I'll Just Do It: How This Seemingly Harmless Habit Hurts Your Team
We’ve all been there as entrepreneurs and small business owners – a task comes up that seems easier just to complete yourself rather than explain it or assign it to someone else. It’s tempting to default to “I’ll just do it myself” to save time or avoid perceived hassles. However, this common tendency can seriously hurt our teams and businesses in the long run if we’re not careful.
Why It Happens
In the busy world of running a small business or startup, who has time to slow down and show someone else a new task? Especially when it often feels easier and faster just to tackle it yourself. However, this urge comes with real downsides. Taking over tasks rather than developing team members crushes motivation, innovation, and loyalty.
The Costs Add Up
So doing everything ourselves might save 5 minutes on a task, but it costs us bigger things like employee satisfaction, retention, and development. For example, when we deny employees growth opportunities by taking over tasks ourselves, several things happen
Employees don’t develop skills critical to their growth and handling higher lever responsibilities at the company.
Employees feel less engaged, motivated, and trusting of leadership.
Employees miss opportunities to think critically and creatively about solving problems in new ways.
Over time, employees feel less loyalty and may look for other job options.
The numbers add up, too – the Work Institute estimates that for every employee who leaves unexpectedly, it costs 33% of their salary to replace them. For a position paying $50,000, that’s $16,500 in recruiting, training and onboarding expenses. And don’t forget what your time is worth! Your time is more valuable than even your highest-paid employee, so don’t forget to include that when thinking about how much it costs to take over tasks rather than training employees and assigning or delegating.
Ouch! Doing tasks yourself to save a few minutes here and there results in huge productivity and financial hits in the long term.
Empowerment Opportunities
The good news is that catching and breaking this habit presents huge opportunities to empower our teams. Efforts to train up and delegate not only alleviate overwhelm for us as leaders but also:
Give employees growth opportunities to develop new skills critical for advancement.
Allow employees to bring fresh thinking and ideas to solving problems.
Encourage employees to take initiative and ownership over their responsibilities.
Drive greater job satisfaction, engagement, innovation, and loyalty.
The First Steps to Change
Breaking the “I’ll just do it” tendency requires intention – but pays dividends. Some helpful first steps include:
Step 1: List out tasks you frequently take over yourself that could be delegated. These might include calendar scheduling, expense report approvals, or status tracking.
Step 2: For each task, reflect on what basic training or resources team members would need to handle them independently. It could be having them shadow the task or providing a standard operating procedure.
Step 3: Talk with employees about your desire to shift responsibilities to empower them with more growth opportunities. Get their input on what training or support they’d need to take on new areas.
Step 4: Start small by allowing employees to lead tasks with your guidance. Check in frequently at first about any blocking issues or questions coming up.
Step 5: Over time, move into a more hands-off advisory role – focusing your time on higher-level strategic initiatives only you can tackle while employees own the daily work.
Our teams have tons of untapped potential when we slow down enough to develop it. Doing so pays off tenfold in stronger employee performance, innovations, and higher retention. It does take a conscious choice to not default to “I’ll just do it” - but it’s a decision with significant payoffs.
Summing It All Up
Doing everything ourselves as leaders might appear easier in the short term – but fostering employee independence, authority, and development pays more significant dividends in the long term for our teams and companies. By shifting our mindsets and practices towards empowering staff, we open up space for higher-level strategic thinking while unlocking greater innovation, motivation, and growth across the organization. What next steps will you start taking today to break the habit of doing everything yourself and instead develop your rising talent? The effort makes a world of positive difference.
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