We'll talk about something that almost never gets named as a problem when managers learn leadership skills. And the reason is that on the surface, this thing actually looks like a strength.
My name is Ramona Shaw, and this is the Manager Track Podcast.
So this thing that I just mentioned is when a manager catches everything. When they're the one who spots the gap before anyone else does and then quietly fills it in. They're reliable, they're warm, they work hard, they never let the ball drop. And unfortunately, that is usually the person closest to the edge, closest at their capacity or beyond their actual capacity.
And nobody around them can see it, because from the outside, the work keeps getting done. And this often comes up when someone's asking for additional headcount and resources. Well, why? You are getting the job done even when you're struggling or you're finding it hard, because on the outside, you seem to handle it just fine.
So if this is you, I wanna be really clear about what is actually happening, because I don't think it's a time management problem, nor is it a discipline problem, like having too much discipline.
It's a pattern that runs and runs on its own, and it gets worse the harder that you work. So let me quickly walk you through how it actually works behind the scenes, meaning that part that stays hidden, and then one specific move that you can use to break that pattern.
So here's the cycle. It starts with absorbing. Like something slips on your team, the task is half done, a deadline is about to be missed, and you step in, and you handle it yourself. Because in that moment, rationally, objectively, right, this is the fastest thing, and it feels like the responsible thing to do.
You are taking care of your team. You make sure that no balls get dropped. But then you fast-forward a bit. You fall behind your own work because you are carrying other people's work on top of yours. And then the next step in the cycle is that you start to read that slippage on your own stuff, like not being able to really do in or invest in team development, not really able to set goals or participate in a learning program, attend a workshop, work on strategic goals and initiatives.
Then that becomes a sort of a personal failure, something I say, "I'm not good enough yet. I'm not doing that thing yet." And the conclusion is usually that we're not ready yet or we're not good enough yet. We haven't figured it out yet. It's very rare for someone to actually see, "Oh, I'm overloaded because I'm doing three people's jobs," and that is the issue in this whole process.
No, we do think, "Oh, I'm behind. I need to get it together. I need to do better. I need to work harder in order to compensate for that." And so working harder means absorbing more, which actually sends you right back to the start now, there's no villain in that. Nobody's taking advantage of you on purpose.
Your team isn't there to say, "Let's stress out my manager. Let's see if they can catch the ball I'm about to drop." There's no ill intention, and you are also not weak or a people pleaser as a result of this. The cycle is just mechanically almost self-feeding, and the reason it is so hard to spot is that every single step actually looks like objectively the right move.
It looks like conscientiousness, doing the right thing. And also, it's usually the thing or the type of behavior that you've been praised for your whole career. I'm gonna call out a specific example, but this is very common, so this person isn't the only one here.
But this particular manager was quietly redoing parts of her direct report's work late at night after everyone had already logged off. Rather than having a conversation about why this particular piece of work or deliverable was not meeting the standard and what the employee needed to do to bring it up to standard, instead, the manager would spend hours at night just trying to catch up on the work and bringing up to, you know, the standards, by doing the work themselves.
Now, from the outside, she kinda looked like a hero. The work was always polished. The entire team's work was polished and great. The employees felt like there was something about it: "Oh, my manager rolls up their sleeves, and they're super helpful, and they jump in, and they make sure that I look good when I present this work to other teams or a client."
But she, this particular manager, was exhausted. And like I said earlier, her own projects were slipping, and her team had no idea that anything was wrong.
Because she did this quietly, she didn't make a fuss. She didn't have the feedback conversations necessary. She just kind of felt like, "Oh, this is what managers are supposed to do. This is what is going to be the right thing for our team, and so I'm actually being the right supportive manager." Sometimes even wrapped in this idea that that is servant leadership.
So nice wrap, nice description, but a big problem underneath. The whole thing is a rescue reflex, and it's really important to see this clearly, either for yourself or if you have people on your team that you're managing who display this type of behavior.
It's not generosity, by the way, because the resentment internally as to, "Why do I have to do everyone's work? Why can't they just get it? Why aren't they going the extra mile like I am?" That actually shows up, and when you start to hear those voices inside of your head at night when you do other people's work.
That then is the signal that this whole thing is actually avoidance, and it's just looking like servant leadership or being very supportive as a manager. That's the outfit, not the actual truth. We might fall into this pattern because the hard conversation we would have to have actually feels worse than putting in the extra hours. But here's the cost, and let's get really clear on this, because most people miss it. When you absorb the gap and close it, the person who created the gap between their work product and expectations never really has to feel it.
