When Being Good at Something Becomes a Trap

Have you ever noticed that you have a tendency to see a complicated problem, figure out what's wrong, and start working out how to fix it - often before anyone has actually asked you to own the solution? 

I've spent decades developing that ability and it's one of the things I genuinely enjoy about my work. Give me a messy situation, a handful of conflicting perspectives, and a problem nobody quite knows how to solve, and I'm interested.

The trouble is, once I've figured out what needs to happen, I can find myself becoming responsible for making it happen, too. 

There's a rather important difference between those two things.

I've been thinking about this because I'm increasingly aware that the way I use my abilities matters just as much as the abilities themselves.

When your strengths become everyone else's solution

If you're reading this, then it's likely that you also get a particular kind of satisfaction that comes from being highly capable. You can make sense of complexity, anticipate problems, and get things moving when they're stuck.

People learn to trust you. They come to you when things get difficult. You become the person who can figure it out.

And if you're anything like me, you probably don't mind that. At least not initially.

But I've started to question something. Especially as I had my oldest son move out on his own for the first time. My natural tendency as "mom" is to offer to help solve any problems that come up. 

However, when I step in to solve a problem, am I creating the conditions for it to stay solved? Or am I simply making it easier for everyone to continue operating the way they always have?

Because sometimes the reason a problem keeps coming back is that nobody has had to address the underlying issue.

The capable person keeps compensating for it.

I see a version of this in my own life at work and in my personal too. I can spend an unreasonable amount of time researching, organizing, and comparing options because I'm good at it. There's almost always a perfectly sensible explanation for why I'm the one doing it.

But being able to do something efficiently doesn't automatically make it a good use of my time.

And that brings me to a question I think many experienced professionals eventually face:

Have I become so good at being useful that I've stopped being selective about where I'm valuable?

The difference between helping and owning

I don't think the answer is simply to delegate more.

Sometimes people genuinely need our expertise. Sometimes the situation is too important or too complicated to hand off and sometimes we need to get involved because nobody else has the context to make a sound decision.

The harder part is knowing where our contribution should end.

For example, I might be exactly the right person to help a leader understand why a transformation is stuck. I can ask the questions, connect the dependencies, and identify the decisions that need to be made.

But that doesn't necessarily make me the right person to own every action required to move it forward.

If I do, I may solve the immediate problem while quietly reinforcing the conditions that created it.

That's not always leadership. Sometimes it's just exceptionally competent gap-filling.

And I've come to believe that the more experienced we become, the more intentional we need to be about this distinction.

Our highest-value contribution isn't necessarily the work we're best at completing. It may be the judgment we bring to deciding what should happen, what matters most, and who needs to own the next step.

Your Anchor for This Week

Think about one responsibility that's taking more of your time or attention than it should.

Before you take it on again, try sorting your contribution into one of three categories:

Own it. This genuinely requires your judgment, authority, or accountability. You're the right person to carry it.

Enable it. Your experience can help someone else understand the problem, make a decision, or build the capability to take it forward. Your role is to help them succeed, not quietly become the owner.

Question it. Nobody has established why this work still needs to happen, what outcome it serves, or whether the process itself should change.

Then ask yourself: If I stopped doing this the way I've always done it, what would actually happen?

You may discover something that genuinely needs your attention.

You may also discover you've been protecting a process, an expectation, or a problem that would benefit from being questioned.

Either way, you get to make the choice rather than letting your competence make it for you.

🩵 What I'm Loving

Here's a useful little AI experiment for anyone whose to-do list seems to grow faster than they can get through it.

Take five recurring tasks that consume your time and paste them into your favorite AI tool with this prompt:

"Act as my workload strategist. For each task, help me decide whether I should keep doing it, delegate it, automate part of it, or question whether it needs to happen at all. Ask me about the purpose of each task, what decisions require my judgment, and what would happen if it stopped. Then give me a table with your recommendation, the reasoning, and one practical next step I can take this week. Don't assume that being good at something means I'm the right person to keep doing it."

The goal isn't to hand your responsibilities over to AI. It's to get a second perspective on what you're carrying and walk away with one thing you can change this week.

And if AI recommends keeping everything on your plate, I'd suggest challenging that answer, too. 😉

I'd love to know: Is there something you've become exceptionally good at that you're starting to wonder whether you should still be doing?

Remember, you're still the author of what comes next.

Warmly,
Heather

Anchored in Possibility™
The future belongs to those who know who they are when everything changes.