Welcome to Episode #256 of the Own Your Best Life Podcast.

We all know it’s unsustainable to try to do everything by ourselves. But at some point we find ourselves carrying the load for the entire team, the family, and even our managers.

We wonder, “why is it always me that cares or does the most?” And more importantly, “what can I do to stop feeling so resentful and tired?”

So you start thinking about having smaller teams, or no one to manage at all, because you decide it’s the people management side that’s the problem. You tell yourself you’re just not a people person. Not a people manager. Not a leader.

Then you notice that even in your personal life, you’re not happy with how things get done by your partner, your family, or your friends.

The time when I most wanted to hide at work, to become a smaller version of myself who wouldn’t get handed the intense work and the stress, was exactly the same time I was unhappiest at home.

Same victim mentality. Same sense of overwhelm. It was running through every area of my life at once.

And I remember realizing that all of it was a choice. Which meant I could figure out how to change things in my relationships at home too.

What ended up happening wasn’t that I got more people to do more. It was that I rebuilt my relationship to the idea that transformation is a process, and that I was part of that process. Whatever gaps I wanted filled, I could fill. Instead of hoping other people would read my mind and know what I wanted and how I wanted it, without me ever having to come out and be clear about it.

All of that helped me get cleaner in my energy, my mindset and my relationships. It took a lot of the resentment and frustration out of working with other people, and it’s why this matters enough to talk about today.

If you’ve been wondering how to empower the people around you to carry more of the load, or how to build a team that can make decisions and move forward without you there, this is your episode.

What I’ve found in coaching and training so many leaders is that there’s one wish they all have. They wish the people around them would just be better and do better.

The number one thought you have as a manager is about the team. Is the team doing what it needs to do? How do we keep the people who are delivering results? What can I do to make it easier for them to make decisions without me?

And it applies at home just as much. How do I get the kids or my partner to do more and help out? I wish we were on the same page about this.

In making this shift, there are a few things to recognize and accept that you want. You want to work less, and do more of what you’re actually supposed to be doing. Building a high-performing team. Building a family.

It isn’t lesser work. It’s different work. You’re no longer just executing, you’re thinking about the longer term.

That thinking is what makes you more strategic, what makes you a better leader, and what builds leadership in the people around you.

Instead of being known as the person who gets it done, you become known as the person who can build problem-solving capability at scale.

You also feel safer and more capable about whatever is coming your way. You set bigger goals. You stay more open-minded. You get better results while actually having a better day to day. And you’re not as grumpy or upset or resentful of the people around you.

But before you go off and try to close the gap between where you are and a team that runs well while you’re gone, you need to understand where you actually are today. That’s how you know which gaps to close.

So here are two questions to ask yourself, to know whether your team could survive a week without you.

The first one is a systems problem. The information is in your head and nowhere else.

The second one is a belief problem. You believe something about the people around you that may not be true.

Question 1: Does your team know what you do, and how you do it?

There’s no mystery to the idea that you do different things than the people around you. You have a body of knowledge that is unique to you, and there’s a reason your role exists.

This sounds simple, but so many professionals who go from individual contributor to leader don’t actually see that they’re doing different work now. That’s the first opportunity. Identifying the things you do differently from your team today.

A lot of the time we don’t want to seem above the people we work with, so we try to make it look like we’re doing exactly the same thing they are. That works against the intention. People start to resent that you do the same work they do and get paid more, or have more authority.

For that reason, and so they can actually cover for you when you’re not there, it’s better to be fully transparent.

What are all the things you do day to day? How do you make decisions about the key questions? If you had a decision tree for your work, what would it look like? This can be process maps, or documents that show what you’re working on and what the next steps are.

One tactical thing you can do is a handoff checklist.

A quick bullet list of what’s on the horizon and what isn’t done that might need to happen while you’re gone. We often don’t want to make one, because we worry we’re handing off our work. But this is one of the ways you release the stress and anxiety of leaving.

