The Leadership Tax: What Is Your Need to Be Needed Costing You?

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Speaker A: High five casino. Hello and welcome to Leading Today with Dr. Lisa Bagby. The podcast where we have real conversations about leadership, emotional intelligence, organizational change, and what it really takes to lead people effectively in Today's World. I'm Dr. Lisa Bagby, and I'm so glad you're here. Now, before we get into today's conversation, I want you to do something for me. If you've been listening to Leading Today and you've gotten something out of any of these conversations like this episode, subscribe or follow the podcast. And by all means, please share it with another leader. Because here's what I know. Sometimes the conversation a, uh, leader needs to hear isn't the conversation they were expecting to have. And today's conversation may be one of those. Let me start with a question. What happens if your organization can't function without you? And I don't mean that as a compliment. Think about that for a minute. What happens if you're the person everybody calls? You're the person who knows where everything is? You're the person who knows how to fix the problem. And you're the person people come to when they don't know what to do. You're also the person who can walk into a difficult situation and somehow make it work. Your phone rings, your email pings, your team needs you, your boss and your colleagues need you. And somewhere along the way, being needed became part of your identity. You became the go to person, and everybody tells you how valuable you are. But here's the uncomfortable question. Are you actually leading? Or have you simply become really, really good at being indispensable? Because those are not the same thing. So here's the leadership tax. There is a price we pay when we become the person who must always have the answer. At first, the tax looks like success. You get recognition, you get promoted, people trust you. You become known as dependable, the high performer, the fixer, the problem solver, the one who gets Things done. But eventually something changes. You stop building capability in other people because it's faster to do it yourself. You stop delegating because honestly explaining it takes longer than just doing it. You stop allowing people to struggle through problems because you already know the answer. You become the shortcut. And every time you provide the shortcut, you may unintentionally prevent someone else from developing the muscle they need to lead without you. That's the tax. Your competence can become somebody else's dependency. Listen to that again. Your competence can become somebody else's dependency. And that is one of the most dangerous traps for highly capable leaders. Now, being needed feels good. Let's be honest. It really does feel good to be needed. It validates us. It tells us, hey, I matter. I'm important. I'm good at what I do. They trust me. And there is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. But leadership gets complicated when your sense of value becomes attached to how much other people need you. Because then delegation can feel like rejection. Developing someone else can feel like making yourself less important. Giving someone else the spotlight can feel like disappearing. And empowering Your team can unconsciously feel like, if they don't need me anymore, what exactly is my value? But that's not a leadership problem. That's an identity problem. And emotionally intelligent leaders have to be willing to examine that. So here's a different way to look at it. Imagine a parent who never teaches their child how to cook because they say, oh, it's easier if I just do it. So every night, they make the meals, they pack the lunch, they do the grocery shopping, they clean the kitchen, and years later, that child is still technically an adult, but still doesn't know how to feed themselves. The parent might say, look how much my child needs me. But what they may actually have created is dependency, not development. Leadership can work the same way if your team constantly needs you to solve the problem, make the decision, handle the conflict, write the email, approve the idea, or tell them what to do next. You may have a very loyal team, you may have a very appreciative team, but you don't necessarily have an empowered team. And there is a difference. So let me ask you something else. When somebody comes to you with a problem, what's your first instinct? Do you say, here's what you should do, or do you say, what do you think we should do? Those two responses create two completely different leadership environments. The first creates dependence. The second creates thinking, critical thinking. And leaders aren't paid simply to have answers. We're supposed to create People who can find answers. That's the work. And then, um, where is emotional intelligence? Where does that come in? Because sometimes we talk about emotional intelligence as if it's simply being empathetic. Uh, listening, understanding people's feelings. And, yes, that's part of it. But emotional intelligence also requires us to examine ourselves. Why do I need to control this? You might ask yourself, or why m am I uncomfortable letting someone else make this decision? Why do I become frustrated when someone doesn't do it exactly the way I would? Why do I keep rescuing people? When do I feel guilty? When I say no? Why do I feel like that? Why do I believe being available 247 makes me a better leader? And perhaps the hardest question, who am I when I'm not the person everybody needs? That is a powerful question, and you may want to sit with that one, because here's another side to this. Sometimes we don't become indispensable because we're controlling. Sometimes we become indispensable because we're afraid. We're afraid things won't get done. We're afraid someone will make a mistake. We're afraid our credibility