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A colleague reached out to me recently. He was about to present product positioning to a customer for the first time and wanted to see my slide deck so he could model his approach after mine.

I told him I didn’t have one. I was going to be on-site, face-to-face, and my plan was to sit with the customer, listen, and help them navigate their decision. No slides. Just conversation.

But I also told him that since this was his first time, he should definitely prepare backup slides and material. Having something ready to anchor the discussion is smart, especially when you’re still building your muscle for these conversations.

His response surprised me. He focused entirely on the one thing he couldn’t replicate “the face-to-face part” and told me he’d be dialing in remotely, so that wouldn’t work for him. He skipped right past the actionable advice about preparing backup material.

I noticed it immediately. He had latched onto the constraint instead of the solution sitting right next to it. And I had a choice to make.

The Instinct to Help Again

Every leadership instinct tells you to jump back in. Rephrase the advice. Make it more explicit. Maybe even offer to build something for him. The desire to help is strong, and it feels productive. After all, the meeting is tomorrow. Time is short. The stakes feel real.

But here’s what I’ve learned from years of coaching and hundreds of sessions working with people across different contexts: the moment you solve someone’s problem for them, you’ve made yourself the solution. And the next time they face a similar situation, they won’t think through it – they’ll reach for you.

So I didn’t respond.

What Silence Actually Does

Not responding isn’t passive. It’s a deliberate act of creating space.

When you remove yourself as an option, you force the other person to sit with the discomfort of not having an answer, and that discomfort is where problem-solving begins.

Think about what happens in that gap. The person has to move from “someone will help me” to “I need to figure this out.” That’s not just a tactical shift. It’s an identity shift. They go from being someone who receives solutions to someone who creates them.

Within a short time, my colleague came back with his own plan. He reached out to the meeting organizer to make sure the call started early enough for him to listen in on the conversation before his segment. That way he could build on what was already discussed, adapt in real time, and bring his expertise into a context that was already shaped by the customer’s actual concerns.

That solution was better than anything I would have handed him. It showed situational awareness, initiative, and an intuitive grasp of the very principle I had described, meet the customer where they are.

The Pattern Behind the Pattern

What happened here follows a structure I see repeatedly. Someone asks for help. You give them what they need, not what they asked for, but what would actually serve them. They filter your response through their constraints instead of their opportunities. And then there’s a moment of tension where you either rescue them or trust them.

The people who grow are the ones you trust in that moment.

This doesn’t mean you withhold help as a rule. I gave him real advice in my first response. I shared my approach, my philosophy, and a concrete suggestion. The silence only came after I had already contributed, and after it became clear that the next step in his development wasn’t more information. It was agency.

Leadership as Calibration

We talk a lot about leadership as inspiration, as vision, as decisiveness. We talk less about leadership as calibration, knowing exactly how much support to provide and when to pull back so someone can stand on their own.

The best mentors I’ve had didn’t give me more when I struggled. They gave me space. And the discomfort of that space is what turned me from someone who sought answers into someone who could generate them.

My colleague will present tomorrow. He’ll do it his way, with a plan he built himself, adapted to his constraints. And the next time he faces a new situation, he won’t start by asking for someone else’s deck. He’ll start by thinking about what the situation actually requires.

That’s not something I could have taught him with another message. He had to teach it to himself.

This is the difference between managing and leading. Managing gives people what they need to execute. Leading gives people what they need to grow, and sometimes, what they need is nothing at all.

Daron Yondem advises senior technology leaders on AI-driven organizational transformation. Learn more →