Solving Is Not Serving

This is the Momentum podcast. The subject I'm going to be sharing on today is solving is not serving and actually got out this morning, even though I'm on this road trip and took to the whole page of notes on this topic, because I feel like it may be one of the most important topics for entrepreneurs trying to grow a team and grow business. Solving is not serving is just it's one of the mantras I use to make myself a better leader.

I'm Alex Charfen, and this is the momentum podcast made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers and creators of all kinds, those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny. We define it. We don't understand defeat because you only lose if you stop. And we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate. There could be a better future.

And instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world, because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution and we always will be.

Let me share with you what I mean by this, because here's what happens whenever I say Salween is on a and sometimes I just post on Facebook is the three words or three words, four words. Solving is not serving. And people will ask me, what do you mean what what is what is that all about? I don't understand. And so this actually comes up at our events a lot. It's a conversation that we have all the time because as business owners and as leaders, when we step in and solve, we actually create massive damage. We can break trust. We cause issues. There's this cascade of events that happens. But here's the challenge with solving is that solving feels natural. Solving actually feels like the right thing to do. Solving for someone is actually the instinct that almost all of us, including me, have. It took me forever to learn that solving was not serving. In fact, it took until I had kids. Let me let me share with you a little bit about what I mean by this. So solving is not serving. Let's let's start with first what it means. So here's here's what it means, that solving is not serving. If you are working with someone or you if there's someone who's trying to accomplish something and get it done and they ask you for help and you step in and do it for them, you solve it for them, you say, I got this. Give me a sec. I'll take care of this. You are not serving that person. And here's why. If you step in and solve for someone, if you step in and do it for them, you're robbing them of the opportunity to do it and do it themselves. It means is solving means someone else doesn't solve it. It means they don't learn how to solve it. The best example that I use, the best metaphor is maybe this is you would never do your kids homework for them. Can you imagine? Your kid comes home, they're like, hey, mom, dad, I'm really frustrated with this. I'm having a hard time with this homework. Can you help me? And you just say, oh, sure. You know, why don't you go outside and play? I'll do all the homework for you. You can turn it in for that is solving. In that case, you can see how solving is not serving. Right, because if we do our kids homework for them, we rob them of the opportunity to do that, do it themselves. We rob them of the learning of doing it themselves. And so it's easy to see it in the case of a kid with their homework. But let's talk about your business. Let's talk about how this is hurting you in your business. See, solving grades, codependents. And here's what I mean by that. If somebody says, hey, Alex, how do I do this? And I jump in and do it for them, you know what? The next time they have to do it, they're going to come back and say, hey, Alex, can you do the thing that you did for me before? But if somebody says, hey, Alex, how do I do this? And I say, well, let me show you how to do it, then I'm actually encouraging them. I'm helping them evolve. I'm helping them learn. I'm helping them be able to do more. If somebody says hands, how do you do this? And I say, I don't know, how would you do it? I'm actually encouraging them to think at a deeper level. I'm encouraging them to solve for themselves. And so when you solve for someone, you actually rob them of the learning, of the experience of the evolution that accomplishing something actually creates solving actually eliminates learning. In fact, in a solving situation, here's all somebody learns is that you can do it better than they can. And whether we are leading a team, whether we're coaching someone on our team, whether we're parenting one of our kids, regardless of what the situation is, solving hurts you, because when you jump in and do it, you eliminate the other person's ability to learn, to evolve, to grow, to do it themselves. But here's what's even worse. And I want to drive this point home. This is this is purposeful. I want you to feel this. I actually kind of want you to get uncomfortable and agitated by this. If you are the CEO of your company, you're the person running the business and you have a team and somebody says, hey, I need help with this, can you show me how to do it? And you jump in and do it for them. You say, hey, I got this. Here's what happens on your side. You say, I got this. Let me help you. You feel like you're being helpful. You feel like you are eliminating a problem for them. You feel like you just move them forward. You maybe even creating momentum. That's how it feels for us is the entrepreneur. Now, let's look at the other side of the coin with the team member who said, hey, can you help me with this? The team member is trying to accomplish something. The team members trying to get something done, the team members in the middle of something that they need help with. Now, they can see the finish line, but they need a little bit of help. And here's what happens. They've been working on it. They can see the finish line and somebody else comes in and takes it from them and runs it across the finish line for them. How frustrating is that, in fact? If you do this on your team, this came up a while ago, and one of our one of our events when somebody said, oh, well, if my team members are having a problem, I just say, I got this and I'm helping them. Said, you know, if you say I got this instead of helping them to finish it themselves, you actually create shame in many cases. And shame is one of the most invalidating, damaging, frustrating, challenging emotions for someone to feel. And so on the one side, as entrepreneurs, we feel like we're doing this great thing by solving somebody, something for someone. But on the other side, we're stopping the revolution.

