Prior to joining the B2B Leaders Academy, Nate was becoming a major bottleneck within his company and within his team, especially when it came to his knowledge.

After working at WalkMe for close to 8 years, he'd been around almost every situation - his knowledge of company dynamics and potential solutions to specific business problems was strong.

But this meant that his team came to him for answers all the time - they were dependent on him, perhaps a little too much.

And while he was proud to help out in those situations, he felt a lot of pressure to be the only one with the answers. He felt overworked and even a little bit hopeless - and these feelings only grew when he started working remotely.

Managing others when he used to be "15 feet away" from everyone on his team, 40 hours a week, meant he could quickly pull people aside, or quickly call a team meeting to bring people together and talk through different situations.

But now that he was on his own, it became much more challenging to think through creative situations and think outside the box...

He wanted his team to grow and not just "take questions to Nate", where he had to pass answers along all the time.

And while he knew everything would be okay if he was around... eventually, he wouldn't be.

He wanted to take a vacation too!

He needed his people to grow so things would still run without him.

He knew he needed to change the way he was leading his team, so he turned to the B2B Leaders Academy for help.

The first thing he grabbed onto in the Coaching Module of the Academy was this sentence...

"I don't have the answers."

Now, typically he did - or he could come up with a pretty good way to move forward - but just by telling his team, "Hey, here's how I'll do it. Go and conquer" wasn't really helping them to grow.

This mindset shift has allowed him to go into any conversation and help his team self-realize their solutions, and continue to grow out of those conversations.

But that wasn't all he did - he learned how to be present with his team by using a proven coaching framework.

He closed down his inbox, shut down Slack, and really paid attention to who he was talking to, what they were saying, and their emotional state.

He learned to ask questions that met them on their emotional level and respond in a way that led them to the result that they were looking for.

They started to come up with their own decisions, and even though their ideas might've been different from his - they got the opportunity to learn and started to become confident and happy with the results they were achieving from their own decisions.

Instead of spoon-feeding answers and becoming the bottleneck, Nate would say something like, "Hey, our customer is currently in this situation. What are your thoughts on how we best tackle this?"

And because he'd hired experienced and smart people, they'd almost always reach the right conclusion that was in line with the company's objectives.

Most importantly though, Nate is no longer a bottleneck and he is empowering the growth and success of the individuals on his team.

Nate is an Elite Leader.