What’s Actually Mine to Do?

What we’re rewarded for becomes harder to put down.

We underestimate something extremely powerful when we talk about changing how people work. It is more than a process, new software or even a new reporting structure. If you are introducing a genuinely new way of working, you aren’t merely asking an employee to adopt a different behavior. You are asking them to unlearn - likely something that took years of professional polish and daily discipline to master.

You are asking them to put down something that has not only worked, but worked phenomenally well. And somewhere along the way, what they did may have become part of who they are.

Heavy? Almost too much to factor into that corporate PMO project? Maybe. But it is the truth when you are working with people. People fuel your business, and behavior and belief ultimately fuel how they work.

Think about a situation where you wanted to uplift a team - to scale into that coveted “high-performing team” model. You set goals. You bought and installed new tech to support the goals. You delegated responsibility for actual outcomes. You communicated progress and provided feedback. But somehow the new processes sputtered, especially at crunch time. Quarter end arrived and everyone reverted to relying on that one key teammate to hurl the team over the line.

You knew it wasn’t scalable. You knew the team could not build broader capability while everything continued to route through one person. So what was missing?

We tend to ask whether the leader trusts the team enough to delegate. Maybe we’re starting one question too late.

Does the leader trust themselves enough to let go?

To recognize when intervention is necessary - and when it isn’t? To tolerate a result they could have improved themselves? To believe that allowing someone else to struggle isn’t the same thing as failing to lead?

When a strength becomes an identity

Years ago, a coach introduced me to an idea that has stuck with me ever since: our weaknesses aren’t always the opposite of our strengths. Sometimes they’re our strengths operating in overdrive. Someone who comes off as relentless may be an achiever who takes deep satisfaction from producing. Someone who appears overly agreeable, a yes man if you will, may be trying hard to build consensus because conflict is uncomfortable.

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. For me, I built a reputation as a fixer. Give me the complicated problem. The one nobody quite knows what to do with. The thing that crosses teams, systems, definitions, processes and politics. The thing that has been sitting around because nobody can quite figure out where it belongs.

I loved those problems. And I was good at them.

Being the fixer wasn’t something I was trying to unlearn. It was part of my professional identity. Until, eventually, I started hearing that being a fixer wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Workhorses aren’t show horses. Workhorses don’t get promoted, or paid.

There was truth in some of that. But “stop being a fixer” never quite sat right with me. Because the capability itself wasn’t the problem. It had worked - and worked phenomenally well.

I solved hard problems. People noticed. And eventually, being good at fixing became being known as the fixer. I was the person who sees around corners. The one who catches what everyone else misses. The one people call when nobody quite knows what to do.

That’s the tricky thing about a strength that gets rewarded over and over again. Somewhere along the way, it can stop feeling like something you do and start feeling like part of who you are.

So when we attempt to introduce a better way to work, we aren’t simply asking for a behavior change. It can feel like we’re asking for a new identity - as if someone is being asked to let go of part of who they are.

The people who have succeeded may have the most to unlearn

We tend to talk about change as though the primary challenge is learning something new. Sometimes it is. But sometimes the harder work is unlearning something old - especially when the old thing worked.

You don’t become the fixer accidentally. You fix things. People notice. Then they bring you harder things to fix. Your expertise compounds. Your reliability compounds. Your ability to recognize patterns compounds. Eventually, people know exactly what to bring you. And you know exactly what to do when they do.

The behavior and the reward reinforce each other. Until the context changes.

Maybe you’re leading instead of doing. Maybe you’re building a team. Maybe the organization needs capability distributed rather than concentrated. Maybe someone else needs the opportunity to struggle with something long enough to develop judgment of their own.

The capability that got you here can become the mechanism that gets in your way.

Not because it stopped being a strength. Because you haven’t yet learned when not to use it.

I was reminded of that recently in a place that had absolutely nothing to do with work.

When you’re inside the problem

Back-to-school season brought a collection of technology problems, administrative issues and processes that didn’t seem to be working particularly well. The adults responsible for the system weren’t exactly attempting to proactively resolve it. And the operational burden kept getting pushed downstream onto parents and kids. Sound familiar?

This is exactly the kind of thing that gets my attention. I can see the system problem. I can see the workaround. I can see who’s absorbing the cost of the workaround. Professionally, I can step back from something like that and diagnose it dispassionately.

