Coaching cases · Anonymized actual case · Self-awareness & roles
A place to begin
A team leader balancing work and parenting explored the guilt behind taking over and found different ways to offer support.
Technology-enabled consumer goods · recently promoted team leader · work and parenting responsibilities
The starting situation
Recognized for strong delivery and responsibility, this leader often took over unfinished work when colleagues struggled. Staying late brought guilt about time at home; leaving the team also felt uncomfortable. Trying to meet both responsibilities led to more personal effort, while a sense of never doing enough remained.
What coaching explored
Coaching explored an expectation that a good leader should prevent the team from feeling difficulty. Taking over expressed care, yet sometimes also removed the opportunity for a colleague to exercise judgment. Specific situations helped distinguish those experiences.
The leader also considered a concern about what her role would mean if the team no longer needed constant help. Rather than dismissing that concern, the conversations explored the relationships and responsibilities she wanted to honor and other ways of expressing that care.
Practices the leader tried
She distinguished a colleague finding work difficult from a situation requiring a particular kind of support. Responsibilities, conditions for intervention and the boundaries of recoverable mistakes became clearer. She also established a boundary around involvement after leaving work.
In 1on1s, she practiced asking what help was needed before taking the work back. Guilt did not need to disappear before she could try something different. Noticing it made room to choose support that left the colleague’s thinking and ownership intact.
Changes reflected on in the account
The account describes colleagues expressing more views and participating in solving problems, alongside less automatic absorption of their work by the leader. She reflected on being available where needed rather than maintaining constant tension as a sign of responsibility.
A question for HR
HR can listen to this person’s specific combination of work and caring responsibilities without treating it as the experience of every woman or parent. Are working boundaries supported in practice? What enables development for the team while respecting the leader’s life outside work?
Questions about this topic
What challenge did this leader bring?
A team leader balancing work and parenting explored the guilt behind taking over and found different ways to offer support.
What practices did the leader explore?
She distinguished a colleague finding work difficult from a situation requiring a particular kind of support. Responsibilities, conditions for intervention and the boundaries of recoverable mistakes became clearer. She also established a boundary around involvement after leaving work.