Episode Details

Summary

Every team seems to have someone everybody goes to for help. New research shows that leaders may unintentionally create these go-to employees through the people they visibly rely on, increasing burnout without necessarily improving performance ratings. Discover how to spread expertise without exhausting your most dependable people.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Leadership Today podcast, where each week we share practical tips to improve your leadership. This week we look at how the person everyone relies on can gradually become overloaded, and what to do about it.

Most teams have a go-to person. They're the colleague people approach when they are unsure what to do, when something needs fixing, or when a deadline is approaching. They know how things work, they are reliable, and they are usually generous with their time. Having someone like that in a team can seem like an enormous advantage,

but new research suggests there may be a hidden cost.

The researchers began with an interesting question. When someone needs help at work, how do they decide who to approach? We might assume that people carefully consider who has the right expertise for the particular problem. Sometimes they probably do. But that requires knowledge and effort, and often we use shortcuts instead.

One shortcut appears to be looking at who the leader relies on. If the manager regularly goes to one particular person for advice, information or assistance, other team members notice. They infer that this person must be knowledgeable, capable and safe to approach. The researchers describe this as an "imitate-the-successful" shortcut. Rather than asking, "Who is best qualified to help me with this particular problem?", people effectively ask, "Who does the boss go to?"

Over time, those individual decisions accumulate. The same employee receives more questions, more requests for advice and more interruptions. Eventually, they become the unofficial go-to person for an increasingly broad range of issues.

There is obviously an upside. Being trusted and relied upon can be rewarding. It can indicate expertise and provide opportunities to contribute beyond the formal boundaries of a role. But the research also identified an important downside. Go-to employees experienced greater burnout without necessarily receiving higher performance ratings as a result.

That creates a real leadership risk. Some of our most capable people may be doing a large amount of invisible work that never appears in their position description or performance measures. Each individual request may only take five or ten minutes, but collectively those interruptions can consume a significant part of the working week.

The irony is that leaders may contribute to the pattern because they trust the person. We rely on them because they are capable, and our visible reliance signals to everyone else that they should do the same. The reward for being reliable becomes even more work.

There are three practical things leaders can do.

First, notice where the requests are going. Ask yourself who people approach when they are stuck. You can also ask your team where they go for different kinds of help. If one name appears repeatedly across unrelated areas, you may have developed a dependency rather than simply recognising expertise.

Second, distribute expertise deliberately. Instead of always approaching the same trusted employee, involve other people and make their expertise visible. You might say, "Sarah knows this process really well, so speak with her about that," or ask different team members to lead particular areas. The goal is to create several places people can go rather than one human help desk.

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