A Man Found a Cocoon
An unknown source told a story about a man finding a cocoon. It has a moral that we see as being pertinent to individual development, teams and organisations:
Beware of taking away opportunities for others to grow.
Here’s the story …
The What
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, and he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress, it appeared stuck.
The man decided to help the butterfly and with a pair of scissors he cut open the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily, but something was strange. The butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man watched the butterfly expecting it to take on its correct proportions, but nothing changed.
The butterfly stayed the same. It was never able to fly. In his kindness and haste the man did not realise that the butterfly's struggle to get through the small opening of the cocoon is nature's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight.
So what?
Like the sapling which grows strong from being buffeted by the wind, people often develop through challenge rather than in its absence.
The difficulty is knowing when challenge is useful and when somebody genuinely needs help. Step in too early and you may remove an opportunity for them to learn. Step in too late and you risk leaving them unsupported.
That judgement is not always easy.
It requires a degree of wisdom: understanding the person, the situation and what is actually needed in that moment. Sometimes the right response is to give an answer. Sometimes it is to ask a question. Sometimes it is to offer reassurance, create space, or simply allow somebody to work through the problem themselves.
This is where coaching becomes valuable.
Good coaching is not about having all the answers or telling people what to do. It is about helping people think more clearly, develop their own judgement and become more capable of dealing with similar challenges in the future.
The aim is not simply to solve the problem in front of them, but to help develop the person solving it.
Now what?
The next time somebody comes to you with a problem, resist the instinct to immediately fix it. Instead, ask yourself what they actually need from you.
Do they need your expertise, or do they need space to think?
Do they need direction, or would a good question help them reach the answer themselves?
Is this a situation where stepping in would genuinely help, or would it remove an important opportunity to learn?
These are simple questions, but answering them well requires judgement. And judgement develops through experience, reflection and coaching.
Much of our work is about helping people develop that capability: knowing when to challenge, when to support, when to ask and when to act. Through coaching, we help to get people to think more clearly about how they respond to the people and problems around them, so that support builds capability rather than dependence.
Because helping someone is not always about making things easier, sometimes it is about knowing when not to.
TL;DR: When we interact with others, it is helpful to recognise when people need to do things for themselves.
