How to Escape the Expertise Trap
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
A leader I coached was spending every Friday afternoon sitting down with her underperformers, going through their work, getting it back on track before the end of the week. Hours. Every single Friday.
I told her: you’re training them that less effort is okay. They do the minimum. You bail them out. Next week, same thing. The week after that, same thing.
The word I used was codependency. That hit different than “delegation problem.” Because delegation sounds like a skill gap. Codependency sounds like what it actually is — a relationship pattern that’s serving a need in both parties. For her, the rescue gave her purpose. For them, it removed accountability.
I gave her a framework, and then she stopped doing the Friday rescue. Nothing fell apart. Her team started performing because they had to. And she got her Fridays back for work that actually belonged at her altitude.
If you’re recognizing yourself in the expertise trap — the fixer, the firefighter, the person everyone depends on — here are four tools I use with leaders to break the pattern.
The Guilt / Obligation / Spite Rule. Before you take on any task, run it through this filter: am I doing this out of guilt? Obligation? Spite? If the answer to any is yes, put it down. It’s the wrong motivation and probably the wrong task. I’m serious about the spite one. I’ve worked with people doing work specifically because someone else said they couldn’t, or because a peer tried to take it from them and they dug in out of territorial instinct. That’s not strategy. That’s ego driving the bus. And ego doesn’t take you anywhere useful. I gave this to a client who was agonizing over whether to go above and beyond for a stakeholder who never acknowledged her contributions. She decided the answer was obligation. She stopped. Nothing bad happened. The stakeholder didn’t even notice.
The Replaceability Audit. List every recurring responsibility you have. For each one, ask two questions: could someone on my team do this at seventy percent of my level with coaching? And do I gain anything from doing it other than it getting done? If yes to the first and no to the second, that’s a delegation candidate. Full stop. Even if you enjoy it. Especially if you enjoy it. Because that enjoyment is the hook that keeps you at the wrong altitude. If you’re going to keep something you enjoy that someone else could handle, it goes in the hobby category — it doesn’t get your best hours and it doesn’t block your team from learning.
The Visibility Expansion. Once you’ve freed up capacity from delegation, invest that time in work that expands how people think of you. Volunteer for a cross-functional initiative. Offer a perspective in a meeting outside your core domain. Build a relationship with someone in a different part of the organization. The goal is to give people a reason to think of you beyond your expertise. You want them to think “she’s great at operations, and she also has a really interesting perspective on our go-to-market strategy.” That “and” is the difference between being stuck and being considered.
The Bench Test. For your strongest team members, start expanding their world. Bring them to meetings they wouldn’t normally attend. Let them present work you’d normally present. Give them visibility to your peers and your leadership. Not all at once — gradually. You’re not dumping work. You’re expanding their operating altitude. And in doing so, you’re building the bench that makes your own advancement possible. Because the day your boss thinks “who would run this team?” and there’s an obvious answer — that’s the day your cage door opens.
The common thread: you don’t escape the expertise trap by working harder at what you’re already known for. You escape it by becoming known for something more.
Which of these four would change the most for you this week?
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