The Indispensable Trap | Manager Burnout & Nervous System Recovery

Welcome And Why Stories Help

0:21 Speaker: This great story teaches us something about being human. I'm Cheryl Paris and this is Work Stress Anxiety. Together, let's borrow a little wisdom from a story to help us navigate a very modern world.

0:43 Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Work Stress Anxiety. I'm Cheryl, I'm your host. If you are new here, welcome. I'd like to welcome a particular person who I've noticed has downloaded the um podcast this week from Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome. If you've listened to the podcast before, welcome to. Thanks for coming back. I really hope you enjoy these episodes. I hope they're insightful and you get to um see things from a different point of view, which is why I try and do a podcast actually. Anyway, let's let's get on with today's episode.

1:28 Speaker 1: Um, I want to talk about Leslie. Leslie is uh line away, and uh Leslie's 45 years old, and she is there it's 2 15 in the morning.

Meet Leslie At 2:15 AM

1:47 Speaker 1: She knows because she's already checked the clock all times, which is always very helpful when you can't leave. She's thinking about tomorrow's staffing problem, uh, a customer complaint for one restaurant, and a supplier's decision that another manager um is waiting for her to approve. Nothing can happen unless Leslie responds. And somewhere between two fifteen and two eighteen in the morning, she finds herself wondering why no one seems capable of making a decision without her. You know, outside work, Leslie likes evenings with her mates.

2:42 Speaker 1: She likes learning about ancient cultures, she just had a recent trip to Egypt. Occasionally she's a bit nutty like me, and she does something like go-karting, which frankly, maybe the only thing she gets to drive sometimes without six people asking her to approve the route. But lately, even when she isn't working, part of her is still at work. Her body might be sitting on the sofa, but her mind is travelling around several restaurants checking what has been done, what might go wrong, and who might need her next.

3:24 Speaker 1: Because Leslie is the person everyone relies upon, and that sounds rather flattering until you realize what it is costing her. Now, I remember when I was a child, I watched The Wizard of Oz for the first time, and I remember when I can't remember the the the actual scene, but this is the original one with Julie Garland in.

The Wizard Behind The Curtain

3:56 Speaker 1: And I remember when she arrives and you see that massive curtain, and then the wiz the wizard appears, and he seemed enormous, and he had this really powerful voice, and there was all that smoke and machinery, and ooh. I remember, and then when I think it's her dog, I think it's her dog, pulls the curtain back, and we see that there's no great or powerful being. We just see it's just one anxious man pulling levers, managing appearances, and trying very hard to remain important in a system that depends entirely on him.

4:46 Speaker 1: And it kind of makes me wonder why or how actually, so many capable people that I know, so many capable managers have accidentally built something rather similar to what the Wizard of Orb Oz has done, not because they're wicked or power hungry, but because being needed can feel remarkably like being valued. And if you've been following my recent episodes or sharing these episodes with other people, just I want you to think about those other people trying to lead without quietly unraveling unraveling because this particular pattern is uncomfortable, I think, to look at.

5:44 Speaker 1: I think as a leader and a manager to say, my team, they just lack initiative, than it is to ask whether initiative has ever been genuinely safe for your team. And Leslie does believe she wants her people to grow. She simply wants them to grow correctly, sensibly, and preferably after running everything past her first, which is completely different to how Captain Picard would do it. Um if you haven't listened to that episode, um, I suggest you do. Um because I talk about, you know, I remember when I first saw, and I I'll be honest, I never have been a big sci-fi fan or naughty naughty cherry, but I have enjoyed watching some of the Star Trek movies, and the particular one that I think of is it first contact, where they meet the Borg, right?

6:48 Speaker 1: And it really challenges Captain Picard's uh management style because he has to trust everybody to do their job, and the thing is, he demonstrates it so so well in that film, anyway. I can't talk about any others, but thinking about it, I have seen a few of the others, I digress, right? But what I'm trying to say is that management style is about structured trust, building structured trust in your team. Whereas what what is Lesby doing? You know, everything needs her approval, and then just going back to her current situation, you know, there we're in the morning now, she's had a rotten night's sleep, and she's staring at her inbox.

7:43 Speaker 1: There are routine tasks, updates, questions, and decisions waiting for her across several different restaurants. Some genuinely need her authority, but many they don't. But everything arrives through that same doorway, narrow doorway of Leslie. And the thing is, she feels irritated that people cannot just get on with things. That overwhelming uh feeling because there's just too much to deal with, and then there's guilt because she can't bring herself to open half of it. So what does she do? She has even begun taking the occasional sick day, not because she's physically incapable of work, but because she just cold face another person needing something from her.

8:39 Speaker 1: Now, imagine being one of Leslie's restaurant managers. Yeah, Leslie isn't the area manager, right? And you make a decision, Leslie changes it. You try something different to bring new customer in. She steps in, you solve a problem, but not quite in the way that she would have solved it.

