Employing Differences, Episode 117: Isn't that my job?

Welcome to Employing Differences, conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

I'm Karen Gimnig.

And I'm Paul Tevis.

Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Isn't that my job?"

So I do a lot of work in organizations, and in teams, where there are defined roles around jobs. Where there is work that needs to be done by this team. Usually each part of that work is done by an individual who has a job title that's associated with that particular piece of work. And one of the things that we know about teams– in particular – is that they work better when they are flexible about who does what, because one of the things that that does is it increases the resilience of the team. I see this all the time in organizations where it's like,"Oh, no, we need to plan around the fact that this person is going to be on vacation for a week, because they're the only person who can do this thing. And what are we going to do?" They're very fragile when we have these very strict senses of who can do what. And at the same time, it can be really disorienting – occasionally disturbing – to a group when someone else picks up something that you think is your job. And so we want to explore today this idea of what it means to be my job, what it is, what happens when maybe someone else is doing that, what happens when I feel like I always have to be doing that. And this idea of of jobs within groups within teams, and how how that occasionally is useful to us, where it's useful to us, and how it's occasionally problematic for us.

So I think one way to look at this is there almost certainly are things that you're not going to hire expertise multiple times for certain kinds of things. There are certain specialties that it really is just going to be that one person's job. But we're gonna guess that's a fairly small subset of the work that's happening in a company or in an organization. Probably the huge majority of things are not so specialized that only one person can know how to do them or can have that role. So I think for this episode, we're really not talking about that small subset of things that there are very good reasons to have it be just one person's job. We want to look at – especially if we kind of think it's just one person's job, let's ask ourselves, "Is it really?" And if it's not, what are the things that make it end up being just one person's job? One of the things is because they've always done it. They're one of the founders, they're one of the beginnings. They've had this job, they've always had that job. And so it doesn't occur to anyone that anybody else might have it. And then changes happen. New staff come, in new members come in, a reorganization happens, that person's abilities change, that person's capacity changes because more work gets given to them. Any number of things can happen internally to that person. Maybe they just get sick of it. I've done it too many times, I've had my fill, I really don't want to anymore. So if there can be internal things, or external things that change. And is there stickiness? Is there stuff that's keeping that job from either being shared or being handed on or being duplicated – for the resiliency piece? What's getting in the way of that? And then let's ask ourselves, is there really a reason? And if the reason is,"Well, you have to be licensed to do that, and licensed people are really expensive, and we're not hiring another one" – probably pretty good reason. But if the reason is, "Well, it's always been that way. And I don't know if anybody else can do it. And it doesn't seem like anybody else especially wants to do it. Nobody's raising their hand or knocking on my door begging to," those might not be very good reasons.

One of the things that I notice in myself – and this happens in groups as well, so isn't just me – is this feeling that when someone else starts doing something that I've done previously, and maybe maybe it is my job, or maybe it was my job. We've talked a lot about volunteer organizations with this idea of rotating leadership roles. It can be really hard when you rotate out of a leadership role to let the next person who's coming into that do those things. Because while it is technically their job, it's very easy for it to feel like it is still your job – particularly, if you have been very successful at that. If you've done well with that, if you've been recognized for doing it well, if you derive a sense of self worth from having done this job and from doing this job, it can be very hard to let someone else do it. And I think there is a degree to which we like to feel indispensable. It's like there is nobody else who could do this. We've often been told,in situations where we've done something well, "There's nobody else who could have done this as well as you did. You were exactly the right person for this job." And the problem is is that indispensability, that feeling of there is nobody else who could possibly do it – this is where we blow things up a little bit out of proportion. Maybe it's true that there's no one in the group right now who could do it as well as I could right now. But that doesn't mean that there's nobody else who could do it, who couldn't do it well enough for what we need right now. That gets in the way of resilience, when you only have one person who can do a thing. It means that it's hard to work around. And so I can get caught in that place. Even when I say I don't want this role anymore. I don't want to be doing these things anymore. Yet, it still has its hooks in me. And I can enjoy and I can appreciate that feeling of indispensability, that feeling of worth that I derive from this job that I am actually good at, this thing that I actually really liked doing. And so while it can often be better for the group for other people to learn how to be able to do this thing, it can feel like a sense of loss on my part to let other people do that. Because isn't that my job?

