Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / How New Managers Can Coach Rather Than Solve
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a pattern I see over and over with new managers, and it's the one their teams complain about most. They become the bottleneck — because they keep solving problems instead of coaching. Luna: It's such a natural trap. You were hired for your ability to get stuff done. Now suddenly doing it yourself is the wrong move. Lucas: Right. And nobody tells you that the transition is partly unlearning what made you successful as an individual contributor. So let me give you a concrete case. I was talking to a friend — let's call her Priya. She was a senior software engineer at a fintech company, around five hundred people. She got promoted to team lead about eight months ago. Four engineers, two juniors, two mid-level. Luna: Classic first-time manager setup. Lucas: Exactly. And Priya told me that within the first month, she was getting pulled into every technical decision. Her juniors would Slack her with a question about a bug or a design choice, and she'd immediately write back with the answer. Felt efficient. Felt like she was helping. Luna: I bet her team loved it at first. Free answers from the expert. Lucas: They did. But within six weeks, two things happened. First, she was working fifty-five-hour weeks because she was effectively doing her old job plus managing. Second, the juniors stopped trying to figure anything out on their own. They'd hit the smallest snag and ping her. She had trained them to be dependent. Luna: So she became the single point of failure. What did she do? Lucas: She made a rule for herself. When someone brings her a problem, she cannot offer a solution in the first conversation. She has to ask questions. She told me she stole the framework from a leadership coach she found online — there are three categories of questions. Clarifying questions, like 'What have you tried so far?' Connecting questions, like 'Who else on the team might have insight on this?' And then expanding questions, like 'What would a good outcome look like to you?' Luna: I like 'What have you tried?' because it forces the person to show their work. Sometimes they've already done the legwork and just need validation. Lucas: Exactly. Priya said about thirty percent of the time, the person would answer her clarifying question and then immediately say, 'Oh wait, I think I know what to do.' They just needed to talk it out. Another thirty percent, they'd realize they needed to talk to someone else on the team. So her involvement dropped dramatically. Luna: And the remaining forty percent are legitimate escalations where you actually do need to step in. Lucas: Right. But even then, she tries to frame the solution collaboratively. Instead of saying 'Here's the fix,' she'll say 'Here's how I'm thinking about this — what do you see that I might be missing?' That way the junior still owns part of the thinking. Luna: It's a small language shift but the effect on team autonomy is huge. I've seen research that says the most effective managers spend less than twenty percent of their time on their own technical work by the second year. Lucas: That matches what I've heard. By year two, your job is almost entirely about enabling other people's decisions, not making them yourself. And the hardest part for Priya was the first month after she changed her approach. Her team was frustrated. They thought she was being evasive or that she didn't trust them. Luna: So how did she handle that pushback? Lucas: She was upfront. She called a short team meeting and said, 'I've realized I've been solving too many things for you, and that's not sustainable for me or good for your growth. Going forward, I'm going to ask more questions before I give answers. It might feel awkward at first, but I promise it's because I believe you can figure this out.' Luna: That's the key — naming the shift so it doesn't feel like a withdrawal of support. Lucas: Right. And she also made one other structural change. She instituted what she called 'office hours' — two thirty-minute slots per week where anyone could book her for focused technical help. Outside those slots, she'd redirect to the question framework. That gave the team a safety valve without making her constantly available. Luna: I think that's brilliant because it also teaches the team to batch their questions. They start thinking 'Is this worth waiting for office hours?' and often decide it's not. Lucas: Exactly. Priya told me that after three months of this, her hours were down to about forty-five a week, her team's output actually went up because people weren't waiting for her approval, and her one-on-ones shifted from status updates to real coaching conversations. She said the biggest surprise was how much more she enjoyed the job once she stopped being the hero. Luna: You know, that phrase 'stop being the hero' — I think that's the core psychological shift for a new manager. You have to get your satisfaction from other people's wins, not your own. Lucas: And that is genuinely hard for people who were promoted because they were excellent individual contributors. Your whole identity was 'the person who solves the hard problem.' Now the hard problem is helping someone else solve it. Luna: So what do you recommend to a new manager who's listening right now and thinking 'Okay, I want to try this question-first approach, but my team is already used to me giving answers'? Lucas: Start small. Pick one recurring situation — maybe it's code reviews, maybe it's when someone asks for input on a design doc. Commit to asking at least two questions before you offer any opinion. And tell the person what you're doing. Say 'I'm trying to be more deliberate about my feedback, so I'm going to ask a few things first.' That transparency disarms the awkwardness. Luna: And if you mess up and slip back into giving the answer, just acknowledge it. 