They don't feel the consequences. They do not get the signal that something was missing because, again, you erased the evidence by simply fixing it late at night. So the accountability gets delayed, and sometimes for months, while the resentment starts to build and the real problems stay hidden.
Now, again, you might be thinking that you're protecting your team, but you are actually keeping the team from ever seeing where the floor is, what the reality is. Which is actually kinda not fair, 'cause we're pretending for something to be true when it actually isn't.
That may put us at an advantage 'cause we see the full picture and the resentment's starting to bubble, but the other person is at a disadvantage because they're misguided. They're missing what's truly happening for you and how they're being evaluated. Plus, there's also a physical component of this.
When you live in a state of chronic, I wanna say stress, but it's almost like a chronic over-responsibility where everything feels like it is yours to hold and we feel like we're holding everyone's strings and you have to constantly be on it.
Your brain spends most of its time in a low-grade threat state, and a brain in this threat mode does not think broadly or creatively. That's just, you know, understanding how our brains operate. It narrows its scope, and it also starts to get reactive. So the harder you push, the worse your actual judgment gets, and as a result of that, we actually become less effective at the exact moment we're trying the hardest to be more effective.
So in other words, I'm being really mindful here in how I share this. But being a good person and being an effective leader are not always the same behaviors in our minds. So sometimes the most useful thing that you can do as a leader is let someone else fall. Now, mitigating risks, of course, of being mindful about it.
But when you let someone else fall on purpose, so the person responsible for it actually feels the weight of it, that is not negligence. That is how a team learns where its own sort of boundaries are, edges are, and where the learning needs to happen. So while a good person would never let anyone fall or would try to do whatever possible for them to not feel the consequences, sometimes letting someone fall is exactly what teaches them the consequences.
This is when you have a child on a playground, and you realize, like, they're doing something, they're gonna bump on their butts. You might be making sure that if they do fall, that they're protected, and they don't get hurt. But them falling is likely a lesson where they realize, like, "This is not working," or, "I'm not ready for this climb or this slide," or whatever it is.
but you're mitigating the risk, but you're also not removing this learning opportunity from them, right? So what may seem like good person behavior would be to, like, pick them up and rescue them or remove them from the obstacle, which actually isn't the effective thing to do.
So to be clear here, what we perceive as good is only sort of made up in our minds versus effective. Now, we're not talking about throwing people under the bus, throwing them out into the deep end of the, of the pool. It-it's very much risk mitigated, but we're usually way too protective. And then the employee who should be learning, they never understand the consequences because you're removing all of that.
You're not actually giving them an opportunity to experience it and learn through the experience.
Now, if this is landing and you are someone who wants to actually build the skill of leading instead of just absorbing, if this is a pattern that you recognize is happening, and there's probably a few others, which is very typical for first-time leaders, this is exactly what we do inside the Leadership Accelerator.
It's a 12-week program we run for new and early-stage managers, people who were great at their job as individual contributors and now have to get great at leading other people, which is a completely different skill set. We go deep into this exact thing on how to delegate without abandoning your team, how to run an accountability conversation that sticks instead of quietly doing the work yourself.
It is cohort-based, so you're not figuring this out alone. You're gonna have a small group of managers in similar situations. It's learning through and with each other. Now, The link is in the show notes to learn more and get in touch to figure out if this is the right program for you. Now, let's get back to it.
So let me get practical about breaking the cycle. The hardest part is not just deciding to stop. That's awareness. It is the hand back, the actual moment where you give a piece of work back to the person it belongs to and not take it back when they struggle.
So most managers get this wrong because they make it feel like a, a punishment or they cave second the person looks stuck or comes back and asks for more help. So here's the approach. First, name what the other person is experiencing out loud before you correct anything. This could be something like, "Hey, I know that every time you have gotten close on this, I have stepped in and I finished it.
So this has probably felt like it was never really yours in the first place." That one sentence does a lot because it tells them that you see the dynamic and you're not pretending it was all on them. This is what I was alluding to earlier when I said your team members may like that you're there and helping and rolling up your sleeves, but there's very, very high chance that they also stop feeling fully responsible for their work because they know that you're gonna come in and make changes.
