How To Stop Doing Your Team's Work - and Reclaim 10+ Hours a Week as a Result

The filter that builds problem-solvers, not problem-dumpers

In today's blog, I want to talk to the leaders who end up unintentionally doing the job that their team are there to do.

If that sounds like you, then read on!

It's a common problem. I talk to clients about this a lot and it creates overwhelm because ultimately, you're doing two jobs.

You are accountable and responsible for the job that you are in. But if you don't trust your team or if you're finding it hard to let go of what your team are there to do, then you end up doing more than one job.

And we know that we can't do more than one job efficiently or effectively.

This is how you end up with work that isn't yours on your plate.

How Work That Isn't Yours Ends Up on Your Plate

The challenge that leaders have is that this doesn't come in big lump-size pieces. It comes in tiny increments throughout the day.

It's a team member question here. It's a roadblock there. There's a decision to be made. And by the end of the week, there's all of these problems solved, all of these questions answered, all of these decisions made.

We feel as a leader that we're being helpful, we're being efficient, we're being a good leader to those on our team. But the reality is we're being everybody's go-to person.

And this is not only keeping us stuck and away from the work that we need to be doing. It's keeping our team stuck as well. It's keeping our team from developing.

Staying in Your Lane

I've had conversations with a client recently where we talked about staying in your lane.

Your teams are in their own lanes. They've got their roles. They've got their responsibilities.

And you have your lane. You need to keep an eye on your lane. You need to keep an eye on what is in front.

Your role as a leader is to clear that path, to be able to look ahead, to be able to look at the strategic interventions that will remove the potential issues that your team will face.

If you can remove those problems that are coming in advance of them happening, your team don't need to come to you with so many fires that they want you to put out.

In addition, we want to help our teams to develop their capability, their ability and their responsibility.

We want them to have ownership to clear their own lane. You can still be there to guide and to support, but you're not taking it off them, and you are not stepping into their lane to do it for them.

The Three Before Me Rule

Last year, during one of the Elevate Your Efficiency Blueprint programmes, one of the leaders shared an approach that they use: 'Three Before Me'.

The programmes are just as much about the sharing and the learning from other participants in the group as it is about me sharing the models and the frameworks that I know are going to help. It's what comes from the other participants as well. And this was so helpful. It's something that I have shared with multiple clients since, (with their permission, of course!).

The Three Before Me rule encourages your team to have three different attempts to solve it themselves before they come to you.

That might be checking Google or checking internal systems and resources. It could be asking other people. The principle is that they are looking at three possible ways to resolve that solution before they come to you.

We want to make sure that as a leader, we are seen as a way to escalate the challenges and escalate things to us rather than being the immediate go-to.

It also helps create team collaboration and cohesion, being able to help your colleagues within the team as well.

What this does:

• It filters out the problems that don't need you specifically. They don't need your level of authority, and it doesn't need to be you.

• When they do come to you, they're coming prepared. They've already explored different options. They've already tried to find different routes to get that resolution.

• They are coming to you with a problem-solver mindset rather than coming to you with the mindset that you are there to solve the problem for them.

This is the difference between developing problem-solvers and being the problem-solver.

You Think You're Being Helpful - You're Not!

This is part of the challenge that leaders need to overcome, because when we jump in and fix, when we jump in and be the problem solver, we are solving the problem in the moment, and in the short term we are moving things forward.

Everyone's relieved. The problem is fixed, things are moving forward, and everyone is happy... in the short term.

However, in the long term, we're creating a much bigger problem.

When we make decisions or jump in and rescue and we're giving people the answers without teaching them how to get those answers for themselves, we don't just take away their autonomy, we also risk taking away their confidence and reduce their competence.

We risk training our team to come to us for every decision, to run everything past us, and they lose their confidence. They lose that autonomy in learning to try things for themselves.

What ends up happening is that we end up training our team to be dependent rather than independent, confident, resilient, and self-sufficient.

This is why you need to stop doing your team's work.

What Humans Actually Need at Work

We need to adopt a no-blame culture to support this change in approach. It's really important that we create a safe space for our teams to make those decisions, to explore different options, and have that confidence in their own competence to find ways forward without running everything past us or coming to us for ways to move things forward.

As humans, we have a psychological need competence, autonomy, and relatedness/belonging.

As a leader, when you jump in and solve, you are undermining two of those three.

You are taking away their autonomy by making the decision for them, and you are taking away their competence by not giving them that chance or the opportunity to develop their skill, to develop their knowledge, to develop those opportunities where they can take action.

And we know that it's action that leads to confidence.

We can't build a confident team if we don't give them the opportunities to have those experiences, to create the belief that they have the resources to deal with what's in front of them.

That's what builds and shapes that inner belief and that confidence.

The cycle:

• The more we rescue, the less capable our team becomes.

• The less capable they feel, the more they need us.

• The more they need us, the more overwhelmed you get as a leader.

This doesn't break until you stop being the one who fixes everything.

The cycle stops with you.

Stop Being The Leader Everyone Comes To

You need to stop being everyone's go-to person.

Now, this is where the mindset shift needs to take place because this is not abandoning your team. It might feel like it in those initial stages because it feels very different to how you've always led, and if you have always been the go-to person, you taking a step back and allowing your teams to develop those solutions, to consider the options, to make those decisions - it might feel like you are abandoning them.

It will feel different, and that's probably one of the biggest shifts that leaders make.