We're stopping them. We're holding them in place. And we may be causing shame, which, again, shame is one of the most disempowering emotion, probably the most disempowering, lowest vibration, lowest energy, emotion. We can feel the shame. And so in the moment of somebody asking for help and you're doing it for him where you feel good about it, you're actually completely doing the opposite for them. And so here's the alternative. Here's how to stop sobbing. Here's how to here's here's the thought that I want you to have instead. See, solving creates codependents. And what you want as a CEO is you want to empower people, not create codependent empowerment over an codependents one hundred percent of the time. So when somebody says, hey, can you help me with this? Ask them what help they need and give them only that when somebody says, hey, I need your support, what they're not they're not saying I need you to do this for me. When somebody says I need your help, they're not saying I want you to take this over. When somebody says, I don't understand, they're not saying I can't do it.

They're saying I need more information to be able to do this. So No. One, when someone asks you for help or ask you for support, give them only the support or help that they need over delivering in the support and help department. Looks like solving, which creates codependents, which makes them feel the leverage, which makes them feel shame. And so step one is you can just give people the help they need. Now, step two is when somebody comes to you and says, hey, I don't know how to solve this. One of the questions that I asked my team routinely is, how would you do this? What do you think? And if they said, well, I haven't thought about, I said, great, let's take a minute to think about it. Tell me what you think and I'll have them tell me what they're thinking. I'll have them share their opinions, their ideas with me. And here's what what makes such a huge difference when I do that is they get the opportunity to share with me what they're thinking. I can guide I can coach what they're thinking. I can share my opinion with them, and then they can come to a resolution. And here's what happens when I say, how would you do this or what would you think? And we work through it from the side of them solving. We are building new muscles in that relationship, in our relationship. We are building muscles where they know how to solve in the way that I want them to when we work through it together. I duplicate decision making. They understand where I'm coming from, they understand my opinions and what I'm looking for. And so they become even more effective as a team member for me. So just in the act of not doing it for them, I create that cascade of positive benefits, of evolution, of moving forward a, dare I say, momentum by letting someone do it themselves. And so when you are in a situation where you have that feeling of, hey, I've got this, I want you to remember you're creating significant uncertainty for yourself, but you're disempowering, frustrating and oftentimes shaming the person you're doing it for. So instead of solving coach lead, direct how people evolve, help them grow, help them learn, stop solving and you will stop creating codependents on your team.

Instead, you will create independence on your team. You will create team members. They can make decisions when you're not there. They can move, project forward, forward and get you the right result. They can create the outcomes you want in your business. And the step that you take as a CEO to create this culture on your team is you stop solving. And here's what will happen if you don't solve neither one of your managers. If you show them if you work with the managers on your team, the leaders on your team, and you start solving for them, you coach them through. They will do the same thing with your team members. And if you have a company culture where no one solves where when there's an issue, we work with people to work with that, work it out, we show them, we coach them, we lead them, we teach them. We create an empowered organization where people in any position in the org chart can make decisions, move things forward and create momentum without you having to be there and without you having to tell them it's OK, you will actually create a company where there is permission to move things forward and make things happen. And here's the outcome. You will stop feeling like your team members aren't taking initiative. You will stop feeling like things are going to slow. You'll start dealing like the team isn't doing enough and you will start feeling like things are moving forward. Going forward, you're not getting as many interruptions and you're in momentum with your team because they are making things happen. Thanks for being here. With me today on this road trip has been intense, but checking in like this and being able to share some of our content actually kind of makes me feel normal.

And it's exciting to share this one because we have not done a podcast on solving is not serving yet. And I, I post this all the time. I put it on in comments on people's posts when they ask questions about leading their management. And this is the podcast there. This is a recording I'm going to use whenever anybody has a question about what is solving is not serving, what does that even mean? I'm going to send them this because as entrepreneurs, when we learn to stop being the solver in charge and do all of it and we start letting the people around us actually create solutions, figure things out and make things happen, what we can accomplish in our business grows exponentially each time we do that. And that is what I want for you. If you are interested in more help growing your business and operations in learning how to stop solving and trust your team through the processes that help you understand what every single person is doing and. Understand that you're utilizing everybody reach out to us, go to billionaire code dotcom, and you can do three things. One, you can download the billionaire code decoded. It's our ebook on the billionaire code, which is the nine framework that shows you where you are on the path to entrepreneurial success, what you need to do next and what you should have already done to make sure you have a strong foundation. And once you're on that site, you can download the ebook. You can check out the building code matrix itself with a video where I explain it. And you can set up a call with a member of my team to understand how we could business owners just like you to go from high six to seven figures, seven figures to eight figures. And if you're in the early eight figures to deep multiply eight figures and beyond, we would love to talk to you. Go to billionaire code dot com. And remember, solving is not serving. Let the people around you evolve. Step out of doing everything for them. Let them do it for themselves and you will evolve your team, grow the people around you. If you do this with your kids, they will learn faster and feel stronger.

You'll stop shaming and having people feel blame that they're not doing it and your entire business will grow and it will grow faster when you give people this type of opportunity. Thanks for being here today, billionaire COCOM. We look forward to connecting with you.