How Control Trains Dependency

9:03 Speaker 1: So the conversation becomes less about whether it's worked and more about why did you do it? Eventually you learn. Yeah. You stop bringing decisions, you bring requests. That's right, requests for permission. Not because you're incapable or you're lazy or you lack ambition, which is often the labels I think that sometimes are banded around, but because waiting has become the safest way to avoid getting things wrong in Leslie's eyes. And every time you wait, Leslie receives another small piece of evidence that nobody will act without her.

9:46 Speaker 1: So Leslie intervenes because she doesn't fully trust the team. The team become cautious because Leslie constantly intervenes. More decisions travel upwards, the backlog grows, and Leslie becomes increasingly exhausted. But more importantly, she starts becoming quite resentful. Then she looks at all those people waiting for her and thinks, you see, I have to control everything because nobody else will take responsibility. Every road leads to Leslie, every road leads to the wizard, and the wizard is furious about the traffic.

10:35 Speaker 1: But what if this is not simply a story about an incapable team and an overloaded manager? What if Leslie has helped create the dependency she now uses to prove that her control was necessary? And if that is even partially true, then perhaps the real problem is not who is waiting for a decision, but who has been, or put it this way, what has been happening behind that curtain. And if you recognize even a little bit of yourself in Leslie, you may feel an immediate urge to explain why your situation is different.

11:28 Speaker 1: And I understand that your standards are really important, your team really uh has made mistakes, and some people genuinely couldn't organize themselves in an empty cupboard. I get all of that may be true, right? But I'm asking you for a moment to think about this because honest reflection is not about declaring yourself guilty. It's about becoming curious, curious enough to ask, what might I be in uh let me put it this way, what might I be contributing to this pattern that I keep complaining about?

12:15 Speaker 1: Now, from the outside, Leslie's behaviour may look controlling, but underneath underneath it all, something rather more vulnerable, I think, may be happening. She might be afraid that a poor decision will reflect bad big on her. She might believe that she, if she was to loosen her grip, that standards might begin to fall, and senior manager would notice, and then her position would be become less secure. So when nobody makes a decision without her, Leslie doesn't simply see initiative, part of her may see risk.

12:59 Speaker 1: And when your mind detects a risk, even imaginary risk or perceived risk, control can begin to feel less like a choice and more about protection. And I understand that.

The Fear Under Micromanagement

13:15 Speaker 1: Now imagine one of Leslie's restaurant managers dealing with a difficult customer complaint. Now the manager has taken a reasonable, you know, plan of action, but Leslie feels the familiar that familiar tightness, the sense that this could all go wrong and somehow land on her desk. So she takes over. And for a moment she feels better. The uncertainty has disappeared. The problem is back in where she considers um to be her safe hands, right? But the relief teaches her something. I feel safe or I feel safer when I'm in control.

14:01 Speaker 1: And it teaches the manager something too, right? I am safer when Leslie is in control. That is how a single anxious moment can quietly become an entire management system. And there may be another layer beneath Leslie's need for control. The way that I see it for some of us, being needed has become evidence that we matter. If somebody comes to us, oh I must be important. If nobody can proceed without me, my position must be very secure. If I'm carrying everything, no one can question my contribution.

14:49 Speaker 1: I get it, because I think it's a very human belief, but it's also a thoroughly exhausting way to live. Because once you your sense of value depends upon being indispensable, someone else becoming more capable can feel strangely threatening to you. You may genuinely want the people around you to grow right up until their growth means they need you less. I'm sure you've seen it. I've been in situations where I've started a job, and at first, when you I don't know about you, but I ask a lot of questions, and um that makes the manager or my senior um manager might feel more um more needed, more capable, but you grow, right?

15:49 Speaker 1: Well, most people do in the job, so you grow and you need to ask less questions, and I think some people, because you're asking less questions of them, that your knowledge, your experience, your growth starts feeling threatening to them. Now, you may not threaten their position, but they perceive it as a threat, and that's what I'm talking about here. Leslie may have carried the belief that a good manager is responsible for everything that her team does, and responsibility gradually becomes involvement, involvement becomes approval, and approval becomes ownership.

16:34 Speaker 1: Before long, a success only feels safe, or perhaps there's some validation there if Leslie can trace her fingerprints all over it. But that creates a different, difficult, I think, contradiction, right? She wants capable people around her, yet she may struggle to tolerate the uncertainty required for them to become capable. Because people do not develop judgment by repeatedly borrowing yours. They develop it by using their own judgment and sometimes using it differently to what you would do. So gets us where.

17:20 Speaker 1: And this comes, I think, as the cruel twist. Leslie feels overwhelmed because everybody needs her, but being needed may also be what's reassures her that she matters. She resents the questions, yet she feels uneasy when decisions happen without her. She wants people to take ownership of their stuff, yet steps in when their ownership actually looks different from hers. No wonder she can't twitch off. Her mind is trying to supervise an entire network of people and possibilities as though vigilance alone can prevent uncertainty.

