Are You Solving the Problem or Building the Person?
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” – Leo Tzu.
Throughout my ten years in a corporate environment, there’s one sentence that stuck with me. It took place during a performance review, where I received unexpected feedback—not the feedback I thought I would get, but, as it happened, the feedback I needed to get.
As a Senior Associate, I once worked with an Associate whose performance didn’t meet the required standards. Their mistakes created extra work for me, and during my review, I anticipated the usual critique: that I should have been more on top of things, reviewing their work multiple times to ensure error-free deliverables. This was obvious, and I didn’t need anyone to tell me this.
Instead, my Manager asked a question that has stayed with me to this day:
“What could you have done differently to ensure that the Associate would have performed their work to the required standard?”
This question caught me off guard. “What do you mean? I have already had to redo their work multiple times myself,” I remember thinking. But then I understood what my Manager meant. The act of staying late in the office, silently cursing the Associate for making them do their work on top of mine was, ultimately, nothing but a quick fix, solving the immediate problem at hand, yes, but nothing more. What my Manager encouraged me to do was to think beyond the short-term. How could I guide, teach and mentor my Associate to ensure they developed the skills and mindset to succeed on their own?
It demanded a shift in perspective.
I realized that it is easy to step in and take over someone else’s work. Sitting down to thoughtfully guide the person how they can do better is harder—yet it is this act that generates growth and fosters long-term success. I had instead helped co-create an environment of dependency. Rather than enabling growth, I had been preventing growth.
This realization can be applied to all parts of life. Imagine, say, your child is trying to learn to tie their shoelaces. When you are in a rush in the morning, already late for school and work, stepping in and tying them yourself, avoiding the frustration of watching them fumble again and again, will solve the immediate problem at hand. But by doing so, you take away the opportunity for them to learn and build confidence.
Instead, the act of sitting with them, guiding them step by step and letting them practice—even if it takes longer—has a lasting impact. They develop the skill to tie their shoes independently and build strength in the face of challenges—even if it means meeting the eyes of the strict teacher at the school drop-off.
It did take a few extra late nights in the office, this time with the Associate sitting next to me, but it didn’t take long before I only had to take a cursory glance at their work, knowing that it would already be of high quality, allowing me to safely log out in time to go home and have dinner with my family.
So the next time you're tempted to "fix it yourself," ask this: Am I solving the problem—or am I building a person?
