Stop yourself being sucked in

Self Improvement

Team needs your help? Resist the urge to get your hands dirty.

When your team need help, resist the urge to solve the problem yourself. Instead, focus on coaching them through the challenge. Ask them good questions to help them find the right answers. Give them suggestions of new approaches or ideas to try. Point them in the right direction, without doing the work for them.

Above all, use the tools you have as a manager to help where you can. Those tools might not lead to instant results - negotiating for more budget typically takes more than a day! - but they’ll lead to more lasting success for your team.

When to take this action

This action is from 'Do the right work, not the easy work' and should be used when your team ask you for help, when your team is under pressure

Need something else?

In your personal development time

Do your job, not your team's

Are you doing the easy work, instead of the right work?

Check yourself

In your personal development time

Keep yourself on the straight and narrow

Bad habit of doing the wrong work? Worried you might slip?

Keep yourself in check

In your one-to-ones

Help me, help you

Your team will surely know if you have the bad habit of doing their job for them. Ask them to help you stop, and tell them how.

Enlist your team

With your boss

Create accountability

Ask your boss to hold you accountable. What behaviours or bad habits should they be calling you out on?

Set a watchman

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