Introduction
Have you gotten the question “I’d like to do more, what can I do?”, and felt like it's just another thing added to your plate?
Or maybe you have asked the question yourself, and been frustrated that you aren’t given more responsibility and feeling stuck in your development?
If you have ever had a team member, come up to you and ask this, you will know the torn feeling. On one hand, you’re thinking it’s great that I have a team member who cares and wants to do more, but it also ends up creating a lot more work for you as a manager. You’ll have to consider what they know, what needs to be done, whether they understand enough to take on the responsibility, how will you monitor this and train them, etc.
So how do we find a better approach?
Being proactive in seeking responsibility
There is a better way that frees everyone up and builds a culture of proactive problem-solving, and it looks like this:
The person who is seeking responsibility tries to solve the problem and propose what they think would add value and how they could carry out this responsibility.
This skill is crucial to develop and exists on a spectrum.
As you advance these skills, the manager has a clearer view of how you are seeing things and opens up conversations to fill in the gaps. The individual is now taking positive steps to solve the problem, and when they share their thoughts, the manager has some more information to work with. If they’re missing things, they can now learn what they’re missing, and if it’s a great suggestion the manager can have confidence that they should be able to do it because they proposed it.
How to respond to “I’d like to do more, what can I do?”
When someone asks you the usual question, express how great it is that they want to do more, and then ask them to come back with what they think would add value to the team, why that is, and how they can be responsible for it. If the person is very early in the journey a good place to start can be to ask them to come back to you with what problems they think you as the manager is solving, or what the biggest challenges in the team are.
This process reflects an expectation that this is how we think about growing our responsibility and pushes the person to develop their skill of seeing and solving problems. When this is repeated over time, it increases everyone’s skills in this area and builds a culture of proactive problem-solving.
Analogy to help relate to the dynamic
A practical example of seeing through other’s eyes is how people seek to gain more responsibility. The general approach is for a person to ask their manager, “I’d like to do more, what can I do?” or something to that effect. This is viewed as a good thing as it is being ‘proactive’, we must understand proactive is not binary but on a spectrum. This approach is more proactive than doing nothing but there are better approaches.
If you have ever had a team member, come up to you and ask this, you will know this ends up creating a lot more work for you as a manager and you end up feeling torn. On one hand, you’re thinking, this is great I have a team member who cares and wants to help out and do more. On the other hand, you now need to figure out what they should do. You’ll have to consider what they know, what needs to be done, whether they understand enough to take on the responsibility, how will you monitor this and train them, etc.
An analogy to understand this dynamic is sales and the old “wolf of wall street - sell me this pen”.
- The default approach “I’d like to do more, what can I do?” is like telling a prospect the features of your product or service. Would you like to buy this pen? It has a great handle and feels nice in your hand, etc. The prospect doesn’t particularly care about that. In order to make a purchase they have to think, what is my situation, does this feature help me, will it fix my problem etc. The approach pushes the work to the buyer, similar to the team member pushing the work to the manager.
- The elevated approach is to ask the prospect about their problem, connect with that, understand how they would like to resolve it, and then explain how your product/service does this. With the pen analogy they create the problem, “can you sign this paper for me”, “I don’t have a pen”.. “I have a pen you can buy that will fix that problem.” This approach the salesperson is doing the work, and the buyer just needs to say yes, which is what happens for the manager when a team member does this.