So then at this point, it's like abdicating ownership because now you brought it across the finish line, so it's not fully theirs anymore. And that actually feels pretty demotivating to people, and it removes that sense of ownership and accountability that we actually want to cultivate. So you calling out the dynamic and the pattern demonstrates ownership on your part and awareness.
It also lets them know we're gonna do things a bit differently going forward. Second then, give them your plain read of the situation like your own part in it as well. "Hey, I've been absorbing this, and that was a mistake on my side because it stopped you from ever owning it fully," right?
With that, you're not blaming them and you're not blaming yourself into another round of rescuing. You're just stating what happened. Now, this is when you specifically call out the next action and make the ownership real. This is now yours to own. Let's check in on Thursday at two o'clock, and if you get stuck before then, come find me before that time, not after.
Because that is the deadline, and it needed to be complete, ready for hand off at that time. So notice the check-in is at a point to review what they've created with the expectation that it should be finished.
It's not, "Hey, let me see what you got, and then I'm going to finish it up." And you might feel the pull to jump in and tell them exactly what to do, like the redlining it and all of that. We're not going to go in there and just now, not doing it ourselves, but basically dictating them exactly what to do.
We're really passing on ownership, explaining the standards, and then letting them run with it.
So here's a small thing that helps. When you catch yourself reaching to redo someone's work or dictating them exactly what to do, stop and ask yourself one question: "Is this mine, truly should it be, or am I rescuing?" That is it. Most of the time, just naming the reflex in the moment is enough to interrupt the pattern, because the grab is automatic, right?
The grabbing it back, and the question now brings us back to the forefront. Is this truly mine to own, or am I rescuing? That is the only question to ask. Now, many people won't say this out loud, but it's important: your reliability has become something that your team organizes around. They are under-functioning a little bit, just as much as you are over-functioning.
This is literally the dynamic. When you over-function, they will under-function. Because they know you will catch it. They know that you're the safety net. It's not blaming them. It's just what happens in a dynamic like this. When one person over-functions, the people around them naturally do less to match that.
Imagine building a team that runs well without you being in the middle of everything, and some part of you feels somewhat threatened by that, like you would maybe lose your value, because now people don't depend on you anymore.
That is another really good observation, because oftentimes the motive to insert ourselves in other people's work and over-function is because it makes us feel useful and like we're contributing, and we're needed. And especially if there's stuff going on where we're worried about not having a job, or we're worried about not being needed, and we need that kind of recognition and reward, then everything I said here won't work because you will naturally always gravitate to inserting yourself in other people's work.
So that's really important awareness underneath all of it. A team that only works when you are over-functioning is not a team you built. It is a dependency that you built. Two different things. And so know that with the idea that if you are not needed, if you're not inserting yourself everywhere as a result of that, you are going to get stuck in your career because you cannot grow that type of leadership.
It will put a big limit on your growth. So this is another part that we really need to become aware of so if this is helpful to you, make a declaration. Go to your manager and your team and say out loud that you're deliberately changing this.
Something like, "Hey, "I've been absorbing too much, and I believe it's holding us all back. So I'm going to start handing things back to you. And at first, it might look like I'm not being helpful anymore.
But that's not the case. I'm just trying to figure out who needs to own what and make sure that whoever owns the work fully responsible and fully owns the entire deliverable. That does not mean that I'm not part of the process or helpful along the way, but it does mean that the ownership needs to stay with the person who's in charge of it."
Saying it out loud matters because otherwise the change just looks like you suddenly got worse at your job or are not interested or no longer interested or whatever people will make it mean, right? Whenever we change something in our leadership system and our behaviors, if you don't tell people, they will come up with some kind of reason, and it's usually not a good reason.
So we wanna make sure that we explain why we're making this change, so everyone's on the same page, and it will make the whole process so much smoother. you're also making that new pattern legible, right? And you get buy-in before you change the behaviors instead of kinda confusing everyone after that.
Cause here's the main thing. Individual contributors prove their value by how much they can personally carry. Leaders prove it by what the team can do without them. Those are different jobs, different metrics, and you got promoted into the second one.
So as a leader, it's not about how much you can carry. So stop being the hero who catches everything, and start being the person who built a team that does not need a hero 24/7. And with that, that's it for this week's episode of The Manager Track podcast. We'll be back next week. See you then.
If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out at archova.org/masterclass. The second resource is my bestselling 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.