When everything
depends on you.

“Be careful not to become the bottleneck and then resent everyone for needing you.”

I recently had lunch with a friend who owns a retail store in Orange County, and he was sharing how burned out he was from feeling like he had to be involved in every part of the business.

It reminded me of a CEO I worked with years ago.

I was running marketing, and this CEO would regularly go directly to my creative team and give them projects. At first, I thought it might actually make things more efficient. Instead, my team started complaining to me about it. They never knew when a new project was going to land in their lap, what the real priority was, or when something they were already working on might suddenly change.

Then one day over lunch, the CEO shared about how burned out “he” was. He complained that he was involved in everything. Every project seemed to need his input and every important decision eventually found its way back to him.

That was the irony.

He was exhausted because he was involved in everything. Everyone else was exhausted because he was involved in everything. 🙃

We tend to talk about burnout as a workload problem. Sometimes it is.. but sometimes it has less to do with how much work there is and more to do with how hard it is to let go of it.

It makes sense that you want to stay close because you care and that you want things done right. But at some point, being involved in every little thing starts making everything depend on you.

So I told my friend the same thing I wish more leaders understood: be careful not to become the bottleneck and then resent everyone for needing you.

Originally shared on LinkedIn.