Show of hands: how many of you end up doing work for your employees that they probably should be doing themselves? If so, how often?
My guess is nearly everyone has answered 'yes' to the first question, and some of you are not thrilled with the answer you would give to the second one.
It's perfectly normal to take on work of your team from time to time. An employee calls in sick, and you need to pitch hit for them. Another employee is inexperienced or stuck on a challenging task. A decision needs to be made that rightfully should be made by someone at your level of authority. These are all reasonable examples where you might have to do the work.
So what are unreasonable examples of having to do the work for your team?
Here's a few:
Your team frequently escalates decisions to your desk
Work gets busy, and you would rather do the work right than clean up mistakes
You take on tasks that you feel should be best handled by your own expertise
The above examples reflect broader issues in the team dynamics between the manager and their employees. In my view, it becomes unreasonable to do the work for your employees for 3 reasons: when it impacts their development, their autonomy, and their input.
These 3 reasons are flashing signs that you need to give the work back to your team. But what does that look like? Let's break it down:
I) Your team's development is hindered when you keep taking the work from them. When the work gets stressful, it can be easy to default to doing the work yourself in order to get it done "right" or done faster. Maybe it looks like you taking certain pieces of the work because you are good at it and enjoy doing it. Maybe it also looks like you wanting to protect your team from work that goes beyond their current duties and capabilities. The list can go on and on.
Whatever the reason might be, it may be to your team's detriment in their own professional development. You may have the best of intentions when trying to protect your team from difficult interactions with internal and external parties; but the result of doing this again and again is a built-in dependency on you. Now you are doing all the hard work, leaving you with less time to do other important work.
Let's also not forget the impact this has on your employees, who may end up becoming apathetic or disgruntled due to a lack of development opportunities. This affects performance metrics, and ultimately the bottom line of the organization you are a part of. Allowing time and space for employee and team development puts the work back where it belongs, leading to the growth of the next sign:
II) Your team's autonomy is minimal when you build up a dependency on you to solve their problems. This goes hand in hand with employee development. If you do not give your employees a fair degree of autonomy, then you are creating a certain level of dependency. Dependency creates more work for you!
If you seek to create less work for yourself, then allowing more autonomy to handle tougher challenges is necessary. Increased autonomy removes the bottle-neck effect of the workflow piling up on our desk, and allows your team to take on the work.
This increases productivity and work efficiency.
Beyond the quantitative metrics, employees with more autonomy tend to be happier and more engaged. Research from The University of Birmingham found that workers with higher levels of autonomy reported significantly improved well-being and job satisfaction. Additional research from Claremont University and the Center for Neuroeconimics studies noted that even just perceived autonomy impacts effort and work output - leading me to conclude that managers have a duty to both actual autonomy and how their employees feel and experience their own autonomy.
III) Your team's input is lacking when stifle their ability to contribute to the solution. Giving the work back is not always going to be solely on your team's shoulders. Sometimes it looks like collaborating on challenges with your team. If your employees feel their voice is not valued, it might be due to not giving the work back to them.
Giving the work back might look like seeking input from your employees more frequently. Bring your employees to the decision table, and ask what they have to say about how to solve the challenge. This process becomes necessary when it comes to complex, adaptive challenges! Anything that requires new learning to solve the problem, it would be wise to seek your team's input.
When you give the work back by seeking your employees' input, you empower them to think critically and become engaged in the work more then ever before. Combined with continued development opportunities and increased autonomy, you may find that your employees' input is exactly what is needed to solve complex problems going forward!
The takeaways:
Giving the work back is not about saying "here, figure it out." to your employees. Rather, it is about supporting and growing your team's capacity to take on the work in front of them. By developing them, providing more autonomy, and seeking their input, you can build as high-performing team capable of weathering any storm! But you can't do any of that without first giving the work back to them.
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