MANAGER MINT MAGAZINE Issue 04 | Page 15

1. Role boundaries become blurry

It’s nice to have variety in your work. In fact, a job that has skill variety can be something that really engages people. Rather than do the same boring work all day, you get to do a variety of different things, using different skills.

The problem arises when team members start to take on work that is not really within their role. Maybe they are helping to organize meetings, create presentations or communicate with people on someone else’s behalf. They might even start writing documents that are the responsibility of somebody else.

Before you know it, the definition of what this helpful team member does is

ambiguous. Now, everybody can plausibly ask them to help with similar work.

“I saw you helped Jake with that presentation. It was great, can you please take a look at mine too when you get the chance?”

If this helpfulness occurs for a long period, these extra helpful tasks can start to form part of somebody’s role, which was never the plan. It then becomes difficult to know who should be doing what, because stakeholders have been trained to believe that you’ll always be there to help.

2. Helpful people become disengaged

At first, being helpful is fun. Oh, the look of joy on the faces as a team member offer to help out with that big report. Now, they are *always* helping with those big reports.

But that’s not what they signed up for, is it? You didn’t bring this person in to assist others with random tasks. They were employed for a specific purpose.

If the additional helpful work that is being performed strays too far from the original role definition, your team member is likely to become disengaged. They were meant to be applying their expertise in international tax regulation, but someone found out they write great reports. So now, that’s also what they do.