Episode 274 Transcript:

This is episode 274 on the topic of breaking the cycle of doing everyone’s work.

Here are the two questions. This podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted, 

although the competition and the expectations get bigger. This show with a manager track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. 

I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and gross. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate and act as a confident and competent leader. 

You know, you can be.

Welcome to The Manager Track podcast. We’re diving into something that I see constantly, particularly with new managers.

Sometimes though this topic comes up with experienced and advanced managers as well and so, regardless of where you are in your leadership journey. I really hope that you get a whole lot out of this episode today. This particular topic, we’re gonna talk about this idea of being the self-sacrificing manager.

And often wrapping it into being a servant leader, which sounds nice and is often promoted as a great or sort of virtuous leadership style. It is one of the biggest traps you can fall into in your leadership journey. If you are the one staying late to finish work, that should have been done by your team. If you are the one who, when someone pushes back on an assignment, finds yourself saying, you know what? Don’t worry about it.

I’ll just handle it. Or, Hey, let me help. I’ll take on half of it, and you only have to do the other half, even though this was an assignment you tried and thought would be most handled by one employee in its entirety. But because of the pushback you compromise. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are moments where that really is the right approach. But again, if this is the default tendency and if you know deep down that you’re sacrificing yourself in order to help your team, then this is for you. I wanna talk about this pattern and why this shows up

and give you some tools on how to break out of it before it breaks you or before it holds you back in your leadership journey. ‘Cause one thing I know for sure.

This behavior will not scale with you. This behavior won’t grow with you. It will hold you back. Okay? So here is what the problem actually looks like in practice. Let’s say

you are delegating something. Maybe it’s implementing a new process or handling a client issue, and then your team member pushes back, maybe even pushes back hard, could even get unprofessional about it, but suddenly you find yourself thinking. You know what? Not worth fighting over.

I don’t even get why this is a big deal or it won’t even take long. What’s the point here? Forget about it. I’ll just do it myself then. If this sounds like an internal dialogue that you’ve had, then please listen to the end ’cause this is going to be really important

for you to reflect on and to challenge your thinking on this. What I hear from new managers or even advanced leaders who find themselves in this situation is that then they come back and they say,

I totally get that. I was people pleasing because I know it’s not my job. But somehow I’m also telling myself that I’m doing it to show my team that I’m a team player.

But here’s the thing, and I really hope that you hear this. You are not helping your team by doing their work. You are actually making everything worse for them and for you. It’s very shortsighted help or a solution to the problem.

But that is not leadership. You are now a fixer. That’s not what you’re here to do. You’re here to make it better for you and your team, not in the short term. But in the mid and the long term, the cost of all this is actually pretty significant. And I think this is where many people and many managers underestimate the trade off, right?

By getting this short term gain of just doing it themselves or being nice and helping out, rolling up your sleeves and being a team player, or you know, just doing it for them if they push back the real cost is pretty far reaching.

You might be handling coverage when people are on PTO. So instead of asking the entire team to help out, you are just saying, okay, no worries. You go on PTAI will take care of everything. You don’t even ask the rest of the team to help out.

You might be working super late doing work that should have been delegated. You didn’t even ask the team, to support you with something. You just think, you know what? I trust myself the most. I know if I do, it’s gonna be done for sure, and it’s gonna be done well. And so why even try to delegate?

I’ll just take care of it. then before you know it, you’re constantly being pulled into 500 different directions. Because guess what? If they notice that you’re doing it and you are happily taking it on, at least to the outside world, it appears that way, then guess who’s gonna be asked to take it on next time?

Yes. It’ll be you again. So the question that should be keeping you up at night is not how can I squeeze in more hours in the day so I can do all these things, but it is, am I enabling my team to not get things done or to not help out? And the answer you probably guess is yes, and yes you are.

When you constantly step in and you do work that actually belongs to someone else, you are teaching them that they don’t actually have to do it. You are training them to come to you when things get tough, because they know that you’ll handle it. They know that you will take it on. When they go on PTO, they won’t ask a colleague to take care of it.

No, they’ll come to you because, you know what a, if their manager does their job when they come back, they know for sure that there aren’t gonna be any issues. ’cause again, you’re probably the one who knows most or have most experience if you typically jump in. So it’s the safest thing for them to do.

It’s probably the best thing in terms of their work quality to ask you. And so why would they ask anyone else? They know you’re gonna say yes. So there you are, you’re gonna be the first, go-to person. So when you constantly step in and do work that belongs to someone else, you are really teaching them that they don’t have to do it.

