There’s a refrain I hear somewhat often from a certain type of manager. It goes something like this: “Well, my management strategy is that I don’t let my employees come to me with problems. Instead, I tell them to come to me with solutions. I shouldn’t be the central problem solver — they should!”

And sure, there is something to that strategy. I’ve long been a proponent of empowering your team to deal with a wide range of customer-driven and internal issues. But I take umbrage with the idea that a leader’s central duty is not to solve problems.

I’ll take it one step further — life is a series of problems needing to be solved. Even if you’re independently wealthy with no demands placed upon you, you still need to solve the problem of how to fill your days. Problems are a core part of the human experience, and if we lived in a world without them, then there simply wouldn’t be a need for leadership.

At the core, leaders are hired to solve problems. That said, they’re not hired to solve every problem. Smart leaders pick their battles and don’t get mired in the minutiae. But as I’m currently working with some franchise businesses, I’m seeing how easy it is to overcorrect from the above attitude and end up as the problem solver in chief.

As an owner-operator, you can easily fall into the trap of solving all the problems because you’re the one with all the answers. And if you lean into that impulse to just solve things yourself, you run the risk of creating a team that isn’t empowered to solve anything on its own.

The moral of this story is that the best leaders find a way to achieve balance. You shouldn’t be seeking out a problem-free life, letting your employees handle things while you sip daiquiris on the beach. At the same time, you can’t become a multi-purpose tool solving every last problem in your operation. True, visionary leadership means prioritizing impactful problems and leveraging your position and skills to resolve them.

As I work with these smaller enterprises, it’s easy to see who understands this distinction and who doesn’t. Those that get it empower their teams to solve small, everyday problems, coaching and guiding them toward this crucial skill development. The people who struggle with this concept feed their team easy answers, to the long-term detriment of all parties involved.

When this concept is implemented successfully, I see a culture of problem solvers spread throughout the operation. If you’re still not sure what kind of problems are worth a manager’s time to address personally, think of macro items like increasing reach to customers, evaluating products and comparing them to competitors, etc.

The challenge is not falling into the camp of never problem solving or being the go-to solution for everything. Both approaches are myopic in their own ways, and your business will suffer for it. What you need is an ecosystem built around teaching and coaching on how to solve problems, allowing you to redirect the most powerful problem-solving mind in the room (yours) into building your business.