The checklist also includes open questions, like the status of projects you’re working on, so people don’t have to ask you where things stand or what happens next. The key is to think about the questions that will get asked when you’re gone.

And if you’re not comfortable with an item on that list being open, what can you do to close it now?

Just the act of creating this checklist will help you feel ready, close loops, and make quick decisions so that only the most important items are left on it. Then decide who needs the checklist and have that conversation with them. This might be several conversations, personal and professional, but we want to get in the habit of debriefing and handing off.

Every time I’ve gotten emergency texts or emails while I was away, it was because I hadn’t done this handoff checklist.

I remember being in Mexico with my family and getting a text asking me about some numbers for a project we were working on. I was supposedly resting. I’d found some quiet time with my kids right next to me.

And I remember pulling open my laptop and thinking, why didn’t I just send all of this before I left? I knew they would probably have this question.

I’d been in such a rush to get out the door that I never sent the quick note. The open items, the status, the answers to the questions I already knew were coming.

So when that voice in your head tells you you’re leaving things a bit of a mess, listen to it. Block a few hours if you need them. Stop taking new projects and new meetings. Don’t work right up to the minute you leave without giving yourself the time to do the handoff note.

This is also one of the ways you get your manager and your team to stop resenting it when you leave. They feel capable of keeping things moving, instead of wondering and worrying about whether to bother you while you’re away.

Question 2: Do you believe the people around you are capable?

This question is a perfect example of why you want the checklist in the first place.

So much of our idea of capability comes from holding everything in our brain in a disorganized way. Of course you’re the only one who can handle a situation, when you’ve never documented it, never shared it, and never even worked out that what you do is a process.

Our capability isn’t that we do the most. It’s that we’ve figured out how we do things, and then figured out how to make it easier and simpler for other people to do them too. Growing the team’s capability is the job.

It’s hard to untie our worth from what we do. So when we look at the people around us, we do the same thing to them. We tie our positive regard for someone to their capabilities, and we forget that we could be helping them build those capabilities.

If we don’t believe people are capable of doing our job, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even in my current corporate role leading sales training, I think about what would happen if I left. Who would replace me?

And what I keep coming back to is that they wouldn’t need to do the job the way I do it today. I didn’t do it the way it was done before me.

I learned the skills. Training, coaching, facilitating. And I brought a background nobody else in that seat had, in management consulting, operations and supply chain, and sales strategy. The next person will have their own set of experiences to draw on, and they can learn these skills too.

I believe that partly because I’ve watched it happen. I’ve seen people doing work that felt administrative at most become the people leading teams and making the decisions in the organization. I’ve worked with people on my teams and told them directly that they’re capable of more, if they want it. And when I’m doing the work of training and developing people, I watch the change happen in real time.

We are not the Dalai Lama. We are not searching endlessly to find the reincarnation of ourselves.

We will leave at some point. We’ll share what we know, and the world will keep spinning. We want to believe people will learn, and our job is to figure out how to share that knowledge, who is the best person to leave it with, and then actually do those things.

What “yes” gets you

Those two questions, does your team know what you do and how you do it, and do you believe your team is capable, are how you know whether the people around you at home and at work would survive a week without you.

This is a process of improving your leadership skills, and also of organizing your own mind. You won’t get it perfect every time. But you’ll get better, and so will your team.

People learn best through failure. Setting yourself up for success means letting yourself and the people around you fail in safe ways that still let everyone grow.

You get to see that your time away is healthy and beneficial. So does your team. People become more aware of everything you’re carrying, and you become more aware of what they’re carrying.

Over time you start cross-training each other, even if you each still have your own lane to run in. That gradual lifting of the team’s capability raises everyone’s confidence.

A strong team isn’t built on one person who knows everything and does it all faster and better than everyone else. It’s what you see when individuals on a team are learning and growing and changing together.

So give the handoff checklist a try, along with the mantra “I’m not the Dalai Lama,” the next time you’re stressed about leaving. Whether that’s for an afternoon, a day, or a week or two.

You might find there are whole parts of life you pick back up when you stop carrying the load by yourself.

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