Amanda NorthcuttFounder & CEO | Keynote Speaker, LevelUp · B2B sales as a solo is HARD. I’ve got you. I help consultants & coaches sell high-ticket services comfortably & confidently, while enjoying consistent, predictable revenue | Founder & CEO | Speaker |

The One Question That Turns Employees Into Leaders

12 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, the speaker frames the founder as the nucleus of a business, responsible for every direct line of operation. To avoid being a bottleneck, the founder should create "armor" around themselves by inserting team members between tasks and the founder, effectively delegating responsibility. The core coaching technique advocated is to empower employees by asking them reflective questions—such as "How would you handle this?" or "What do you think we should do?"—instead of providing direct answers. This question‑driven approach is presented as a powerful way to develop leadership qualities within the team.

You, as the founder, are the nucleus of the business. You're in the middle. And if you wrote down everything it takes to run your business on a whiteboard, right? And then draw a direct line and everything you're responsible for, right? If you're a solopreneur practitioner, it's you, it's on you. And so, what you want to do is reduce the number of straight lines to you by putting basically armor kind of around the nucleus.
Mm-hmm.
That is you, and get people between the thing that needs to be done and you, and you best enable and empower your team members to do that by enabling and empowering by asking this really magical question, not letting them, not responding to, what do I do here? But turning it back around and having a thought experiment and exercise and coaching opportunity with them by saying, how would you handle this? Or what do you think that we should do? I mean, that's just like incredibly powerful.