will be damaged. We're afraid we'll have to clean up the mess. We're afraid the person we develop might eventually become better than us. And sometimes we're afraid of something more subtle. What if I delegate and nobody does it the way I would? Well, they're not supposed to. That's the point. If everyone has to do things exactly the way you do them, you've created followers who imitate you. You haven't necessarily created leaders. Leadership is not about replicating yourself. Really think about that. Your greatest leadership achievement should not be, I have five people who can do exactly what I do. It should actually be, I have five people who can do things I could never do do. That is completely different, and that is a completely different standard. Your job isn't to clone yourself. Your job is to expand capacity, to develop judgment, to create confidence, to make room for other people's strengths, to build a team that becomes more capable because you led them, you developed them. And this is where we have to talk about the high performer. Because high performers can be particularly vulnerable to this. High performers often get rewarded for being fast, reliable, for solving, for rescuing, for saying yes, for taking on more. So the organization says, mary, she can handle it. And then Mary thinks, yes, I can. So they give Mary more, and Mary handles it, so they give her more. And eventually being able to carry the weight becomes the expectation. Now, here's the problem. The behavior that got, uh, you promoted may not be the behavior that gets you to the next level. At some point, you have to stop proving that you can do the work and start proving that you can multiply the work through other people. That's leadership maturity. That's you being a multiplier. So what does the next level look like? It may mean that instead of answering every question, you ask better questions. Instead of, here's what I think, try. Well, walk me through how you're thinking about it. Instead of I'll take care of it, try, what part do you feel comfortable owning? Or instead of send that to me and I'll fix it, try what would you change before you send it? And instead of immediately solving the conflict, ask what conversation do you think needs to happen. You are still leading. You're just no longer doing all the cognitive work for everyone else. And let me give you another challenge this week. Identify one thing that people consistently come to you for just one. Maybe it's a report, a decision. Maybe it's a process or a meeting or a problem. Maybe it's a particular type of employee issue, but something that everybody says, just ask Mary. Now ask yourself, why am I still the person who owns this? Not why can't they figure it out? That's easy. Ask, what have I done or failed to do that has allowed this dependency to continue? That's the harder question. Then identify one person who could begin learning it. And here's the important part. Don't give them the task and then hover over them. Give them the task, the clarity, and give them guardrails. Give them access to what they need and then give them room. Because development requires some discomfort. That's where growth happens. If you remove every opportunity for someone to struggle, you also remove opportunities for them to grow. And one more thing. If you're listening to this and thinking, Dr. Bagby, but I'm indispensable because nobody else is doing what they're supposed to do. I hear you. And sometimes that's absolutely true. There are poorly designed systems. There are capability gaps. There are accountability problems. There are under resourced teams, there's organizations that reward heroics instead of building sustainable systems. But that's precisely why the question becomes, am I solving the problem or am I becoming the workaround for a broken system? Because if the organization can only function m because one extraordinary person keeps compensating for systemic problems, that's not organizational excellence. That's actually organizational fragility. And eventually even the strongest person gets tired. So here's the question I want to leave you with, not how valuable am I? I think most successful leaders already know they're valuable. So instead ask what becomes possible when I lead or because I lead? That's different. When you're gone for a week, does the team collapse or do they rise? When you don't have the answer, do people panic or do they think when you're not in the room, do people wait or do they lead? And when you move on to your next opportunity, does everything stop or does the work continue perhaps even better than before? Hmm. Let's think about that for a moment. Because ultimately, the measure of your leadership isn't how much people need you, it's how much capacity you've created in the people around you. That's the legacy. That's your legacy. Not everybody needed me. That's leadership, what we're talking about. And that's our Leading Today conversation. I want you to think about the leadership tax. Where might your need to be needed be costing you? Where might your competence be creating dependency? And where could you step back, not because you care less, but because you are finally ready to lead at a higher level. Because sometimes the most powerful thing a leader can say is it isn't I've got this, it's you've got this. And I'm going to give you the space to prove it. I'm Dr. Lisa Bagby and this has been Leading Today. If this conversation encouraged you or made you think differently about your own leadership, please like this episode, subscribe or follow the podcast and share it with another leader who needs to hear it. And I'd love to hear from you. Where are you still doing something that someone else on your team should be learning to do? That's your question for today. I'll catch you next time on leading today with Dr. Lisa Bagby. Thank you for joining me.

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