Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / The Hidden Cost of Manager Overwork
Transcript
- Lucas: It is September twenty fourth, two thousand twenty six, and welcome to New Manager Conversations with Fexingo. I am Lucas, joined today by Luna. We are hitting a milestone today, episode two hundred, but we are not looking back at all the previous episodes about delegation or managing former peers. Instead, we are drilling into a specific failure mode that catches almost everyone who gets promoted from individual contributor to manager. Luna: Which is the urge to keep doing the actual work instead of leading the people who do it. Lucas: Exactly. It is what leadership coach Elena Rostova calls the operational hoarder syndrome. You get promoted because you were the best coder, the best salesperson, or the best analyst. And when your team hits a snag, your instinct is not to ask how they plan to solve it, but to jump in and solve it yourself because you can do it faster. Luna: Right, because you know exactly how to fix it. But in doing so, you accidentally teach them that their opinion doesn't matter as much as your speed. Lucas: Precisely. Let me give you a concrete example. There was a mid-level marketing director I spoke with recently. Her team missed a campaign deadline by three days. Instead of asking why the timeline slipped, she stayed up until four in the morning rewriting the copy herself. She felt proud the next day for saving the project, but her senior designer quit two weeks later. Luna: Because the designer realized they were just an assistant now, not a creator. That feels like a classic case of the manager confusing their value with their output. Lucas: That is the core tension. As an individual contributor, your value is your direct output. Your bonus, your promotion, your reputation—all tied to what you produce. As a manager, your value is multiplied through others. If you continue producing at the same level as before, you are not adding multiplier effect; you are just doubling your workload and halving your team's growth potential. Luna: It is a identity crisis disguised as a time management problem. You miss being the expert because being the expert felt safe and validated. Lucas: Safe and validated, yes. And there is another layer. When you hoard operations, you create a bottleneck. Every decision, every edit, every code review has to go through you. In a small startup, this might be tolerable for a month. In a larger organization, it creates a drag on velocity that stakeholders notice immediately. Luna: And they start going around you, or worse, they stop bringing problems to you because they know you will just take over. Lucas: They stop bringing problems. You become the black hole of initiative. I saw this with a software engineering lead last year. He was terrified his juniors would ship buggy code, so he reviewed every single pull request line by line. The team stopped pushing features because waiting for his review added a forty eight hour delay. Management thought the team was slow, but the real issue was the manager's anxiety manifesting as micromanagement. Luna: So how does someone actually break that habit? Because knowing you shouldn't do it doesn't stop the muscle memory of fixing it yourself. Lucas: You have to institutionalize a rule. I call it the no quick fix policy. For the first ninety days, if you catch yourself about to jump in and solve a problem, you must pause and ask one question: what resources does my direct report need to solve this themselves? Luna: That forces you to shift from solver to enabler. It is uncomfortable because you have to tolerate the possibility that they might do it wrong. Lucas: Tolerate imperfection. That is the hardest part. You have to accept that their first attempt will be slower and perhaps less polished than yours. But if you do it perfectly every time, you are training them to be dependent. If you let them stumble slightly, you are training them to be resilient. Luna: Resilience is a better long term asset than perfect execution in the short term. Especially when you are not there anymore. Lucas: Exactly. Think about the career progression path. If you cannot function without doing the tactical work, you are not promotable to director or VP. Those roles require strategic oversight, not tactical participation. By hoarding the work, you are actively sabotaging your own future promotions. Luna: That is a harsh reality check. Most people don't realize that their current behavior is capping their ceiling. Lucas: It is invisible to them because they feel productive. They see the finished product and think, great job. But they are missing the bigger metric: team capability growth. Are your direct reports more skilled today than they were thirty days ago? Or are they just watching you work? Luna: Watching you work is not learning. It is performance art. You have to step off the stage and let them rehearse. Lucas: I love that metaphor. Step off the stage. So, practically, what does stepping off look like in a weekly rhythm? It starts with your one-on-ones. Stop using them to update you on tasks. Use them to unblock thinking. Luna: Instead of asking what did you finish, ask what is blocking your judgment. Help them clarify their