Resource, Don’t Rescue means supporting people without taking over. “Good” looks like diagnosing capability gaps, clarifying expectations, and giving teams what they need to execute—tools, time, information, or access—without doing the work for them. Leaders who resource expand capacity instead of restricting it.
This imperative produces two outcomes: more capable teams and less leader time spent redoing others’ work. When leaders resource effectively, team confidence increases and dependency decreases.
Your team over-relies on you. Leaders become bottlenecks. Work slows as more tasks escalate unnecessarily. Capability stagnates. Rework increases because people never build the skills needed to deliver independently. Customers wait longer as the team funnels everything through you.
Capability scales. Teams become more autonomous and reliable. KPIs improve: leader rework hours drop, delegation effectiveness rises, and throughput increases. Partners experience smoother handoffs and faster execution across the workflow.
An analyst repeatedly escalated problems to her manager. Instead of fixing them himself, he began diagnosing the gap—lack of context. He provided the missing inputs and coached her through the steps. Within one month, escalations dropped by 60% and her independent delivery rate doubled.
To strengthen capability building, explore Learning 200: Build Your Own Curriculum for self-directed development and Coaching 300: Act and Audit for improving performance through structured feedback. For reducing escalation load, see Accountability 200: Make Reality the Boss.
