You think you’re helping.
You step in, do the thinking, build the spreadsheet, and have the hard conversation they should be having themselves.
You call it support. Leadership. Mentorship.
It isn’t.
What you’re actually doing is telling them, without a single word, that you don’t believe they can do it. That their incompetence is permanent. That your capability is more important than their growth.
The most generous thing a parent ever does is let their child fall and get back up. Not once. Repeatedly. Until getting up becomes instinct.
Business is no different.
The leader who never learns to own a difficult conversation will always need someone to have it for them. The executive who never wrestles with the numbers will always be dependent on someone who did. You’ve made yourself indispensable. Congratulations. You’ve also made them helpless.
Real support has a different shape. It looks like a question instead of an answer. A nudge instead of a rescue. A standard held firmly, rather than quietly lowered.
The hard truth: enabling feels like kindness. It has the warmth of kindness. But it produces the opposite result.
If they never struggle, they never grow. If they never grow, nothing you’ve built together lasts.
Stop rescuing. Start believing in them enough to let them figure it out.
That’s what real investment looks like.