Except this time one of the kids absorbing it was mine. And that changes things.

When the outcome means something about you, you’re no longer merely diagnosing the situation. You’re inside it.

I found myself increasingly involved in my oldest son’s organization of his schoolwork. Granted, he isn’t even in the double digits yet, but he had built a reputation for being reliable and on top of things. This dynamic was odd and, admittedly, frustrating.

Some of my involvement felt justified. If he forgets an assignment that was clearly communicated, yes, that’s his mistake to make and his consequence to experience. But when the technology doesn’t work? When the result is unclear instructions and expectations? When the corrective process itself is inadequate?

Then allowing him to “learn from the consequence” felt less like a lesson in responsibility and more like asking him to absorb the consequences of an adult system failure.

Do I do more? Or do I do less and trust him?

I couldn’t quite tell anymore. And because I couldn’t tell, doing something felt safer than risking the possibility that later I’d discover I should have done something. So, almost instinctively, I did more.

What would “good enough” actually look like?

Eventually I was asked a question that stopped me: What would handling this “good enough” actually have looked like? My answer surprised me. Trust him to organize his own schoolwork. And if he messed it up, let him learn from the experience.

Good enough wasn’t doing more for him. It was doing less.

That’s uncomfortable when your instinct is to act. It’s even more uncomfortable when you care deeply about the outcome.

I realized that part of the problem was rooted in me trying to “do right by him.” It had pulled me into doing too much.

Underneath that was something harder to admit: I trusted myself less than I wanted to trust him.

Could I trust myself to recognize when he genuinely needed my help? Could I trust myself not to intervene when he didn’t? Could I watch him struggle with something I knew I could make easier? Could I tolerate the possibility of a less-than-perfect outcome without interpreting it as evidence that I hadn’t done enough?

Because if preventing a bad outcome becomes the evidence that you’re doing a good job, there isn’t much room for someone else to struggle without their struggle feeling like your failure.

Any similar experiences come to mind? Guess what. That’s not just a parenting problem. It’s a leadership problem.

Strength in overdrive

Think about the things you’ve become known for. Maybe you’re the fixer. Maybe you’re the expert. Maybe you’re the person who always has the answer. Maybe you’re the person who catches every detail. Maybe you’re the one who protects the team from chaos. Maybe you’re the person who can always be counted on to get it across the finish line. Or maybe you lead someone with any number of these strengths.

Those things probably became part of a glowing reputation because they created value.

There’s a difference between being good at fixing difficult problems and being the person who fixes difficult problems.

And once that distinction starts to blur, changing how you work can feel considerably more threatening.

If I’m not the person fixing the problem, what exactly am I contributing? If I don’t catch it, who will? If I don’t have the answer, am I still the expert? If I let someone else struggle with something I could solve faster, am I really leading?

The more important the outcome becomes, the easier it is to move closer. Monitor more. Check more. Answer more. Intervene more. Take on more responsibility for the result.

“More important” starts to mean more of me - more time, more energy, more rescuing - and can mean fewer lessons, less growth and less capability distributed across the team.

Maybe that’s an economy of emotion rather than an economy of scale.

The stakes increase, so instead of scaling capability through other people, we scale our own involvement. And the closer we get, the harder it becomes to see the thing we’re inside.

Distance isn’t detachment

This is one reason outside perspective can be so valuable. Not because the person outside your business knows your business better than you do. They don’t and shouldn’t.

You know the history. The personalities. The constraints. The decisions that got you here. The workaround someone created three years ago and why, at the time, it was actually a pretty smart idea.

That proximity is incredibly valuable. But proximity has a cost. When you’re inside the system, you’re experiencing everything it produces – good or bad.

Maybe your reputation is attached to the initiative. You hired the person. You approved the technology. You designed the process. You made the commitment. You’ve been fixing this particular problem for years. You’re not observing something from the outside. You’re in it.

Someone with useful distance can do something that’s extraordinarily difficult to do from there: zoom out, zoom in, and zoom back out again. See the system and the pattern. Get close enough to understand what’s actually happening at the point of work. Then create enough distance again to distinguish the incident from the underlying condition.

Distance isn’t detachment. It’s being close enough to understand and far enough away to see.

Sometimes that’s what another person can give us: not the answer, but enough distance to ask a different question.

