Respond to the following article (at least 250 words):

ALL LEADERS !... Leadership Moment ......want more of the series?...it's free, just let us know!

This is a quote / phrase that may or may not be familiar to you...but regardless, don't discount it too quickly as just another quote.......it has 'extremely' deep roots toward your success as a LEADER !

Give a man a fish 
And he eats today....
Teach a man to fish and 
He eats for a lifetime

I often times find myself on this topic of conversation with leaders and managers [interestingly, it is normally the upper-level leaders at the top of organizations, for some reason---but applies to all of us as leaders] The conversation goes something like this:

" ...day after day, I have people lined up at my door wanting to know this or that...what to do about this... how to handle that...and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes (you get the picture, right?) 

Now go back, read the quote above, and see if you see a connection yet? You see, the trap we fall into as leaders is in attempting to handle this and handle that, answer this, solve that, provide a solution here and tell them how we should deal with this or that.... (is the picture getting more and more familiar to you?...do you recognize this trap?)

Now don't beat yourself up too quickly here. To begin with, this is a good thing about YOU!?! Our instinct is to do the right, helpful and 'leader-ly' sort of thing here....help them out with an answer. That's good right?....no, that's bad and you have already determined why, haven't you? {if not, go back and read the quote again NOW.}

There is another real-life issue that causes us to fall into this trap....TIME! (it's very efficient to just give answers rather than getting our people to think AND the quicker that I give him an answer, the quicker I can GIVE THE NEXT GUY A FISH...... AND besides isn't that my job as the leader to do the THINKING anyway?
OK, all together now: " oh no, all I am doing is providing fish instead of TEACHING PEOPLE TO FISH FOR THEMSELVES!!!" ...and now ask yourself this question: " where will these same people come the next time they are hungry?" 

TIP OF THE DAY: Develop the habit that when people come to you with problems, your response automatically becomes: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?... WHAT DO YOU THINK?.... HOW WOULD YOU DO IT? ...and now get ready to coach!...what if it is a good solution?......now what if the idea is something that you know won't work?!?!

BOTTOM LINE to this fishing expedition?... Ownership: people work on their own ideas harder than yours! I wrote my first book all about this concept...