How to coach managers into leaders. (Without doing their job for them)

Dominic Monkhouse11 September 2026

Geri has stopped loading the dishwasher.

Not a protest. She loads it, I redo it, and I’ve never told her why.

Plates on the left in order. Cups where cups go. Anything that doesn’t fit the order waits for the next wash.

Yes. I know.

She wasn’t doing it wrong. She was doing it differently. I decided my way was the way. So now I do it every night. Forever.

You’re doing the same thing to your leadership team.

Somebody brings you a problem. You see the answer straight away, because of course you do, you’ve solved this exact thing a hundred times.

Badly, the first dozen, but granted, you got there in the end. So you tell them the answer. The meeting takes 4 minutes instead of 40. They leave with a decision.

You get to be the cleverest man in the building for about an hour. And congratulations. You’ve just taught them to bring you the next one.

Ask them next week how it’s going. Everybody’s busy. The pipeline’s moving. We’re working hard. Grand. What actually got done?

Here’s the trap. You can’t keep solving them, because they’ll never learn how. You can’t just stop either, because right now they genuinely can’t, and the work still has to get done. So you stay stuck in the middle of it, wondering why nothing ever moves off your desk.

The thing is you can teach your managers to think without doing the work for them. That’s the whole trick.

And I learned the hard way but I made this so you don’t have to.

How to Coach Managers Into Leaders (Without Doing Their Job for Them)

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