You don’t have to stop being the fixer

This is the part I wish we’d talk about more when we tell experienced people they need to change how they work.

You aren’t abandoning the identity. You’re evolving your relationship with it.

You can still be the person capable of solving the hardest problem in the room. You just don’t have to solve every hard problem to prove that you are. The fixer doesn’t disappear. The fixer develops complementary skills - including discernment.

The old reflex might be: I see it → I can solve it → I should solve it.

The evolved version creates some space: I see it → I understand it → what does this situation actually need from me?

Sometimes the answer is still: fix it. But sometimes it’s: ask the question. Create clarity. Remove an obstacle. Let someone else work through it. Observe what happens. Allow the consequence. Cheer them on. Trust.

Observing isn’t doing nothing. It’s an intentional action. And neither is choosing not to intervene.

Discernment is knowing not only what you can do, but what is actually yours to do.

That’s not becoming less capable. You’re creating the conditions for capability to exist beyond you.

The expertise stops being a scarce resource that everything has to route through. Other people get room to think. To decide. To get something wrong. To learn. To develop judgment. And eventually the team can do more than any one exceptional fixer ever could alone.

But capability can’t exist beyond you without trust. And I’m starting to think we often talk about that backward.

We tell leaders to trust their people. Delegate. Empower. Give them room to make decisions. But doing that requires something from the leader first.

You have to trust yourself.

Trust that you’ll know when your expertise is actually needed. Trust that someone else’s different answer isn’t automatically the wrong one. Trust that a stumble you could have prevented may produce capability you couldn’t have created for them. Trust that your value doesn’t diminish when you aren’t the one who saves the day.

Only then can you create enough space for someone else to earn your trust - and eventually their own.

Maybe that’s the real evolution. Not from fixer to non-fixer. Not from expert to coach. Not from doing to some vague version of “leading.” From having a capability to having choice about how and when you deploy it.

Make the question smaller

Changing how we work doesn’t necessarily require becoming someone else. Sometimes it requires becoming more discerning about when the person we’ve already become needs to show up.

Maybe the hardest part of a new way of working isn’t learning something new. Perhaps instead, it’s trusting yourself enough to loosen your grip on something old.

Not because the expertise no longer matters. Not because the fixer needs fixing. Not because everything that made you successful suddenly became wrong.

You’re not being asked to abandon the person you worked so hard to become.

You’re learning to trust that person enough to know when they’re needed. Sometimes it’s easier to spot these patterns outside the office.

It's funny how easily we act as though emotions only show up outside the office.

Maybe that's why it was easier for me to see at home how my autopilot mode of helping was getting in the way of something else I valued: giving my son the space to develop his own judgment.

But we value our reputations at work. We value the rewards that come with them. Of course emotion shows up there too.

So perhaps the patterns we notice outside the office are worth bringing back inside it.

If we’re asking people to work differently, we have to recognize what we’re actually asking of them. The fixer may need to let someone else struggle. The expert may need to ask rather than answer. The person rewarded for catching every detail may need to leave room for someone else to own the outcome.

Those aren’t simply new behaviors. They challenge the very behaviors we spent years rewarding.

And that means leaders have another responsibility. We can’t ask people to put down the behaviors that made them successful and then continue rewarding them every time they pick those behaviors back up.

If we want a new way of working to stick, we have to make and hold space for it.

That might mean tolerating a slower answer today so someone develops judgment for tomorrow. Resisting the instinct to route the hardest problem back to the same reliable person. Recognizing someone for building capability in others, not only for saving the day. Allowing a team to work through something imperfectly instead of celebrating the hero who swoops in at the eleventh hour.

Sustainable change requires more than asking people to behave differently. We have to change what gets rewarded, reinforced and trusted.

Because a new way of working isn’t only about learning what to do differently. Sometimes it’s about learning when not to do the thing that made you successful in the first place.

So keep the expertise. Keep the instinct. Keep the ability to see what others miss.

But when you feel yourself moving closer - monitoring more, fixing more, carrying more - make the question smaller instead of the task bigger.

What’s actually mine to do?

And when someone else’s growth is involved:

Does this call for my help or my trust?

Sometimes leadership means stepping in. Sometimes it means creating enough space for someone else to step up.

The work is trusting yourself enough to know the difference - and creating the conditions that allow others to do the same.