'Sorry, I jumped to a solution there. Let me step back — what do you think?' Lucas: Exactly. The team will appreciate the self-awareness. The other thing I'd say is that this isn't just about reducing your own workload. It's about building your team's capacity. If you always solve the problem, your team never learns to solve problems without you. And that means you can never step away — for a vacation, for a promotion, for anything. Luna: Which is exactly the kind of thinking that makes you promotable. If your team can run without you, you're ready for the next level. Lucas: That's the paradox. By making yourself less essential day-to-day, you become more valuable to the organization. You're no longer a super-performer — you're a force multiplier. Luna: I want to come back to something you said earlier about one-on-ones becoming coaching conversations. Can you give listeners a specific template for how to structure a one-on-one that's coaching-focused rather than status update focused? Lucas: Sure. Priya uses a simple three-part agenda that she shares with her team in advance. First five minutes: 'What's on your mind?' — open-ended, whatever the person wants to talk about. Next fifteen minutes: one development topic — this is where the coaching questions live. Could be about a skill they want to build, a project they're struggling with, a career goal. Last five minutes: 'How can I help?' — this is where you can offer resources, remove blockers, or give direct feedback. But notice that the direct problem-solving is at the end, not the beginning. Luna: And if the direct report shows up with a list of status updates, how do you redirect? Lucas: You acknowledge it briefly. 'Thanks for the update, that sounds on track. Let's put that aside and talk about the thing that's actually challenging for you right now.' You have to be willing to protect that development time. If everything's fine, you can end early. But if there's a real issue, you need space to dig into it. Luna: One thing I've noticed is that new managers often feel like they need to have all the answers. That coaching approach requires you to be comfortable saying 'I don't know, what do you think?' Lucas: And that's vulnerable. But honestly, your team already knows you don't know everything. Pretending you do is what erodes trust. Saying 'I don't know, let's figure it out together' is actually more confidence-inspiring. Luna: You know, this kind of frank, practical advice is exactly why we keep this show ad-free. We don't have to sell you anything or water down the message to please a sponsor. It's just us, talking about what actually works. Lucas: Yeah, and we want to keep it that way. So if the show helps you — whether it's one concrete tip or a whole new way of thinking about management — and you want to support that independence, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, just a way to keep the conversation going without ads. Luna: It's a small gesture that makes a big difference for us. And we appreciate every single person who's chipped in. Lucas: Alright, back to coaching. I think there's one more piece that Priya's story highlights that's worth unpacking. She said the hardest part wasn't the questions — it was staying quiet long enough for the other person to think. Luna: Oh, the silence is brutal for most of us. We want to fill it. Lucas: Right. She started counting to seven in her head after asking a question before she'd say anything else. She said it felt like forever the first few times, but it gave her team member space to actually formulate a thought instead of just reacting to her suggestion. Luna: Seven seconds is a long time in conversation. But it's a great discipline. Lucas: It is. And the results were pretty dramatic. One of her juniors, who had been very quiet in meetings, started offering solutions in team discussions after a few weeks of those one-on-one conversations. Priya said that alone made the whole shift worth it. Luna: So to summarize for someone in their first ninety days: resist the urge to be the hero, ask questions before giving answers, be transparent about why you're changing your approach, and embrace the silence. Lucas: And remember that your success as a manager is measured by your team's success, not by how many problems you personally solve. If you can shift your mindset from solver to coach in those first few months, you'll build a team that can run without you — and that's when you know you're really leading.