.

But, Amanda, sometimes people don’t bring us problems. They bring complaints:

“This stupid dishwasher didn’t clean anything.”

“College is too hard. I suck at this.”

Not beautifully phrased. A tad immature. Whiny. Still useful information.

People do not always arrive with thoughtful analysis and neatly packaged requests. Sometimes they know something is wrong before they know what right would look like.

My very first coach once told me (when I was complaining about people complaining) that behind complaints there is often a request, a need, a hope, or simply information worth understanding.

Our job is not to require people to sort all of that out before they speak. Our job is to help them get better at moving from something’s wrong toward understanding what they’re noticing, why it matters, and what they can do next.

That’s why I worry about Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions. The problems most likely to stay underground are often the ones that matter most: the complicated ones, the uncomfortable ones, the ones nobody quite knows how to solve yet, and sometimes the safety issues. I’ve watched people become embarrassed that they couldn’t solve something independently, so they avoided raising it at all. I doubt that’s the outcome the leader intended.

So maybe these LinkedIn-popular leadership mottos deserve more scrutiny. What sentence, if people truly followed it when they encountered an issue, would create the outcomes you want?

I don’t know the answer for your team, but I think it’s worth figuring out.

One of the things I love about coaching is helping leaders notice those defaults, examine what they may be reinforcing, and find language that better supports the culture they actually want to create.

As my kids’ basketball coach used to say: little things, little things, little things. Culture can shift in surprisingly big ways when we pay attention to a few small words, and choose different ones on purpose.