Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.1
However, what do you do if you the man’s family is about to die from starvation? Balancing now-and-later / acute-and-chronic situations is some of the hardest things a leader has to deal with. As a leader, we don’t have the luxury of doing things one-at-a-time (even though there is no such thing as multi-tasking) and it is very important that you consider how you always teach.
It’s more about you then it’s about them
Your interpretation of the situation leads to how you respond. If something seems dire, regardless of how the situation is presented, addressing the problem by just doing you are blowing right past the teachable moment. It is important to actively listen and truly understand what is going on in order to figure out what the best path forward is for any issue. Don’t let you own beliefs about failure (see below), perceptions of you and your team, and any other than the facts drive the solution.
People will largely take what you are willing to give
If you build it, they will take it. Offering to do something in a world where so many team members feel overwhelmed with the amount of work they have and the pressures of the environment in general, team member will defer learning for a more immediate solution. The issue is that issues don’t typically happen just once and all this does is kick the can done the road. As a leader, you can’t allow team members to miss opportunties to learn either; you and your team will not scale otherwise.
It is okay for team members to sweat it out
Failure is the greatest teacher and leads to long-term success. As long as something isn’t really damaging, providing guidance or honestly giving nothing sometimes, to your team about the issue is a very valuable tool. People don’t like to fail generally, and providing the forum for them to use the tools, team, and connections they already have to attempt to solve can be very successful without significant downside.
Making sure that you are handling the now and the later dually ensures that issues are properly handled while giving team members the tools by which they are go it themselves the next time is of the utmost importance when thinking about scale and growth. In building a high-performing team, many times team members just need to talk things through and get validation that what they are thinking is the right path; fostering a culture of learning through doing can yield great results.