Don't Forget Your Monkey: Growing Leaders, not Followers
A knock at the door draws your attention away from the task at hand.
Standing there is a direct report, a teammate who is showing great promise and may one day sit in your chair as the leader of the school, district, or organization.
They are here in your office because a problem has surfaced. Perhaps it is a complaint that must be addressed, an employee-relations matter, a student discipline situation, or a difficult decision that needs to be made. Whatever the issue, it feels like a monkey on their back.
They have come to you because they need help.
As caring leaders, our instinct is often to remove the monkey from their back. We want to free them from the burden, protect them from making a mistake, and take responsibility for resolving the issue ourselves. After a brief conversation, they leave your office feeling relieved.
The monkey, however, remains behind.
It is now sitting on your desk alongside all the monkeys that already belonged to you.
Mark Cole, CEO of Maxwell Leadership, has said, “When being helpful keeps others from being capable, you have a problem.”
That observation captures one of the most difficult lessons of leadership: sometimes our desire to help can unintentionally keep others from growing.
Certainly, there are moments when a leader must step in. Some situations carry legal, ethical, safety, or organizational consequences that require the leader’s direct involvement. Supporting others does not mean leaving them alone in circumstances they are not prepared for or authorized to handle.
But far more often, the person standing at our door does not need us to take over. They need us to help them think.
If we continually accept other people’s monkeys, our own work becomes increasingly difficult. Our calendars fill with responsibilities that properly belong to others. The important work before us is moved aside by urgent matters that someone else has left on our desk.
Even more concerning, however, is what the other person loses.
They lose the opportunity to wrestle with a complex situation, weigh competing priorities, make a thoughtful decision, and learn from the outcome. They may leave our office with an answer, but they also leave without having developed the judgment and confidence they will need for the next challenge.
Cole puts it this way, “If you answer the question that someone else could have answered, you solve today’s problem, but you rob tomorrow of a leader.”
That is the real danger.
The problem may be resolved, but the person remains dependent upon us. Instead of developing another leader, we may be creating a capable follower who has learned to bring every difficult decision to our door.
Leadership often rewards us for having answers. Early in our careers, our ability to solve problems may be one of the reasons we are entrusted with greater responsibility.
As our leadership grows, however, our work must change.
“At one level of leadership, your job is to find answers,” Cole reminds us. “At the next level, your job is to grow leaders who can find the answers.”
That transition is not always easy.
Providing an answer is efficient. Asking questions takes patience. Solving the problem ourselves can feel faster than helping someone else develop the ability to solve it. When the day is full and the calendar is crowded, taking the monkey can appear to be the simplest choice.
Yet leadership is not measured merely by how many problems we can personally solve. It is also measured by the capacity we build in others.
Questions such as these may help:
What do you believe is the real issue?
What do our policies, practices, and values require?
What have you already tried?
What options have you considered?
What do you think we should do?
What support do you need from me?
These questions do more than help resolve the situation at hand. They develop judgment. They communicate trust. They help someone begin to see themselves as a leader who is capable of addressing difficult issues.
As Cole has said, “An answer can move the work forward. A thoughtful question can move the person forward.”
Strong leaders must do both.
We must move the work forward while also moving people forward.
There is another question, though. Why is our teammate at our door?
Are people bringing us solutions to problems because they need our leadership or because they need our permission?
Those are not the same thing.
There are times when someone has already done the thinking. They understand the situation, have considered the alternatives, and are prepared to recommend a solution. They may simply need the authority to proceed.
If we are not careful, we can turn that moment into another opportunity to take control. We can revise their plan unnecessarily, substitute our preferences for their judgment, or reclaim responsibility for a decision they were prepared to make.
When a teammate brings a thoughtful recommendation, our role may simply be to affirm the work, ask a few clarifying questions, provide permission, and encourage them to move forward.
Every time we respond in that way, we make a small but meaningful investment in their confidence.
We are saying:
I trust your thinking.
I believe you can handle this.
I am here if you need me, but you are ready to lead.
That does not mean we stop paying attention. Growing leaders requires both trust and appropriate accountability. We clarify expectations, agree on next steps, and establish a time to follow up. We remain supportive without assuming ownership.
The monkey stays with the person who has the responsibility and the opportunity to grow from caring for it.
When someone enters your office with a monkey on their back, invite them in.
Talk about the monkey. Examine it from every angle. Let it run around the desk and jump on the chair if necessary. Ask good questions. Offer perspective. Share wisdom from your own experiences. Help the person identify the resources and relationships that may support them.
But when the conversation ends, make sure the monkey leaves with its owner.
The person should leave your office not relieved of responsibility, but better equipped to fulfill it.
That is an important distinction.
Returning the monkey is not an act of indifference. It is an expression of confidence. It communicates that we see potential in the person before us and believe they are capable of more than they may yet recognize in themselves.
Of course, there may be some wobbling along the way. Emerging leaders will not always make the same decisions we would make. They may take a little longer, approach the problem differently, or occasionally make a mistake.
But if we step in every time the path becomes difficult, they will never develop the strength, wisdom, and resilience leadership requires.
Our goal should not be to make ourselves indispensable by collecting everyone else’s responsibilities. Our goal should be to build the capacity of those around us.
Cole describes this challenge in five simple words: “Go from needed to not needed.”
At first, that idea may feel uncomfortable. Leaders often derive a sense of purpose from being needed. Yet becoming less necessary in the daily decisions of others does not diminish our leadership. It demonstrates its impact.
A team that can function only when the leader is present is dependent.
A team filled with people who can think, decide, collaborate, and lead is strong.
The next time someone appears at your door carrying a problem, pause before accepting it as your own.
Ask yourself:
Does this person need me to solve the problem, or do they need me to help them grow through it?
Sometimes you will need to take the monkey. More often, your responsibility will be to help the person understand it, care for it, and carry it well.
Ask more questions.
Give fewer answers.
Offer support without removing responsibility.
And when your teammate leaves your office, encourage them, express your confidence in them, and gently remind them:
“Hey, don’t forget your monkey.”
That may be the moment when today’s problem begins developing tomorrow’s leader.
References:
Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to attend the Maxwell Leadership conference “Live2Lead” in Atlanta. It was there that I heard Mark Cole speak. The quotes in this article come from his remarks that day.
The analogy of a teammate with a monkey on their back has been written about several times. It appears that the origin of the story comes from a 1999 article, Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey? by William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass in Harvard Business Review.
Image Credit:
Image 1: Generated by ChatGPT. I added the text to the image using PowerPoint.
Image 2: Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash
Image 3: Photo of the absolutely amazing Buncombe County Schools leaders I worked with (L-R: Dr. Jamie Johnson, Assistant Superintendent; Dr. Rob Jackson, Superintendent; Dr. Jennifer Reed, Associate Superintendent; and Chip Cody, Assistant Superintendent). We often joked about taking care of our own monkeys.
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