Consider what helpful looks like at the level that you are now at, because the helpful that you have had before is not as helpful in a more senior leadership role.

The shift is changing how you help them.

Instead of solving, instead of giving them the answers, you are shifting to a more coaching approach through this.

(If this is something that you want to explore, it is the theme for the April workshop with the Leadership Community).

Instead of solving, we ask: "What have you already tried?"

Instead of giving the answer, we ask: "What do you think your options are? What have you considered?"

Instead of making the decision for them, we are asking them: "What options have you considered? What is on the table? What is off the table? What do you feel is the next best step?"

Sometimes you will still need to step in because you are responsible and accountable in your role, and that's okay.

You will want to make sure is this is an intentional step in because it is the best thing to do, rather than stepping in because it is the automatic thing to do.

There is a difference.

We are retraining them from coming to us, asking us to do the thinking for them. Because every time we do that, we're saying yes to their work and no to ours.

What Changes When You Stop Taking On Your Team's Work

When we create that shift, your team become more capable. They're developing their problem-solving skills. They're building their own confidence.

You have more space for that strategic work. The work that only you are there to do. It is your work. It's your list of things to do. It's your priority tasks. It's the space for the strategic work that only you can do.

Your team will be much more respectful of your time. There's a filter in place, so when they do come to you, they're coming prepared.

You can actually take time off. This is one of the biggest changes. A lot of people are stuck working longer hours or having to log on weekends or worst case scenario having to log on when they're on holiday because the team falls apart when they're not there.

The more we create this shift, the more we give people a space to learn and grow and evolve in the roles that they are in, the more we can step away knowing that they have things in hand.

We don't feel guilty. We don't feel like we're abandoning them. We can step away at the end of the day. We can step away for weekends. We can step away for a whole week knowing that we have a self-sufficient and confident team that have got things in hand in our absence.

Stand Aside - Don't Roll Your Sleeves Up and Fix

As I mentioned at the beginning, we need to stand next to our team, rather than roll our sleeves up and jump in and fix.

Leaders need to stay in their lane and support their people to become more confident and more capable in the lane that they are in.

We're not crossing over into their lane and we are not rescuing.

As a leader, your role, your responsibility is to bring your team up to their full potential. and you can't do that if you are always jumping in and doing things for them.

It is no longer about you being the best person in the room. That's not what leadership looks like.

Leadership is being the person who is there to support and to guide. You are there to help your team to reach their full potential and create an environment where they are self-sufficient, where they are resilient and they are high-performing.

It is going to require you to let go.

And this is where a lot of leaders struggle - to pause rather than take immediate and automatic action and replace it with an intentional response.

The question that can be really helpful in this moment is to ask yourself:

"Will doing this myself make my team more capable or less capable?

Am I helping them in the moment or am I helping them longer term?"

If it's less capable, step back. Stand next to them. Guide them. Let them do it. Let them do it for themselves.

And if that means they make mistakes, they make mistakes. They're going to learn. They're going to grow, but they're going to have your support and your guidance while they do that.

Lead From the Balcony, Not From the Dance Floor

Having read this far, I want you to look at your to-do list through this new lens.

How much of what you are doing - whether that is your to-do list, time in your diary, or meetings that you are attending - how much of that is actually your work versus how much of that could be with somebody else, or should be with somebody else?

Your overwhelm is from trying to do more than your job. Your overwhelm is thinking about what the other people are doing.

That overwhelm can be reduced and it can be removed.

It's not poor time management.

Prioritisation definitely helps, but it's not what a lot of people think it is. It's not poor time management. It's a requirement for better boundaries.

The boundaries that we hold as a leader are incredibly important because what we do is more important than what we say.

We don't need more hours. We need to stop doing the work that is not ours. We need to stop trying to think about what everybody else is doing all of the time. We need to trust our teams to grow and evolve and be self-sufficient, for them to have that autonomy, for them to work in a way that means they're high performers and they're creating great work.

These changes allow us to be in the space that we are in, and lead from the balcony and not be on the dance floor.

It is exhausting and it's no wonder you feel overwhelmed if you're trying to be on the balcony and on the dance floor at the same time.

We need to lead from the front and not from the center.

We don't need more hours. We need to reclaim the time that we have. We need to build a capable team and we need to move from being automatic and reactive to intentional and purposeful.

What's Your Lightbulb Moment?

I would love to hear what your lightbulb moment is from this. What's resonated with you?

Maybe it's the Three Before Me rule. Maybe it's the realisation that you're creating the dependency that is the biggest challenge for you right now. Maybe it's the question "Will doing this make my team more capable or less capable?"

As a result of what you have read, what might you do differently?

Remember next steps: keep it small, keep it simple, keep it specific.

That's how overwhelmed becomes intentional.

---

Ready to transform from reactive to intentional leadership?

I help overwhelmed leaders transform from reactive to intentional leadership in 8 weeks, so you finish work on time, take The Big Week Off with zero work and zero guilt, and create success that feels as good as it looks.

The Elevate Your Efficiency Programme addresses the root cause - the habits, behaviours and identity keeping you stuck - not just the symptoms.

The Leadership Community helps you keep the momentum of progress going.

Free Training: www.zoethompson.uk/quick-links

YouTube Channel: Intentional Leadership with Zoë Thompson

Podcast: The Lightbulb: Weekly Insights for Intentional Leaders