Do Your Job. It’s Just That Simple.

I have been in the professional world for 28 years, and during that time about 8 of those years have been spent in positions where it seemed my job was to do someone else’s job. I hate that. If you are making your employees do that, then they probably hate it, too. And they may not feel very kindly toward you, either.

When I say “doing someone else’s job,” this typically means fixing mistakes they make, or performing functions that are their responsibility but that they have simply chosen not to do. And by “someone,” I usually mean my boss.

Why do these situations arise? In some cases, it is due to incompetence on the leadership’s part. The Peter Principle suggests that people keep getting promoted until they reach a level where they cannot do their job well enough to get promoted again, and as a result they stay there in a position where they are less than capable. In other cases, it may be due to sheer laziness, perhaps a leader’s feeling that the bare minimum of effort is good enough, which leaves others to pick up the unfinished tasks. This is probably more likely to be the case when the leader is near retirement, rather than someone still looking to move up. Very often, a combination of these two factors may be at work. It might also be the case that the leader has some side business that they are doing, business that takes them away from doing the job for which their company pays them; this should be a concern in creative fields, since many leaders are Creatives themselves and may be on the lookout for outlets that let them use their creative, rather than leadership or managerial, skills.

What does this do to your employees? Well, first, it takes them away from the jobs they should be doing, the jobs for which you hired them. If you hire someone to be a software developer, you are not getting your money’s worth when you use them as your tech support for Microsoft Excel. If you hire someone to be a professor, but then use them for administrative support, well, you are spending an awful lot of money for a secretary. Hiring a hairstylist but then using them to manage the salon while you are out doing something else reduces your revenue (and theirs) since they cannot do hair while sitting in the back office going over the books.

It can also be incredibly demotivating for the employee They come into a position with a set of expectations for what they will be doing, and if they find that they are expected to do YOUR job as well as theirs, they are likely to look for employment elsewhere. They have professional goals, and if they spend time covering for you rather than pursuing those goals, they are not going to feel fulfilled. And of course, no one wants to do work for which someone else is getting paid.

What we are talking about here isn’t so much “delegation” as it is “abdication.” You can delegate tasks to your employees, and if you are doing that because you are just overwhelmed by your job, then do what you need to do, but be clear WHY you’re doing it, to avoid some of the motivational issues. This is certainly common in startups, where there may not be a lot of resources to hire enough people, and so everyone pitches in, regardless of their job description. The real problem, though, is when you simply abdicate your responsibilities, not because you do not have time to do them, but simply because you are not capable or just don’t want to do them.

If you are not capable of doing the job for which you are getting paid, then do whatever it takes to become capable. If, however, you are simply not interested in doing the job for which you’re getting paid, then you really need to move on, because you are not just stealing money from the company, you are hurting your employees, too.