Stop trying to rescue your staff all the time

Attention leaders: stop trying to rescue your staff all the time!

I believe helping others comes naturally to most people. When we see someone fall in front of us, our instinct is to help them up. I was brought up in an environment where the unspoken rule was “see a need, meet a need”, and so I’ve always enjoyed helping people.

In my first managerial role when I saw my employees thrashing in the water to keep their heads going under from heavy workloads, I would jump in and rescue them. But they kept drowning every week, and I would spend all my time saving them. It started to wear me down.

In the end, one of my staff almost pulled me under, and that was the last straw. That was when I realized the saying “a drowning man will clutch at a straw” was real. My lack of leadership experience and need to care too much for people almost cost me my job.

A trusted friend told me this later: “Stop rescuing other people to feel good about yourself. I know it feels good to be needed. You think you’re doing a banging job at your workplace but in reality, all this rescuing is limiting your employee’s potential for growth. Ultimately, it will hinder your company’s growth and stifle your development as a leader.”

It was a gut punch to my ego, but it was spot on.

All those rescues I had performed had created an unhealthy cycle of dependency between me and my employees. Instead of letting them solve their problems through trial and error, I had robbed them of their independence and the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, and they in turn began relying on me to swoop in and save them. Without realizing it, I had become the bottleneck.

As quoted by Braden Douglas, “When an employee faces a challenge at work, it’s important to give them the space to fight their own battles.”

To break the rescue cycle, you must first teach your employees how to swim. You need to allow them to struggle in the water. If you see their arms flailing, let them be. Of course, don’t let them drown. But only by fighting through challenges and figuring out solutions on their own will they become stronger, more resourceful and independent. ●