Stop being so f**king helpful at work

Welcome back to Lead with Intention! I am writing this inbetween lukewarm sips of coffee as I juggle half term holidays and Pancake Day (for my international readers, here’s a precis, it’s the best holiday IMO)

And if you’re an international reader, I’d love to know what your favourite local holiday is and why - because I’m curious nosy. Reply and let me know, and I’ll celebrate them all ;)

Ok, let’s get to it. You saw the headline today right? You wondered, has Louise possibly drunk TOO MUCH coffee and it’s gone to her head? Well no. And yes.

I want to get real today.

One of the things I see most often in my leadership coaching practice is this.

The helpful trap

Ambitious, senior, highly expert and capable people, not getting promoted into the leadership role they want and deserve.

Because they’ve inadvertently crawled into a trap of their own making.

They’re so helpful, so amenable, so indispensable where they are, that their employer doesn’t want to promote them, lest they lose one of their hardest working soldiers.

How on earth could they fill the gap when you’re doing the work of at least three people, uncomplainingly, and with such a high level of competence and commitment?

Sound familiar?

If you’re nodding your head, you’re in the right place.

Why does this keep happening?

It’s happening, because you’ve been conditioned to believe that your value lives in what you deliver, not who you are. And in how busy and helpful you make yourself, so that you’re seen as indispensable.

And because organisations have designed themselves around people exactly like you. Extremely competent, reliable, willing to carry more than your fair share without making a fuss about it.

You learned early that the way to prove your worth was through output. Through being the person who could be counted on. Through solving problems before anyone even knew they existed. Through making yourself indispensable.

And it worked. For a while.

You got promoted. You got recognition. You got told you were “so good at what you do.” And every time that happened, you doubled down. More output. More responsibility. More proof.

But here’s what nobody told you…

The skills that get you noticed as a high performer are not the same skills that get you seen as a leader.

Being brilliant at execution may make you indispensable.

At the level you’re already at.

Until someone comes along who can work even harder, even faster, with even more functional skill. (Hey, did someone mention AI?)

And it also means you won’t get promoted if there’s a “useful-shaped” hole you are already filling.

Because organisations don’t promote people who are too useful where they are. They promote people they can’t afford not to promote. People who’ve made it clear (through their behaviour, their boundaries, their strategic focus) that their value isn’t contingent on how much they produce.

And the worst part? Because you’re so busy, so helpful and because you’ve mistaken these things for being valuable, you can’t see what’s happening until it’s too late.

If you’ve just recognised yourself in every paragraph above, keep reading…