Quandary Mat: My Employee Does Too Much and Blames Me
Dear Hunter,
I have a team member I supervise who is smart and a hard worker. He’s great. But he’s so great that he’s driving himself to burnout. It’s hard to watch, and hard to help.
He is always overwhelmed and often lashes out at me when he’s stressed. When I talk to him about prioritization and other time and energy management strategies, he blames me for his workload. When I ask for details, I see that he is going above and beyond what I want from him. Sometimes twice the work that I expect. And his work product is excellent. It’s impressive, and I’m glad he cares so much.
Last week, he reorganized a bunch of our shared files. No one asked him to do that. I expressed gratitude for the effort. (I always do.) When I asked him why he did that while he was overwhelmed and missing deadlines on his actual work, he said “It needed to be done, and I wanted to do it for the team.” I think he was implying that I should have taken care of it.
How do I pull someone back from doing too much good work?
Signed,
Not So Above and Beyond
Dear Not-So,
We can think of this person as a solo crusader for excellence. Like Don Quixote even, an energetic hero with the right idea but lacking awareness of important context. (Just without the level of delusion of that classic character.)
On the plus side, your team member is producing high-quality work and a whole lot of it, and he is a self-directed problem solver. Every supervisor’s dream.
On the needs-improvement side, he is not handling some other key parts of being a high performer:
Managing his capacity
Setting priorities
Sticking to what he is expected to do by his boss (you)
Meeting deadlines on those key deliverables.
As well as this practical performance management problem, you have an interpersonal problem: He isn’t allowing you to help him. There are many potential reasons for this, from wanting to impress you or others at work, to thinking he knows better than you, or even to something entirely personal like ADHD or anxiety.
I would start with the practical requirements, and then move to the relational problem if the situation doesn’t improve. Why this progression? I think it’s safe to assume that being a productive high-performer is very important to this person. Specific feedback about how to grow as an employee will be taken seriously and will likely lead to action. I know, you have tried this already. What might be new here is talking about what you want him to do specifically as “professional growth” or “leadership.”
On the practical side of things, I suggest you move to a more involved management habit for a while. This could look like more frequent 1:1s (short, like 15 minutes) or asking for daily or weekly email updates with his status on his top-priority deliverables. Use a written list of his projects and deliverables that you track together. This will help you two stay together, and laser-focused on what you need him to do. Extra stuff he has nominated himself for? Not part of this list. (Related article: Quandary Mat Who's Afraid of Micromanagement)
For the good ideas he has for extra work to help the team, or for extra-high quality deliverables: Make another list. Those ideas are gold! This second list achieves a few things: a) it acknowledges his superpower of identifying opportunities for excellence and efficiency, b) harnesses those ideas for the team’s benefit, and c) it allows you to consider and prioritize which of these things he (or others) work on and when. The messy solo crusade becomes a team effort under your direction. (Related article: How to Say Not Now Without Crushing Ideas)
Finally, a few things to keep in mind on the relationship side of this challenging situation:
You might be taking it personally, that he continues to work outside of your direction. That would be a natural reaction. Try to resist this interpretation, because it will strain the relationship further.
You might want to save him from this situation. It’s hard to watch. That is also natural to want. Try to resist saving him. Instead, stick to coaching him in the areas of professional growth listed above (and others you would add to the list).
I hope these ideas are helpful. Keep me posted!
Best of luck,
Hunter