You’re training them to come to you when things get tough, because again, they know you’ll handle it. And all the while you are doing this, and in the moment it might even feel good, you might feel like, oh, I’m so helping and they’re gonna recognize and like me because of that. But you are burning yourself out and you are not developing your people.

And honestly, you are also not actually doing your job as a manager. And that last one might be the toughest one to swallow. I get that. Now, we obviously need to find some solutions here and do things differently, but before we get into the solution, let’s briefly talk about what really drives this behavior, because we have to understand what’s happening in your head when someone pushes back on an assignment or when you’re being asked to help,

even if you shouldn’t before we even talk about any additional tools or anything else. It is that awareness that we need to build first. So if you are thinking, Hey, if I push back and I say, I get that you’re not happy with this, but I still need you to do it.

They’re going to view me differently. They’ll see me as someone who just doesn’t care or someone who’s not willing to help, or they’ll just have a negative view of me as a supervisor and they won’t like or respect me anymore. And this is the crux of the problem. You are worried about being liked in the moment that you will actually sacrifice your effectiveness as a leader.

And with that, the respect that people have for you. So the most important thing to really learn and get comfortable with. Embrace the fact that as a manager you are for sure going to be negatively viewed at times. That is inevitable when someone doesn’t wanna do it and you push back and you tell them, yeah, I’m sorry, but you still have to do it.

They might be agitated, that may hang up, that teams call or zooms call and roll their eyes or tell their roommate or their partner that that was crap that was not okay, and that this is unfair. Yes, they may directly or indirectly be unprofessional about it. That is going to happen. You can’t avoid it if you think that that is a problem.

Them seeing it that way, them reacting that way is a problem and that problem needs to be prevented at all costs. Then yes, you will continue to self sacrifice. And again, with that, you are burning yourself up, you’re not developing your people and you’re not actually doing your job as a manager. So the first thing we have to really understand is your team members will see you negatively at some point. If they see you negatively all the time, that is a problem. But if they see you negatively when you push back, or when you tell them to do something that they feel uncomfortable, scared of doing, they feel challenged by it or they just don’t wanna do it.

They don’t think they’re the ones who have to do it, but you with rational thinking, you know, no, that’s the best thing either for them or for the team, or for the company, or for their development, or someone just has to do it now. Okay? So everyone’s gonna pull their weight and this is just the weight that they gotta pull.

If you’ve really done that assessment. Then let it be okay that they may be agitated about it, they may not like it, and that is okay. It’s a short term reaction and many times, and you’ve probably been there too, the next day or after they’ve done it, they may actually feel proud of having pushed through or done it.

They may even have learned something. They may have felt challenged or they may have increased their own sense of capacity of what they’re able to do or how productive they can actually be. ’cause they were forced to do it. And so they actually feel better about it. And when they notice that you are bringing out potential in themselves that they didn’t see before, or that you are making them stronger or better or more knowledgeable, they will respect you for all of that.

And they know that you are actually doing your job. Even if on Monday night after that phone call with you or that Zoom call with you. They may not like it. Okay. So both of this can be true at the same time.

So to make that point even more. Think about the managers you’ve respected in your career versus the ones you haven’t. The managers that you respected. Even when they pushed back or disagree with you, you still viewed them as supportive because you knew they knew what they were talking about.

They have the technical skills, they have the experience, the competence to back up their decisions, and they pushed you. And yet even if that annoyed you at times, you still respected them. The managers, you didn’t respect, I’m gonna make a guess here.

Maybe they pushed back to, but there was still a gap, or they were new in their role or they were lacking expertise or experience, or they were lacking empathy and understanding. Or when they said, no, you have to do it this way. And they weren’t even listening to your counter opinion or alternative approach, and they did this over and over where you didn’t feel like you had much to contribute, right?

And so a big distinguishing factor here is the empathy, it’s the like actually wanting to hear your perspective and it is credibility when you know what you’re talking about or you have reasons of why you’re delegating something or why you’re pushing back. That demonstrates either past experience and credibility through that

or a decision making process or solid information that makes me or your employee see you as someone who’s put in the work to make this decision and be credible with it, it’s not wishy-washy, loosey-goosey, or a spur of the moment or an emotional reaction.

