Two team members recently started at my firm. They are going to be strong Customer Success Managers, and I’m looking forward to working for them one day. They come to me with lots of questions.

Today I responded to questions a bit differently. I said, “Try to figure it out… where do things start to fall apart? What problems do you find you need to solve first in order to address your question to me?”

I find the saying “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions” problematic. If I’m an employee and always had a solution, what’s the benefit of my leader?

I think I’m starting to prefer “come to me with the problems about your problems.”