I was at my first Information Technology conference many years ago when I heard Dr. Jackie Freiberg speak about leadership.
One of her slides made the argument that we choose to be leaders rather than wait to be assigned the role.
I took a picture of it with my phone.
Apparently, I sensed there would come a day when our phones would contain thousands of pictures we would rarely look at again…but this one stayed with me.
The idea that we are designed to choose felt powerful. Leadership was not limited to the role we occupied within the four walls of a work cubicle—although mine only had three, but who was counting?
It extended into all the roles of our lives: husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister, teacher, friend, and individual contributor.
If we are designed to choose, aren’t we also defined, at least in part, by those choices?
In the workplace, it is easy to wait to be acted upon. We wait for someone to tell us what to do. We wait for the expectations to become clearer, the strategy to be finalized, the organization to mature, or the leaders above us to become perfectly aligned.
And what happens when none of that occurs?
Do we blame the boss? Point to the lack of organizational maturity? Sit back and mire ourselves in non-helpful rhetoric?
Sometimes I have.
But somewhere early in my career, someone gave me a simple piece of advice to follow in my career:
“Find a need and fill it.”
I adopted it immediately and made it part of my work success algorithm. I didn't even completely know what it meant exactly, but somewhere deep inside I instantly knew it would be important. Boy, that has been an understatement! It has dramatically affected the success I have realized over the years.
But what does it really mean to find and fill a need?
I have been thinking about that question again because of a recent conversation with a colleague. This person felt they had more capacity in their current role. They knew they could contribute more, but they didn’t know where to begin.
I found myself returning to that old advice.
“Find a business problem someone has,” I said, “and become part of the solution.”
It sounded simple enough.
But as I thought about it afterward, I realized that the word part may be the most important word in that sentence.
Not every problem belongs to us. We do not have the expertise, authority, time, or permission to solve every need we notice. And rushing in with an answer before understanding the problem can create more disruption than value.
Good intentions are not always the same thing as good judgment.
So perhaps finding a need does not mean appointing ourselves as the person in charge of fixing it. It begins by paying attention to what matters to someone else.
- What is keeping them up at night?
- What are they trying to accomplish?
- Where are they stuck?
- What problem continues to return without being resolved?
Could we make their priority part of our own priority—not forever and not at the expense of everything else, but long enough to help something important move forward?
Sometimes we fill the need by solving the problem.
But perhaps that is only one way.
Some problems need someone to ask a better question. Others need a connection between people who have been working separately. Some need a new idea, a useful framework, a different perspective, or simply a thought partner willing to stay in the conversation long enough for greater clarity to emerge.
Maybe value creation is not always producing the answer.
Sometimes it is lifting the mind toward new possibilities.
That has probably been one of the most consistent parts of my own work. I have tried to collaborate, consult, connect people, and help others see their challenges in new ways. At times, I have been able to create a solution. At other times, the most valuable thing I could offer was a question or an idea that helped someone else discover the solution.
Maybe that is still filling the need.
The more I have practiced this mantra, the more I have also learned that trust changes everything.
When trust already exists, people are more willing to share what the real problem is. They do not have to defend every unfinished idea or pretend to have all the answers. They allow us into the uncertainty.
Trust speeds up the process because it gives us access to the need beneath the request.
Without trust, an offer to help can feel like criticism, interference, or an attempt to gain visibility. With trust, the same offer can feel like partnership.
That is why judgment and emotional intelligence matter so much. It is not enough to notice a need. We must understand how—and whether—to enter it.
Do I arrive with curiosity or with a predetermined answer?
Am I helping the person who owns the problem, or am I unintentionally displacing them?
Am I contributing to their success, or am I using their problem as a stage on which to demonstrate my own value?
Am I creating greater capability, or simply making myself indispensable?
Those questions reveal both the gift and the danger within the mantra.
“Find a need and fill it” can inspire initiative, service, curiosity, and creativity. It can also lead to overreach, exhaustion, rescuing, and the quiet belief that we must solve everything in order to be valuable.
I am still learning the difference.
Perhaps the more complete version of the mantra is this:
Find a need that matters to someone else. Seek first to understand it. Bring whatever you genuinely have to offer—a question, a connection, a framework, an idea, or a solution. Then help create value without making yourself the center of the story.
The motive matters.
I never set out to apply this principle in order to further my career. I wasn’t strategically searching for problems that would make me more visible or important. I simply found that I enjoyed helping people solve meaningful problems.
I cared less about position, title, and level and more about needs, relationships, and creating value.
Ironically, opportunities followed.
Doors opened. I met new people. I was invited into unfamiliar parts of the business. My work became broader and more meaningful. Even compensation seemed to follow naturally behind the value that had been created.
But it only worked because advancement was not the reason for doing it.
People can usually feel the difference between someone who wants to help and someone who wants to be seen helping.
Maybe that is the real algorithm:
Need + curiosity + trust + judgment + authentic contribution = value.
And perhaps motive sits beneath all of it.
I still believe we choose to lead rather than wait for leadership to be assigned to us. But choosing to lead does not always mean declaring the vision or charging ahead alone.
Sometimes it means noticing something important that another person is trying to accomplish and asking:
“How can I help?”
Sometimes it means solving the problem.
Sometimes it means connecting a few dots.
Sometimes it means offering a framework that allows people to see their work differently.
And sometimes it means helping another person recognize that they already have the capacity to become part of the solution.
I never set out to use this mantra to advance my career. I simply discovered that when I consistently helped other people solve meaningful problems, new opportunities seemed to find me.
Success followed the value.
But the value had to come first.
