If You’re the Hero, You’re Doing It Wrong: Coaching Managers to Build Ownership
📢 Managers, if you’re the hero in every story, you’re doing it wrong. 📢
Here’s why: “nice” managers often end up holding their teams back. In an effort to protect people from hard things, nice managers run interference, solve every problem, & act as the fixer of all things inconvenient. While it feels supportive in the moment, this approach backfires.
It creates bottlenecks, learned helplessness, & burnout—for both the manager & the team. Instead of building capable, resilient employees, managers become overextended heroes making every decision, carrying every problem, & running themselves into decision fatigue.
So, what’s the alternative? 🛑 🦸♀️ Stop solving your team’s problems. Coach them through it instead.
Coaching isn’t the softer path; it’s the more compassionate one. Because it makes employees stronger, more confident, & more professionally successful in the long run.
Here are five powerful coaching questions every manager can use when a problem lands on their desk:
What have you tried? This question signals trust & sets the expectation that employees make a first-pass effort before they reach out. It challenges them to get creative & use their resources.
What—or who—is getting in the way? This surfaces the true blocker (e.g. is it a need for a senior leader champion, more clarity around what success looks like, or authority to make a decision)? With this knowledge, the manager can support progress instead of owning the entire problem themselves.
What support do you need? This encourages employees to think about broader sources of support (e.g. peers, adjacent teams, external resources), & not just the manager. It calls them to take ownership & responsibility rather than getting their manager to “fix it for them.”
What would you do if you were me? This helps the team member develop judgment, prioritization, politics-navigation, & tradeoff thinking from the perspective of the big picture.
What else should I know? This question allows managers to gather key context while reinforcing that ownership stays with the employee.
For HR Business Partners & L&D leaders, these five questions are a teachable micro-skill you can embed into:
Manager development programs
1:1 conversation templates
Leadership rituals & coaching models
The impact is immediate: faster decisions, stronger ownership, better cross-functional problem-solving, & real capacity back for strategic work.
Pro tip: Coach managers to distinguish awareness vs. ownership. A simple script like, “Thanks for flagging this. What have you tried so far?” keeps empathy high & accountability higher.
At The Perk, we’ve built these coaching habits into The Middle Manager Protocol, our flagship program that transforms middle managers into accountable, influential leaders who can drive culture, strategy, & performance without burning out.
Because the best managers don’t wear the hero cape. They step into the Guide mindset & build other heroes.
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