Experience · Managers · Teams
Experience makes it possible to recognise a situation earlier and suggest a way forward quickly. For a manager, that advantage contains a trap: the more useful the answer, the easier it is for the team to return for it next time.
Solving today and building capability for tomorrow are not always the same decision.
Giving the answer solves today and weakens tomorrow
There are moments when a direct decision is required. But if every conversation ends that way, the team learns to escalate problems instead of constructing proposals.
The alternative is not leaving someone alone for hours. It may be enough to ask what they observed, which option they consider best and which risk concerns them. The manager’s answer comes after seeing the reasoning, not before.
Explaining the reasoning is worth more than telling the story
“This happened to me before” adds context, but it does not always help with a different situation. What transfers is not the whole story. It is the signals that mattered, the options that were discarded and the uncertainty that had to be accepted.
Explaining the mistake helps too. Experience told as an inevitable sequence may impress; a decision reviewed honestly teaches much more.
Practice turns experience into capability
A joint visit, a case review or a conversation after an incident creates practice from real work. The team can see what the manager notices, and the manager can discover what the team is seeing.
That exchange creates a shared language. It does not produce copies of the manager; it improves how different people interpret and decide.
The signal is that the team decides well without waiting
The test that experience has multiplied is not that everyone chooses the same option. It is that they can explain their choice, recognise their limits and act without asking for permission out of habit.
A manager contributes a great deal by solving a difficult problem. They contribute even more when, over time, they stop being the only person capable of solving it.