Own the Thinking Process, Not the Thinking

What made you effective can get in the way.

Most of us were rewarded in school for having the answer and promoted early in our careers for being excellent independent contributors. Having the answer is what got us here. But the same instinct that made you successful can undermine your impact as a team leader, executive, or coach.

It shows up most often in the moments you care the most and want to help.

When Caring Becomes Carrying

Have you ever been in a coaching conversation—with someone on your team, a peer, maybe even your spouse or a friend—where they start explaining a problem, and somewhere along the way you realize you are the one working it out?

You care. You want to help. And you know you're supposed to coach them by asking questions — so you start with a few open, curious questions. But then you stop listening and your mind is whirring: What's going on here? What would I do? What's the answer?

That's the moment the conversation has shifted. It started with you helping them think through their problem. Now you're the one holding it.

This is when caring becomes carrying. It's subtle. Most of us don't even notice when it happens because it comes from a good place. We want to help. But we end up getting pulled back toward owning the thinking or the outcome.

I've written about this default to owning the answer in past IndustryWeek articles about how to break free of the Doer Trap and forget what we've learned about leadership.

Caring doesn't have to mean carrying. When you're supporting someone to solve a problem that's theirs to own, your job isn't to own the thinking. It's to own the thinking process.

You own the process. They own the thinking.

The Problem Isn't Your Questions. It's Who Owns the Problem.

I saw this play out recently in a leadership workshop I was leading on how to coach for problem-solving. After a practice round, a participant shared her frustration. She was trying to ask open questions that didn't assume an answer, but she felt stuck. She didn't feel she could ask a helpful question unless she already had a sense of the answer—especially when she didn't deeply know the technical details.

What she was describing isn't a question-asking problem. It's a problem-ownership problem.

Her coachee's problem wasn't hers to figure out, but she had taken ownership of finding the answer. She was equating her value with being the one to see the answer first, rather than creating the conditions for the other person to figure it out.

She had unintentionally started to own the problem, not the process of solving it.

The Place Where the Real Work Happens

In Japanese, gemba means "the place where work happens." At Toyota and across lean practice, leaders go to gemba to see problems firsthand and understand what's really going on.

But when you're coaching or supporting someone through their problem-solving, your gemba isn't the production floor or the process. Your gemba is the person's mind. It's their process of thinking.

It doesn't matter if someone is working through a quality defect, a staffing shortage or even why their kids never turn their homework in on time.

What matters is the completeness of their thinking process:

• Do they have a target?
• How well do they understand the current condition?
• How are they thinking about the gap to close between the target and the current/actual condition?

You hold the problem-solving process. Not the problem itself.

A Structure to Hold the Thinking Process

You don't need a tool or template to create the conditions for better problem-solving, but it helps to have a structure in your head. Tools can help, and tools can get in the way. It depends on the person and the context.

I hold the flow of a problem-solving A3—a structured tool made famous by Toyota—in my head, even when I'm not introducing the template:

• What's the background? Why does this problem matter?
• What's the current condition? What's actually happening, and how do you know?
• What's the target? What should be happening?
• What's the gap, the real problem to solve?
• What are the causes of the gap?
• What are ideas to close the gap—possible solutions to test?
• What's the plan to put them into action, and how will you study and learn your way forward?

Even more simply, I repeat a refrain from one of the best executives I ever worked for:

Target. Actual. Gap.

Target minus actual results equals gap—the problem. (Target - Actual = Gap. The problem)

Anchor your questions around that and you make sure the person has identified the real problem before jumping to solutions.

A senior manufacturing executive I work with described the difference this way:

"I'm now able to explain the urgency of the targets we need to achieve for the business, and then help them understand what the gap is. I'm able to go out and coach them about how to solve the problem, rather than just communicating, 'We have a problem!' and giving them my ideas."

Same urgency. Different role. He's learned to hold the structure of the thinking, not own the answer.

Stepping Back Is Stepping Up

Not stepping in can feel like you're contributing less. You can see what to do. You've solved this before.

But this is the essential reframe about your identity and impact as a leader: Your expertise doesn't disappear. It shows up differently. Not in having the answer, but in creating the conditions for others to develop theirs.

After one of my leadership retreats, an operational director at a large healthcare organization decided to start leading by asking questions instead of handing her team the answers. She set a new process with her team: “When you come to me with a problem, bring your thinking about why there is a gap and some ideas to close it.”

She got odd looks, groans and eye rolls at first. But within weeks, her team's ideas were better, their confidence grew, and by year end she had 35 completed projects instead of her usual five to 10.

And, in doing so, she was freed of the burden of owning it all. The impact, as she put it: "Selfishly, my inability to relinquish control meant I was on call 24/7/365. Now I have the best work-life balance I have ever had. When I am off, I am off."

That's unburdened leadership. More problems solved, greater team capability built and more time to focus on what you actually own and have responsibility for.

I think about my client Shawn, a director of operations and operational excellence at a global biotech company. When he was asked to take on leading an operational team, he decided to lead by creating the conditions for them to reach their goals rather than telling them what to do.

Within a few months, the team had become one of the highest-performing in the organization, and his boss wanted to know his secret. Shawn's answer: "I don't know. I'm not doing anything  special. I'm just asking questions. It’s like I have a superpower now … and it's so easy!"

That's what happens when you own the process, not the thinking: you build a team that thinks, solves and moves forward, without everything coming back to you. And you have a new superpower.

Three Things to Try

The next time you're helping a team or individual solve a problem, try these three practices:

1. Take an intentional pause to clarify ownership. Ask yourself: What's my role here? Am I the content expert, or am I here to create the conditions for someone else's thinking? (More on this in The Power of the Pause.)

2. Listen for where they are in their thinking process, not just the problem they're describing. Help the other person structure their thinking by guiding the problem-solving process: Have they named the target? Do they understand the current condition? Are they clear on the gap, or jumping straight to solutions? Your role is to notice what's missing in the process, not to fill it in with your own answer.

3. Honor your expertise without letting it take over. Try a phrase like this one a senior executive shared with me: "I have a lot of experience with similar issues, but before I share any ideas, I want to hear what's going on here. What's the truth in this situation?" It acknowledges your experience and knowledge, and empowers them to own the thinking in this situation.

You Create the Conditions for Growth

When you own the process and not the thinking, your expertise doesn't disappear—it amplifies. By creating the conditions for others to own and solve problems, you stop being the bottleneck and start being the catalyst for change. Your team grows. Your impact grows.

You can still care. You just don't have to carry it all.