No, I realized by the way that you communicate to me that you are engaged, you are listening. You see my point of view, like, I know this isn’t what you were looking for. I know you would prefer to do it differently. And at the same time, for these and these reasons, here’s what we need to do or here’s why I need to do step in.

And when you combine these two, the credibility and the empathy, pushing back may temporarily lead to this negative view, but it’s not gonna cost you the respect. And so with that, here’s something that you can try out.

When someone pushes back, shift the conversation to the solution. You can say something like, hey, I understand that this isn’t ideal. But let’s shift gears and think through some solutions. How do you think we can solve this? Notice you are not saying just do it because I said so. You’re also not explaining why they’re wrong. You are also not entertaining the pushback per se. You’re really changing the conversation to the solution, and you are also not saying, here is what I think we need to do, or, you know what, I’m going to take it on.

That is not a solution. You’re actually asking them, what do you think a solution could be? How do you think we can solve this? If you are not taking it on, then how do you think this can be handled? You could also frame it a bit differently and say, hey based on my experience with similar cases, here is what I found works best if you have experience with a different approach.

How about we first try mine? And if it doesn’t work, let’s go back and your method.

Those are ways that you can communicate in the moment without being too cold, without not caring, but effectively pushing back. Okay. Now let’s assume that you’ve actually delegated something and you are not doing it. Great work, pat on the back. But then what happens when they don’t do it? Like that’s probably your immediate next question.

Okay, great. I delegated, I don’t know how receptive they were. They at least said they’re gonna do it, but then they actually don’t do it. Or they do it in a way that I just then have to go redo it or have to finish it up because it wasn’t good enough. And this is another thing that many managers struggle with.

And if you have the tendency of then just redoing it or you know, taking it back on after you delegating and saying like, you know what, nevermind, I’ll do it. I have some free time now. That is yet another form of how you are self-sacrificing and actually not doing your job as a manager so when something doesn’t get done, your first response should come from pure curiosity, not judgment, not assuming they’re lazy or they’re incompetent.

Curiosity, and this goes back to this idea. Of everyone being equal. So we trust that other people wanna do a good job in the workplace. They may not do that based on your own assessment, but that’s at least the premise that we have that people want to show up and want to do what’s right. And so when we start with that assumption until proven otherwise.

We don’t go in and say you didn’t do it, or Here’s what you need to do. You have to do this by end of tonight. No, we say, Hey, I noticed this is still pending. I got curious if you have any questions, let me know if you need any help before the deadline on Friday. I then iterated that I’m here to help if they need help, but I’m not gonna do it for them. I got curious if there’s something in the way, so I didn’t make assumptions, I didn’t tell them what they need to do.

And I also let them know that I’m paying attention, I’m paying attention to the fact that it hasn’t been done yet, and I’m paying attention. I know exactly when that deadline is. So they likely will get this, and either they say, yes, I actually do have a question, or more likely they’ll say, yeah, I’m on.

It will get that to you on Friday. If I have any questions, I will reach out and then I’ll get it to you on Friday. Because of the nudge that you sent. Or let’s talk about a different example. If they told you they do something by a certain time, but then they don’t, you could say, hey, you mentioned yesterday you were going to get this done by the end of the day.

But I just noticed that it’s still open today. What got in the way? So again, I’m curious, I see that you said yesterday you’re gonna do it. It’s not done yet. I’m not rep reprimanding. I’m also not doing it for you. I’m asking what got in the way, or what is getting in the way of this being complete.

You are not accusing, you’re not explaining what they should have done. You’re just pointing out what you notice and you’re asking a question.

So to quickly recap this, really think about it. Every time you do someone else’s work to avoid them being upset with you or them having a negative view of you, you are making a choice. You are choosing their temporary comfort over their long-term development. You are choosing being liked in the moment over being respected as a leader by your higher ups and by your team.

And the big part again, is you are not helping them. Let me emphasize this. If you continue to keep rescuing people from their responsibilities, you are kind of building a ditch for yourself that you’re gonna fall into.

But you are also the only one who’s learning and growing by doing the work. Your team isn’t, they’re not doing it. So you have to coach and mentor people to understand that in the future. So what I encourage you to do is, moving forward, to really think about to what degree that you are pushing back to what degree that you delegate full ownership of a task and you set clear expectations so that they know that they’re fully responsible for the quality and the deadlines, the amount of work, the scope of work, all of that.