own decision making process rather than giving them the answer. Lucas: Right. Shift the agenda from status reporting to obstacle removal. If they come to you with a problem, resist the urge to provide the solution. Instead, say, what are three options you are considering? Then help them evaluate those options. You are coaching the framework, not filling in the blanks. Luna: That requires patience. It takes longer to coach someone through a framework than to just tell them the right answer. But the ROI on that time investment is massive. Lucas: The ROI is massive, but the short term pain is real. You will feel like you are losing control. You will worry about quality. But remember, your job is not to be the smartest person in the room anymore. Your job is to build a room full of smart people who trust each other. Luna: Trust is built when they succeed on their own, not when they succeed because you carried them. That is the fundamental shift in mindset. Lucas: It is. And it applies to every type of management role. Whether you are in finance, engineering, sales, or creative arts. The mechanism of operational hoarding looks different, but the result is the same. A burned out manager and a stagnant team. Luna: Stagnant and resentful. Because nobody likes feeling like a puppet. Even if the puppets are getting great results, they want agency. Lucas: Agency is the key word. Give them agency over the process, even if you retain accountability for the outcome. That balance is where effective leadership lives. Not in doing the work, but in designing the environment where the work thrives. Luna: Designing the environment. That sounds abstract, but it really means removing friction and providing guardrails, not driving the car. Lucas: Exactly. Guardrails, not driving. If you find yourself behind the wheel, you have lost your seat as the navigator. And that is a dangerous place to be for both you and your team. Luna: So the takeaway is clear. Resist the quick fix. Ask questions instead of giving answers. And measure your success by their growth, not your output. Lucas: Measure your success by their growth. If they are growing, you are leading. If you are still grinding alone, you are just managing busy work. We are approaching the halfway point of our show today, and I want to pause for a moment to talk about how this network operates. Luna: Yeah, we have been talking about sustainable workflows, so it feels fitting to mention how we keep the content flowing without burning out the hosts. Lucas: It does. We produce these daily conversations across dozens of topics, and listener support is genuinely what allows us to maintain this quality and frequency. If you have found value in these discussions, consider supporting us directly. You can visit buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps cover production costs and keeps the show independent. Luna: Even a small contribution makes a real difference in keeping these resources available for professionals navigating their careers. Lucas: Thank you for considering it. Now, let us get back to the practical application of stepping back. What about situations where the team is genuinely struggling? Where they lack the skill to solve the problem on their own? Luna: That is the tricky edge case. If they lack the skill, then the manager’s job is not to do the work, but to facilitate training or pair them with a mentor. You still avoid doing it yourself. Lucas: Right. Pair programming, shadowing, structured training modules. You invest in capacity building. If you just do the work for them because they are weak, you perpetuate the weakness. You have to be honest about skill gaps and address them directly through development plans, not by covering for them. Luna: Covering for them is kindness in the short term, but cruelty in the long term. It denies them the chance to improve. Lucas: Cruelty disguised as kindness. That is a powerful way to put it. So, whether it is a confidence issue or a competence issue, the solution is always development, not substitution. You are there to develop talent, not substitute for it. Luna: Substitute for it. I am going to remember that phrase. It captures the entire trap of the new manager perfectly. Lucas: Use it. If you feel the urge to substitute, ask yourself if you are building a bridge or carrying the load. Build the bridge. Let them cross it. And if they fall, help them up, but do not carry them across. Luna: Help them up, but do not carry them. That is the balance. It is hard to let go, but essential for growth. Lucas: Essential. And ultimately, it frees you up to do the actual managerial work: strategy, vision, and culture. Which are far more valuable to the organization than any single task you could complete today. Luna: Far more valuable. And probably far more enjoyable once you stop trying to do everyone else’s job. Lucas: Much more enjoyable. Thank you, Luna, for joining me on this milestone episode. To our listeners, reflect on your own habits this week. Where are you holding on too tight? Where can you build the bridge instead? Luna: Where can you build the bridge instead of carrying the load. It is a simple question, but it changes everything. Lucas: It does. See you next time on New Manager Conversations with Fexingo.