The perils of getting sh*t done
(and the need for boundaries)
Who wouldn’t want to be good at getting stuff done?
Being reliable, being productive and welcoming responsibility are all well-regarded qualities. If you’re trusted as a safe pair of hands, the more likely you are to progress into management roles.
But is there a price to pay for this effective conscientiousness?
As Head Coach at Famn , I’ve run group coaching programmes for high-potential women over several years, and for many hundreds of participants. In every cohort, a significant percentage recognise themselves as having a high capacity for “getting sh*t done”.
The shadow side of high productivity and efficiency
These women often describe how these characteristics serve them well. But every one of our traits inherently has a strength and a shadow side.
In the case of women who are good at getting sh*t done, that shadow side can be constraining or even harmful.
It tends to manifest in two ways:
Limitations on career progression.
And/or the toll it can take in terms of overwork, overwhelm and burnout.
When getting sh*t done limits progression
Having a member of a team with high standards and high capacity for work is a brilliant resource. Give them any task or project and it is delivered without fuss or complaint. Fantastic.
And yet, these people often never progress as far as their talent deserves. A high proportion of people (mostly women) who display these traits seem to get stuck in middle management.
The problem is, being uncomplaining, undemanding and avoiding any Diva-like behaviour can also mean being taken for granted and being irreplaceable in your current role.
When getting sh*t done is unsustainable
"If they are working late, they feel guilty that they’re not at home with the kids or their partner. But when they’re at home, they’re guilty about the work task-list that remains incomplete."
These traits are often consistent with what’s known as a “Pacesetting” style of leadership, one of six styles identified by Emotional Intelligence psychologist, Daniel Goleman.
It’s a style of leadership that’s high intensity and, potentially, exhausting.
As the name implies, the manager is out there at the front, setting the pace, encouraging their team to keep up. To inspire the team to raise their pace and their standards, the manager must always be there at the vanguard, conscientiously doing it themselves.
One of the most common shadow-sides that emerges from this conscientiousness is feeling guilty when we may be letting people down. Several clients describe that wherever they are and whatever they’re doing, they can feel guilty that they’re not somewhere else.
If they are working late, they feel guilty that they’re not at home with the kids or their partner. But when they’re at home, they’re guilty about the work task-list that remains incomplete. We only feel guilt when we care about something; the conscientiousness is a prerequisite for the guilt.
The perilous cycle of feeling like you’re never doing enough
When they feel desperately guilty about not doing enough, the worst of both worlds can unfold. They compulsively take on more and more, which can lead to stress, overwhelm and burnout.
We asked a client with these traits what made her feel anxious and what her response to that anxiety was. She said that it was not getting everything on her (enormous) to-do list finished that stressed her. Her response to that stress was to work harder and longer.
The benefits of her enormous capacity for work are obvious. The consequences of the unsustainable demand she placed on herself are also obvious.
So, if we find ourselves trapped in the perilous cycle of getting sh*t done, what can we do about it?
Disrupting the pattern
Awareness is always the starting point for change: we cannot disrupt our unhelpful patterns without spotting them in the first place.
But changing them is not as easy as making a conscious decision to be different. Those patterns are there for a reason and a big part of that will be that they kept us safe as a child.
These patterns are often driven by two of the behavioural drivers from Transactional Analysis psychology: Try Hard and/or Be Perfect.
As with the client mentioned earlier, feelings of stress tend to reinforce the pattern more strongly. Therefore, trying to change in increments, by experimenting with small changes, tends to be more effective.
Cultivating the ability to say no
“Setting boundaries and saying no is at the heart of developing our resilience.”
Boundaries are a vital here. Consciously managing what we’re prepared to take on and where we are prepared to say no to increased workload or responsibility can feel alien. Saying no and avoiding further responsibility can feel potentially catastrophic and career limiting and yet, paradoxically, it can be just the opposite.
Setting boundaries and saying no is at the heart of developing our resilience. Or looking at things from the opposite perspective, in organisations and personal lives where the work that needs doing can be endless, having little ability to set boundaries is a sure route to burnout.
Of course, there are times when all of us need to put in extra effort, to go deep and push ourselves to the limit.
But that’s really the point of this piece. If we don’t foster the ability to notice and set boundaries, then we have no power to protect ourselves from the exhaustion and burnout that can ensue, and we may even be holding ourselves back from progressing in our careers.
Do you relate to the perils of getting sh*t done? What else can we do to better support women in progressing to leadership positions? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
About me
Hi, I’m Roger. Advisor and coach to the UK’s top CEOs, co-founder of Famn, and former punk rocker. I’ve been a coaching psychologist for 20-odd years, working with a wide range of executives, CEOs, leadership teams, and the occasional rock star. I believe the world would be a significantly better place with more emotional intelligence; which I want us to stop seeing as a fluffy, “soft” skill, and start utilising as a hard-nosed, commercial asset.
Sign up to The Real Work
This Substack, like all my work, is dedicated to helping leaders and humans to gain an awareness of the assumptions, compulsions and shadows that shape our ways of being — and usually get us more of what we don’t want. By doing the deep work of unearthing these powerful psychological drivers, we get a new perspective on how we show up, interact and lead. And we get the real work that can make-or-break an organisation — effective leadership, high productivity, harmonious collaboration, tangible business growth — done.