You are not there as a backup. You are not the safety net. That is what it actually means to be a team player. That is what it means to coach and support your team for them to be self-sufficient, for them to contribute. By the way, on a psychological level. For employees to know that they’re actually and effectively contributing to the team is a huge factor for motivation and engagement.

The moment that they start to realize that their contribution doesn’t matter so much anymore, that they’re not adding that much value because their boss kind of redos their work or jumps in and takes things on, that is when we start to feel demotivated. I once had a manager, although it was only for the short time. I learned a ton from this manager. But one of the things that he did that made me feel demotivated sometimes for a couple hours, but sometimes for a couple of days,

was that they would rewrite my emails and it wasn’t that I didn’t know how to write emails, it’s just it was like stylistically different or occasionally there was a really important thing that they added that I actually liked.

But instead of telling me, Hey, call out this additional point in your email, they would actually write the whole sentence and rewrite the paragraph to add that statement. And so then I started to feel like I’m no longer contributing to the degree that I think I am capable of and I want to contribute.

’cause someone else sort of switched in and and redid it. And that is often a source for disengagement.

So to break that cycle, here are four specific steps that I recommend. First, start paying attention to when you’re about to do someone else’s work. In that moment, pause and even if you want to say like, Hey, you know what? I’ll just handle it.

Stop and tell them instead, let me think about this and get back to you. Don’t agree, but insert a pause.

Second, when you catch yourself in the pattern, ask solution-focused questions instead. How do you think we should handle this? What would you need to make this work or how can I help you get this done? And then third, accept that some people might not like you in a moment when you hold boundaries. That is totally okay.

That’s actually part of the job. And I know we don’t talk about it often. It’s not something we often read in a leadership book. It’s not something that gets promoted a whole lot, but that is the truth. That is what I see. Working with leaders day in and day out is inevitable.

And then the fourth one is follow through. So when you delegate something, pay attention to whether it gets done, if it doesn’t, instead of telling them what to do or you know, whereas telling, doing, doing it yourself. Ask those curiosity based questions.

Okay. So those are the four steps that will help you break this cycle of being a self-sacrificing manager.

Because again, every time you rescue someone from a challenge or from doing something they might not wanna do, you’re kind of robbing them of a challenge or doing something that they haven’t done before or a bit uncomfortable about.

You are robbing them of the opportunity to grow. You might even be sending that indirect message that you don’t think they’re capable of figuring it out or capable of handling it, which is why you just did it without even asking.

You didn’t even delegate it or try to delegate it. You just took the whole thing on. And I know that this is hard, that it can feel easier in the moment to just do the work yourself, because you know that you’ll get it done. You’ll know you get it done on time and you can avoid an uncomfortable conversation.

But in leadership, we’re not playing the short game. You are building a team, you’re developing people, and you’re creating systems that will work whether you are there or not. And ultimately, you probably also wanna grow and scale as a leader and not be stuck. So don’t dig yourself into that ditch.

Your team doesn’t need you to be their savior, then need you to be their manager. Okay? So I know that this is not easy, but if this resonated with you. Then give it some time and just really observe yourself first. When does it happen?

How does it happen? Add those pauses in and start to look at the whole process when you delegate work to when you jump in to do work and to what kind of questions or what kind of scenarios you take on more than is actually yours to take on.

Being a self-sacrificing manager is one of those common traps, especially new managers fall into because they wanna look good and they wanna validate to others that they’re a team player, that they’re not in any way arrogant or feel that they’re anything better.

So they self sacrifice. Or maybe even because they feel like they’re not carrying the same load as they used to, because now they have these management responsibilities and you know, they’re not quite as task oriented as other things. I mean, in one-on-one conversations or in emails, you’re probably often supporting your team with tasks, but not really having your own tasks.

Or not as much of your own tasks or projects to complete. And so feeling like you are contributing and you’re pulling your weight, maybe just a reason for when you want to help out, jump in, take on the work, and you hope that you get rewarded by being liked and by being seen as a nice, supportive servant leader who’s also a team player.

But that thought, as we said in the beginning is backwards. That’s not actually what happens. Okay. I hope this was useful. Food for thought, and if you’re not struggling with this, then I hope at least this was validating that you are on the right track.

If you have any colleagues or friends that should hear this message too, please pass this podcast along, and if it resonates and you like this, we found this insightful, we love getting more reviews on iTunes or Spotify.

Thanks so much and we’ll see you next week. Another episode of The Manage Track Podcast. Bye for now.

If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it at archova.org/masterclass. 

The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there.