The leadership trap that looks like kindness
The leadership trap that looks like kindness
Your team's great, the culture's warm, so why are you the one running on empty? This week Liz breaks down a pattern she sees constantly in coaching, and admits she's fallen into it herself: rescuing your team instead of leading them, and not realising it, because rescuing looks so much like care.
Take the Leadership Mirror to see exactly where this might be costing you β https://www.edgeofpossibilities.com.au/authority-drift-index-take-the-quiz. This month there's also a free companion resource, Why Momentum Breaks Down Under Pressure, on the resources page.
Key takeaways:
- Rescuing feels responsible, it isn't, it's safety, yours, not theirs
- The more you rescue, the more dependent the other person becomes on you rescuing them
- A real client story: Kylie came to coaching burnt out despite a fantastic team and a genuinely great culture, and discovered rescuing was the hidden cost
- The shift isn't solving the problem for someone, it's empowering them to solve it themselves and painting the bigger picture
- Two questions to sit with: do you solve problems for your team or help them solve their own, and where are you carrying decisions that were never yours to carry
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/ayK-bkTk8MA
Read the blog: https://www.edgeofpossibilities.com.au/blog/how-to-stop-rescuing-your-team-instead-of-leading-them
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Full transcript
Your team's great, the culture's warm, so why is it that you're the one that's running on empty? I coach leaders on exactly this pattern, so let's jump straight into it. The leaders who burn out the fastest are often the ones with the best teams and the best culture, not the worst. Now, that should sound wrong. By the end of this you'll know if this is yours, and what it actually looks like to close it: the problem, the cost, the insight, and one shift that you can take away today.
So here's the problem. Rescuing feels responsible. It isn't, it's safe. Stepping in and fixing something for someone means that you never have to have the harder conversation. You never have to sit in the discomfort of watching them struggle through their own work. Most leaders never clock that this is what's happening, it just feels like you're being a good, available leader. I certainly have fallen into that trap in the past myself.
So what does that actually cost you? Well, the more that you rescue, the more that you keep the other person dependent on you rescuing them. They stop stretching because you'll catch them anyway. You've built more work for the future version of you, and called it help. This isn't a discipline gap, it isn't a time management problem, it's a pattern running underneath your calendar.
Let me show you what it actually looked like for one of my clients. Kylie came to me feeling really burnt out, and she couldn't work out why. Her team were fantastic, they worked really hard, and the culture in her office was genuinely wonderful. On paper there was nothing wrong.
Here's what we uncovered though. Whenever a team member came to her with a problem, she did everything she could to help, bending over backwards every single time, because she really loved her team and she genuinely wanted to support them all. But what she missed was that rescuing them meant that she wasn't supporting them. She was wearing herself thin trying to give them everything that she possibly could, and it was actually disempowering them from making decisions for themselves. Once she understood that, and yeah, it took a moment for her to see it as anything other than caring.
The shift was this: her role wasn't to solve the problem for them, it was to empower them to solve it for themselves, and to paint the bigger picture so they actually understood what they were all working toward. It freed up her time, and it gave her team real opportunities to show initiative and to use their own thinking.
The culture was already great, and that's what made this so easy to miss. She wasn't failing as a leader, she was just doing too much of the right looking thing. But once she started empowering instead of rescuing, and sharing the vision instead of just the fix, things went to a whole new level, not just for her but for her whole team.
So here's what exactly made the difference, and it's not doing more, it's doing less of the wrong thing on purpose. Notice the urge to jump in and fix it before they've had a real go themselves. Ask what they think the next move might be before you offer yours. And talk about the destination or the vision, not just today's fix, so they can start navigating their way there themselves. None of that means caring less. It means noticing the difference between rescuing and leading, and choosing on purpose.
Two things worth being honest with yourself about, not to feel bad about but just so that you notice. When someone brings you a problem, do you solve it for them or help them solve it for themselves? And where are you carrying decisions right now that were never yours to carry?
If either of those landed, don't sit with it, go find out. The Leadership Mirror takes three minutes and shows you exactly what this might be costing you. The link's below.