People take more ownership in delivering their own ideas than the ideas of others, and successful leaders know this.

Instead of just giving the answer (the solution), they ask their people for what they think the answer should be.  However, how a leader asks for the answer is important in having their people keep the ownership.

Some leaders often ask, “what do you think we should do?” or “what’s the best thing to do?”.   When you only ask for one thing, and you don’t happen to like it, you then need to convince your people to do something different.  Now, the answer is no longer their answer, but yours – the leader’s; and they will have less ownership in your answer than theirs.

The best way to ask “what options do we have?“.   Now, you get to coach your people towards what could be the best answer and they keep the ownership, as the source of the answer was theirs.