From Problem Solver to Problem Solver Creator

The question that changed everything for me was simple: “What if instead of being the person who solves problems, I became the person who creates problem solvers?” It sounds obvious in retrospect, but the shift from solving to enabling requires completely rewiring how you think about getting work done.

For years, my value came from being able to debug the trickiest issues, architect complex systems, and untangle the technical problems that had everyone else stuck. I was fast, thorough, and reliable. But in a leadership role, continuing to be the primary problem solver wasn’t scaling—it was becoming a bottleneck.

I realized that every problem I solved myself, though satisfying, was a missed opportunity to develop someone else’s problem-solving capabilities. Instead of asking “How can I fix this?” I started asking “Who could learn the most from figuring this out, and how can I set them up for success?”

This mindset shift transforms everything about how you approach engineering leadership. Instead of optimizing for immediate solutions, you optimize for building a team that can tackle increasingly complex challenges independently. Here’s what that looks like in practice.

Teaching Through Ownership, Not Tasks

The difference between assigning tasks and developing problem solvers is the difference between “implement this API endpoint” and “figure out how we should handle user authentication for this new feature.” One teaches someone to follow specifications; the other teaches them to think through trade-offs and business impact, research solutions, and make technical decisions.

Strategic delegation becomes about identifying problems that are slightly beyond someone’s current comfort zone—complex enough to require real thinking, but not so complex that they’ll get stuck without making progress. When we needed to optimize our database performance, instead of diving in myself, I paired our most eager junior backend engineer with our database expert and said, “Figure out why our queries are getting slower and what we should do about it.” (They did an excellent job and both learned new things in the process.)

The key is providing enough context for good decision-making while resisting the urge to prescribe the solution.

This means sharing the business constraints, the technical requirements, and the success criteria, then stepping back and letting them work through the problem-solving process. When they hit roadblocks, you guide them toward resources and approaches rather than answers.

What you’re really doing is teaching people to ask the right questions: What are we optimizing for? What are the constraints? What could go wrong? How will we know if it’s working? These thinking patterns transfer to every future problem they encounter.

Building Problem-Solving Muscle Through Learning

The best problem solvers aren’t necessarily the ones who know the most—they’re the ones who are best at learning what they need to know. Creating a culture where continuous learning is expected and supported turns every project into an opportunity to develop new problem-solving capabilities.

This means structuring work so that people regularly encounter unfamiliar challenges with appropriate support systems. When someone expresses curiosity about machine learning, performance optimization, or distributed systems, find ways to connect that interest to real problems your team needs to solve. The developer who wants to understand ML can take point on improving your recommendation algorithm. The engineer curious about performance can lead the investigation into why your app feels sluggish.

Internal knowledge sharing amplifies this effect. Regular deep-dive sessions where team members present problems they’ve solved create a library of problem-solving approaches that everyone can learn from. But more importantly, the act of sharing forces people to articulate their thinking process, which helps them develop more systematic approaches to future problems.

The compound effect is remarkable. Teams that prioritize learning consistently punch above their weight because they’re better at recognizing patterns, adapting to new situations, and breaking down complex problems into manageable pieces.

Communication That Enables Independent Thinking

The goal of communication in leadership isn’t just clarity—it’s creating the conditions where people can make good decisions without constantly checking in with you. This means providing not just what was decided, but the reasoning behind decisions, the factors that were considered, and the principles that guide similar situations.

When you share context richly, you’re teaching people to think through problems the way you would, but with their own insights and perspectives.

Instead of saying “use Redis for caching,” explain why caching is needed, what alternatives were considered, what trade-offs matter, and how to evaluate whether it’s working. Now when similar performance problems arise, they have a framework for thinking through solutions.

One-on-ones become especially valuable for developing problem-solving skills. These conversations are where you can understand how someone approaches challenges, what assumptions they’re making, and where their thinking might benefit from different perspectives. Often, the most helpful thing you can do is ask questions that help them think through problems more systematically.

The ultimate goal is asynchronous problem-solving—people having enough context and judgment to tackle new challenges without waiting for direction. When that happens, your team’s problem-solving capacity isn’t limited by your bandwidth.

Identifying and Developing Natural Problem-Solving Styles

Every engineer has a natural approach to problem-solving, but not everyone has had the opportunity to develop and refine that approach. Part of creating problem solvers is recognizing these natural inclinations and providing opportunities to strengthen them.

Some people are naturally systematic—they break down complex problems into smaller pieces and work through them methodically. Others are more intuitive—they see patterns and connections that aren’t immediately obvious. Some are great at asking the right questions to clarify requirements. Others excel at considering edge cases and potential failures.

The key is matching people with problems that play to their strengths while gradually expanding their toolkit. Let the systematic thinker lead the database migration planning. Give the pattern-recognizer the tricky debugging challenge. Ask the question-asker to work with product managers on requirement gathering.

But also create opportunities for people to develop complementary skills. Pair the intuitive problem solver with someone more methodical. Have the detail-oriented engineer work on a project that requires big-picture thinking. These collaborations teach people new approaches while solving real problems.

Leadership development happens naturally when people get comfortable with their own problem-solving style and learn to facilitate problem-solving in others.

Removing Obstacles to Problem-Solving Growth

The biggest barriers to developing problem solvers are often systemic rather than individual. People can’t develop good judgment if they don’t have access to the information they need to make decisions. They can’t learn from mistakes if the environment punishes experimentation. They can’t tackle complex problems if they’re constantly interrupted by urgent but low-value work.

Your role becomes creating the conditions where problem-solving skills can develop naturally.

This often means advocating upward for better tools, more reasonable deadlines, or clearer priorities. It means protecting your team’s focus time and ensuring they have access to the resources they need to dive deep into problems.

Sometimes it’s about facilitating conversations between teams so your engineers can get the context they need to make good technical decisions. Sometimes it’s about negotiating for technical debt time so people can practice the long-term thinking that prevents problems rather than just solving them reactively.

The most important obstacle to remove is the fear of making mistakes. Problem-solving skills develop through experimentation, and experimentation requires an environment where intelligent failures are treated as learning opportunities rather than performance problems.

The Multiplier Effect

What makes this approach so rewarding is that the impact compounds exponentially. A team of capable problem solvers doesn’t just solve more problems—they solve harder problems, prevent problems through better design, and create solutions that other teams can build on.

When you develop someone’s problem-solving abilities, you’re not just helping them with their current role. You’re giving them tools they’ll use throughout their career, whether they stay individual contributors or move into leadership themselves. The engineer who learns to think systematically about performance problems becomes someone who designs performant systems from the start.

The ripple effects extend beyond your immediate team. Problem solvers become mentors. They raise the bar in technical discussions. They ask better questions in design reviews. They contribute to a culture where good technical decision-making is normal rather than exceptional.

This is the ultimate lever in engineering leadership: instead of solving problems yourself, you create the conditions where great solutions emerge naturally from your team.

Instead of being the bottleneck, you become the catalyst that makes everything else work better.

The transition from solving problems to creating problem solvers is challenging because it requires patience and faith in other people’s potential. But when you see someone tackle a problem that would have stumped them six months ago, or when your team consistently delivers solutions that surprise you with their thoughtfulness, you realize you’ve built something much more valuable than any individual technical contribution: a system that continuously generates great technical work.