I was coaching a senior executive who, like many leaders, was completely overwhelmed. Her number one issue was a desperate need to better manage her time. When I interviewed her colleagues as part of our process, the feedback was glowing. She was universally respected and admired. But one piece of feedback came up consistently: they needed her to be more available.
When I shared this with her, she was distraught. She felt like she was available 24/7, drowning in a sea of Slack messages, Teams pings, and emails. She never put her phone down.
This created a stark paradox: Her team’s number one request was for her to be more available. Her number one goal was to get some of her time back.
On the surface, these goals seemed impossible to reconcile. So, we dug deeper.
Diagnosing the “Availability” Trap
We started by analyzing her digital communications. It didn’t take long to see the problem. My client was right—she was incredibly responsive. But her hyper-availability had created an unintended consequence: her team had started running everything by her.
Decisions, no matter how small, were sent her way for a quick approval. Each one was a minor interruption, but the sheer volume had become a crushing burden. More importantly, it was fragmenting her attention. Dragged into the weeds by a constant stream of low-stakes questions, she struggled to focus on her main priorities and felt she wasn’t making the best strategic decisions because she often lacked the full context.
She had unintentionally created a culture of dependency. By being so good at providing quick answers, she had trained her team to stop making decisions on their own. Without her, they were paralyzed.
The Real Ask: Your Team Wants a Leader, Not a Help Desk
The breakthrough came when we redefined what her team meant by “more available.” They didn’t need more of her time for trivial questions. They felt her absence in more meaningful ways.
They wanted her in their strategic meetings. They wanted to hear her vision for the department. They needed her wisdom to help solve the complex, high-stakes problems they were facing. They were desperate for her leadership and guidance, not just her sign-off on a minor email.
She was offering constant, low-value availability, while her team was starved for high-value presence.
From Bottleneck to Coach: A 3-Step Shift
The solution was clear: she had to shift from being an answer-provider to a coach. This was not something she could do overnight, but by adopting a few new behaviors, she began to fundamentally change her team’s culture.
Here is the playbook she used, which any leader can adopt:
1. Replace Answers with Questions Instead of providing the solution, she began pushing the thinking back to her team. This simple shift forces critical thinking and builds decision-making skills.
- Instead of: “Okay, do X.”
- Try: “What’s your recommendation?” or “What are the pros and cons of the options you’ve considered?”
2. Use “It’s Your Call” Deliberately For low-risk decisions, she started responding with a simple, empowering phrase: “It’s your call.” This did two things: it immediately cleared the item from her plate, and more importantly, it signaled trust and transferred ownership to her team member.
3. Batch and Deepen Conversations Rather than having fragmented, shallow discussions over chat all day, she started deferring non-urgent topics to their weekly one-on-one meetings. This protected her focus time and made the 1-on-1s far more substantive. These sessions became opportunities to genuinely engage, understand context, and support her team with probing questions, not just quick fixes.
Your Behavior Is Your Culture
It took focus and patience, but over a few months, a new culture of independence and ownership began to emerge. The flood of trivial emails and messages slowed to a trickle. The team started deferring their own questions to their 1-on-1s, where they knew they would get more meaningful engagement.
As a result, morale improved, her team felt more empowered, and she finally had the time to focus on the high-impact strategic work her role required. She was more present and engaged where it mattered, and she got her time back.
The most important lesson my client learned was that her behavior as a leader was the team’s culture. By learning to coach her employees instead of just directing them, she transformed her team and her own workday. This is a crucial lesson for us all: we don’t always have to have the answers, but we are responsible for asking the right questions.