18:04 Speaker 1: Doesn't make any sense. This I think is why awareness matters. You know, like as if we've got some sort of magnifying glass. No. I'm talking about honest awareness here, where it asks you to look at your own parts without turning that reflection into some kind of self-punishment. Because shame says I am the problem. Responsibility says I may be helping to keep this problem going, and that means I may also have some influence over what happens next. You know, Leslie can understand why she developed this pattern and still acknowledge its impact.

19:16 Speaker 1: The explanation is not an excuse, but it can begin, you know, that process of choice, right? What if leadership is not approved by how many decisions come through you? What if your value is measured by how helpless everyone becomes when you're awake? Perhaps strong leadership is visible when people can handle, decide, and develop without you standing behind the curtain, pulling all those levers. Now that possibility may feel unsettling, especially if you're used to controlling everything, and if control is helped you feel useful, safe, and important.

20:11 Speaker 1: For years, right? But it also offers something Leslie hasn't had for a very long time, and that's the possibility that her team could grow without diminishing her, and that she could step back without disappearing. So if leadership is not about making yourself indispensable, what might Leslie beg doing instead? Okay. So which gets us where that I think that doesn't mean disappearing or lowering your standards or leaving everyone to improvise, right? I think it means recognizing that support and control are not the same thing.

20:58 Speaker 1: So let's think of it this way.

Structured Trust With Clear Boundaries

21:01 Speaker 1: A healthy alternative might sound like this. Okay, here is the outcome we need. Here's what I need you guys to be working around. You can use your judgment, but anything you're not sure about, just come back to me if you think it's gonna go outside one of these parameters. Leslie's is not handing over responsibility for a major safety issue or pretending every decision carries the same risk. I think what she's doing is she is separating the decisions that genuinely require her authority from those that merely she's been accustomed to dealing with.

21:45 Speaker 1: Because when everything is treated as urgent, risky, nothing can move without the wizard, right? Remember that? This may help because anxiety I think tends to make predictions and the present uh into facts. If I don't intervene, something will go wrong. If they choose differently, standards will collapse. If they stop needing me, I will Become less valuable. And I arguing those thoughts may not change very much. I appreciate that. But small lived experience often has more influence. It's one of the reasons why I talk about small steps, right?

22:38 Speaker 1: One decision handled safely by someone else begins to show Leslie that stepping back is not the same as losing control. And it shows her management team that using their own judgment doesn't automatically end with them being overruled. So Leslie might experiment by choosing one low risk, reversible decision that she would normally deal with, perhaps a routine staffing adjustment or a minor customer service decision. And when the manager brings it to, instead of immediately supplying the answer, Leslie might ask, Well, what do you recommend?

23:27 Speaker 1: Doesn't have to be a big deal. Before stepping back, Leslie could agree what a safe decision looks like, what outcome matters, what limits apply, and what she genuinely needs to be involved in. And that may help her mind tolerate the uncertainty because she is not surrendering all the influence. She's just creating a sense, a sensible boundary around it, I think. And if the manager's approach is safe and reasonable, but simply different from Leslie's, she might allow difference to remain different, right?

24:08 Speaker 1: Because delegation is not about asking someone else to imitate you, right? Or is it good question. This is where the ABGW method comes in because I think it's about looking at things. Um you've got the same information here, but it's about looking at it in a completely different way. So instead of if they don't need me, I am becoming irrelevant. Leslie might try. If they can handle more without me, my leadership is working. She doesn't need to become a different person. Her care, experience, and high standards can remain.

25:00 Speaker 1: She is learning to use them to develop people rather than keeping every decision attached to her. And of course, Leslie may work inside a system that punishes mistakes, you know, or holds managers responsible while giving them very little real authority. She can't personally reframe her way out of poor organizational design. But that would be something else. But she can become honest about the part that she actually influences. One successful decision will not transfer transform the entire team.

25:47 Speaker 1: No one's saying that. But Leslie may feel still feel a bit uncomfortable, and her manager may initially bring the decision back because waiting for permission has become familiar. That doesn't mean that the experiment has failed. Each time, the way that I see it, each time Leslie asks for their thinking, allows a reasonable decision to stand and responds to an imperfect outcome without trying to seize everything back into her control, she creates evidence. The team gather that evidence. You simply need to just take the next small step.

27:51 Speaker 1: Because every step you take, no matter how small, is a step towards a brighter and more balanced future. Trust in your journey. And remember, progress is progress no matter the pace. Bye for now.

Small Steps And A Calmer Week

28:07 Speaker 1: I hope today's episode gave you something useful to carry into your week. Now finish your coffee, take a breath, and remember progress is progress no matter the pace. Until next time, bye for now.