Why Good Leaders Feel Behind, Even When They Are Working Hard

Most of the leaders I coach are not sitting around avoiding work.

They are working constantly. Answering emails. Putting out fires. Managing difficult personalities. Jumping into meetings they were not supposed to be in. Solving problems that should have been handled by someone else. Trying to protect their team, their boss, their clients, and somehow still have a life outside of work.

And yet they still end the week feeling behind.

Not because they lack skill. Because they never established a system to lead effectively.

I know this pattern personally, not just from years of coaching it. Early in my sales career, my sense of urgency was high and my standards were exact; proposals and slides had to look a certain way, tailored to the audience, brand colors right, nothing misspelled and it had to have my tucked on it. The personalized touch was so important to me.

When I was not given enough support or people did not follow through once they got the work done he became frustrated. I felt like I had already explained something once, I would get frustrated and take it back myself. It was faster. I would take it home and work on it later at night.

It felt easier, quicker and just necessary. It also meant I was carrying more and more over time, and I was often becoming the bottleneck. What changed it was stopping long enough to ask questions instead of taking over, and starting to trust in the people around me one conversation at a time. Those that knew what the outcome was that we needed as a team. We discussed what outcomes and then I started letting them be more creative and take more ownership, and my stress lifted.

I was coaching a client recently who showed me this pattern in its most common form. Their team was understaffed, and the people currently in roles were not all necessarily skilled in the areas they needed support. So the pattern that formed was predictable. Take the person who seems the most capable, hand them an opportunity, and then manage every step of it so closely that it gets done one way. The problem with this is the ownership is now removed. It’s no longer someone else’s project and they no longer take pride in it, because it’s only to be done your way.

You can probably see where this goes... The employee makes a mistake. The leader steps in faster the next time. Another mistake happens. The leader starts spelling out exactly what to do and exactly when to have it done. 

Eventually delegation stops and control or micromanaging starts.. It looks like instruction, and usually it is the leader’s way, because that is the only way they can trust it will get done right now. Letting it go again feels like a liability or too much of a risk. With limited time, it feels like it’s too risky to take any more time to allow someone to come up with the solution.

Here is what happens next, and it is the part most leaders do not see coming. The employee starts to resent the process. Not because they were corrected; people can handle corrections and coaching. They resent it because they were never asked about how they came up with their solution and insight. They were told what and how to do it.

When I coach a leader through this, I ask one question first. How are you talking to this person? Are you asking them anything? Almost every time, the answer is some version of, I do sometimes, but when things are urgent, I sometimes don’t have time to ask questions. I just need this done.

That’s the real issue.It is a time management, prioritization and boundary problem.  Underneath every theme I coach, mindset, behavior, communication, delegation, boundaries, there is almost always the same root cause: urgency addiction. Leaders who cannot see past the next six to twenty four hours. They cannot imagine slowing down to teach someone something when they are already overloaded, because slowing down feels like it costs time they do not have. So they do it themselves. It feels faster at the moment. In the end, it becomes a vicious cycle that continuously repeats..

The same urgency is what kills feedback.

Many leaders avoid the direct, sometimes difficult conversation about performance because they do not want to feel like the bad guy. They tell themselves they are being kind by staying quiet. It’s not true, because you are cheating your people out of the input that could help them grow, and they are letting a performance issue go unaddressed until the pressure builds and the conversation finally happens, except now it happens under stress, and it comes out harsh or too direct instead of developmental conversation.

There is one more layer that shows up. Sometimes a leader assumes someone simply is not skilled enough. The moment that assumption forms, the brain stops looking for evidence to the contrary. You stop seeing what that person is capable of, because you already decided you would not see it. That single assumption can cap someone’s growth for months without you ever noticing. This is the Reticular Activating System at work.  It works to find the situations and behaviors that reinforce your beliefs about someone or something.

The data backs up how common this is. Nine out of ten managers do not delegate enough, according to the World Economic Forum. On the feedback side,most managers avoid this because they don’t want to be perceived as the “bad cop”, don’t have the time, assume that the person hasn’t made changes before and likely will not move forward.  

And the cost is huge. Gallup has found that seventy percent of the variance in team engagement traces back to the manager alone, and only 26%  of employees strongly believe the feedback they receive helps them improve. The lack of feedback and coaching creates burnout, frustration, underperformance and a lack of engagement.

Here are 5 things to focus on if you struggle with these areas:

1. Put weekly one on ones on the calendar and protect them. Adjust the format depending on what each person needs; some people need direction, some need space to think out loud. Don’t cancel them. Your commitment shows and your people will appreciate it.

2. Run stay interviews or regular engagement conversations. Ask what makes this person tick, what is in their way, and what would make them want to stay and grow here. You will uncover challenges and roadblocks as well as areas you can support and elevate their performance.

3. Give feedback often: Treat feedback as an investment, not a conflict. Give the good feedback and the recognition they deserve. Also, give the feedback that is not working.  Share with them how a tweak can elevate them towards their own goals. Feedback is a gift. The leaders who withhold it are not protecting their people. 

4. Block strategic time on your calendar that has nothing to do with putting out fires. Time to think, to coach, to ask better questions, to see further ahead than the next deadline. Without it, you will stay reactive, and a reactive leader becomes a manager of tasks instead of a leader of people.

5. Seek out feedback from your team. Ask what you can do better. How can you lead better, support more and work better together.  When you create a culture of feedback, recognition and personal accountability, everything elevates.

None of this is over the top or unmanageable. But it is the difference between a leader who is constantly drained and a leader who can build a strong, high-performing, engaged team that feels empowered and looks for solutions vs. problems.

Where are you creating dependency instead of ownership? Not your whole team. Where have you stepped in instead of asking a question first? Where can you ask more clarifying questions to empower your team to do more great work and elevate their performance?

A single shift, asking and listening, instead of telling, is often the difference between a team that resents you and a team that grows because of you. If you’d like to schedule an exploratory call to learn more about your leadership or your teams, you can book a call here: https://radiacarr.youcanbook.me