Stop Being the Hero

Why the strongest leaders build teams that do not need them for every answer

High performing leaders, particularly women, are frequently the go-to when something is unclear, urgent, or politically sensitive. While this reliability builds trust within teams, it can also lead us to an over-reliance on problem-solving at the expense of strategic work and individual career growth.  This dynamic can inhibit our teams from fully developing their skills and capabilities.

Reflecting on my early career, I once equated leadership with heroism, where I felt compelled to step in and solve every problem my team faced. As I gained more experience, I realized that true leadership involves empowering team members to tackle challenges independently. By equipping others with the tools and confidence they need to solve problems, we not only foster their growth but also create a more resilient and capable team.

Then one day, simply checking the box wasn’t rewarding. I was spending so much of my time doing things for other people that I was burning myself out. An entry-level new hire changed everything for me. She came to my office and asked questions every single day. She was constantly at my door. I appreciated it, but, like I said, at this point in my career I was exhausted. I thought this is a lot. Her questions don’t even pertain to her job. After a particularly difficult day, I went home and told my daughter about it, “I don't know what to do. She keeps coming in with all these questions and I don't understand why or how to help her.”

She gave me some simple advice, “Mom, you need to break everything into small pieces. Make your answers simple and apply them to her life and job.”    

I went back to work the next day. When the new hire came in, instead of shooting off an answer, I asked questions. She asked a question; I asked a question. I wanted to dig into what she was trying to accomplish. Once I understood that, I could explain the answer in a way that connected to her work, her goals, and what she was trying to learn. We continued this back-and-forth for months.

She applied for a job in my department. She knew what she wanted all along, and she got the job. That was my aha moment. She had been building toward something. Her questions weren’t random. She was curious, ambitious, and intentionally learning beyond the boundaries of her current role. She went on to a successful career.

She taught me that leadership success is not measured by how often people need us, but how well they can succeed without waiting for us. Constantly being the person with the answer wasn’t leadership; it was a bottleneck.  Being the person who can swoop in and solve the problem derives a certain satisfaction; it feels good to be needed. But if every decision, question, or problem must come through us, we haven’t built stronger teams. We’ve built teams that depend on us. That realization changed what energized me as a leader. It is incredibly rewarding when a new idea clicks, and a mentee takes what they learned and applies it to their job in a novel way. We invest in individuals and organizations.

The alternative is exhausting for everyone. When leaders are constantly focused on resolving the tactical issue in front of them, we spend our days putting out fires. We fix the immediate problem without ever asking why it happened or whether the person closest to it has the knowledge and tools to handle it differently next time.

One of my biggest wins as a leader is watching someone move from asking, “How do I fix this?” to asking, “Why is this happening, and how should I approach it?” That is the shift from tactical execution to strategic thinking.

Teaching also has another benefit: it forces the teacher to learn. I’ve been in this industry for a long time, and experience is valuable—but experience can also create blind spots. When we know something well, it becomes easy to assume certain things are obvious or to accept a process simply because that is how it has always been done. I’ve been developing a training program for new hires on my team, and in doing so I realized something was missing from our traditional onboarding. We were very good at teaching people how our products and services worked, but we weren’t explaining to them why our customers needed them in the first place. I began building what I call a Foundational Onboarding Experience. Before we talk about products, we start with basic questions: Why does parking exist? Why do communities charge for parking? What problem is the customer actually trying to solve.

Sometimes it takes someone with a fresh perspective asking, “Why?” to make us reconsider what we thought we knew. Today, whenever I work with someone new, I think about that young woman who stood at my office door asking question after question. I tell new team members something very similar:

I want you to be successful. You are important to this team and to this organization. We will give you knowledge, tools, support, and opportunities to learn. But I won’t always know when you need help. You have to be willing to ask questions, seek answers, and take ownership of your own growth.

That responsibility goes both ways. Employees have to be willing to ask, learn, try, and sometimes fail. Leaders have to create an environment where doing those things is safe and encouraged. If people are afraid to ask questions, we lose opportunities to teach. If we simply answer every question or solve every problem for them, we create dependency instead of capability. The goal isn’t to become a leader with all the answers. The goal is to develop more people who know how to find them.

About the Author:

Eleonore Adkins is the Vice President of Customer Experience at IPS with 15+ years in parking and mobility. She leads Client Success, Implementations, and Support, delivering accountable onboarding and operations. She built a proactive CX framework improving satisfaction, retention, and time-to-value, with expertise in municipal deployments and service transformation. 

About IPS Group:

IPS Group, Inc. pioneered the first smart parking meter more than 25 years ago and today delivers a fully integrated smart parking ecosystem for municipalities, private operators, universities, hospitals, and other parking organizations.

At the foundation of IPS culture are the four P’s: People, who are at the heart of everything we do; Possibilities, as we develop future-ready technology designed to scale and evolve with our customers; Partners, with whom we build lasting relationships grounded in trust; and Proven, reflecting more than 25 years of innovation, experience, and commitment to the parking industry.

IPS Group manufactures single-space and multi-space smart meters and kiosks in San Diego, California, supported by a comprehensive Data Management System for centralized management and reporting. Our broader technology ecosystem includes enforcement software and hardware, permitting solutions, LPR technology, mobile payment options, and Elevate™, our latest software platform. Elevate brings parking data from multiple systems into a single dashboard, providing customizable reporting and AI-powered insights that help operators make better-informed decisions.

As parking operators navigate an increasingly complex curb environment, fragmented technology stacks, aging infrastructure, and growing pressure to do more with fewer resources, IPS Group provides simple, cost-effective, integrated solutions. Our technology helps operators modernize at their own pace, simplify operations, and build the flexible parking infrastructure their communities and customers need—today and into the future.