Yeah. So I think the resilience piece is really important. And there's another piece that travels with this, which is teamwork. Belonging, connection and collaboration. If we're valuing – in a lot of the group's I work with – egalitarian decision-making. Everyone having a balance of power or nearly equal power – and there are whole other episodes about power, so I won't go too far down that road. As jobs can shift and change and travel from one person to another, it actually creates the culture and the thing that we want. Very often, we joined because we wanted to be part of a collaborative team, in whatever terminology we're using around that. And the more that everybody is specialized, the less it feels like a team – the less we can help each other, the less we have support for each other, the less we feel engaged in a sense of belonging with each other. There was a moment in life where I started a nonprofit that was all about being a place where people can have relationships and connections. That was the whole reason for the group to exist. And of course, we needed some structures and being good at that kind of thing, I built all these structures, and then was very eager to hand off jobs to people – partly because I wanted other people to do the work – but mostly because I wanted the sense of team. I wanted it shared. And so I handed the piece called registration to someone. And then every day – or multiple times a day, because I was just so excited about it and just so invested in it – I pulled up all the registration stuff to see how it was going. And if there was something that needed to be done, I just helped out by doing it. And she called me up and said, "It's very clear to me you want to do registration. That's fine. I'm out." And I went, "Uh-oh. That is so not what I wanted." And I did talk her back into it. But I had to say, "I won't look at it. I won't open it. I will not touch it any more." Part of it was her feelings got hurt and I felt bad about that, but the big thing for me was my behavior was not giving me the outcome I wanted. Although I had theoretically handed off the job, I had claimed it. Could I do it well? Sure. I built the systems, I knew the systems, and I could get in there. But it wasn't that she wasn't doing it well enough. And to have me treading on her territory... She wasn't really getting to do it. She wasn't feeling good about it. And we weren't in a collaborative space. So I was undoing what I was looking for. So I think for all of those reasons, really looking at if there's a task I'm holding on to, either that I don't like it anymore, or that somebody else would like to do it – like, if there's a hint that the task maybe should shift or be shared and we're resisting that? Getting really curious about why becomes super important.

What you're really talking about in there and what I think we've been talking about what so far is this idea of task fluidity and our understandings in the relational space. When we aren't clear about who's doing what that can have big relational impacts. And depending on the situation we're in, we may be ready or not to be more fluid or not around those those things. But what you're pointing to is the "let's pay attention to how we show up around these tasks and the impact that that it has on the relational space." The other thing that I want to point to is actually more in the task in the process space, because there isn't a "one size fits all" in terms of this degree of fluidity, this idea of resilience, and things like that. One of the metaphors that I often use with groups that I work with is sports teams. Because as it turns out, there's many, many different types of teams depending on the game that is being played. So for example, in American football, there's not a lot of role fluidity there. There are some cases where it may be like, "Okay, if you're on the offensive line, right, we might shift you from guard to tackle." But there's still differences there. But we're not going to shift you from playing guard, to playing linebacker or to quarterback. There is a degree to which the specialization of those roles is actually really important to the way that the game is played. We see a somewhat similar, a little more fluid, for example, in baseball. Where there are roles. There are things that people do. We don't move them between those roles a whole lot. Occasionally, yes. But the structure of the way the work is divided is well suited to the game that has been played. But that's very different from something like basketball, or soccer – or association football, as our friends in Europe might refer to it – where there's way more fluidity. You can actually move people largely from position to position, because there's so much more overlap. And even when you change formations during the game, it might not be clear, who is playing what role and who is doing what. Because that's what the game needs. That's actually what being an effective team means in that situation. And so I think there is a degree to which we need to pay attention to what our attitude towards roles and jobs is and how that affects that relational space. We also need to notice how we are working with the fluidity of those jobs and roles and tasks. How well suited to the situation we are in – or not – that it is? Which may mean that there's a mismatch between our comfort level and the needs of the situation.

So I think what we're saying here is that there is a tendency to assign roles, and that's you're in your role, and you stay in your role forever. There's a good bit of culture that sends us that way. And while there are extreme cases where that might be the case, most of the time, we're gonna have more resilience and better teamwork, if we can have fluidity in that. That's not a one size fits all. It adjusts. But if you want to look for opportunities to improve in this area, what you're looking for is, is there a task that for whatever reason isn't working well where it is? Somebody else wants it. The person who has it doesn't want it. It just isn't getting done because that person's too busy or whatever. If there's something going on with the task that suggests the change might be an order, and there's resistance to change in it, this is a place you want to get really curious. What is that resistance? And how much of that is an individual's sense of ownership that may not actually be useful? Or simple momentum? Or power structures? Any of those things getting in the way of task fluidity that actually would create the teams that we're looking for, and the resilience that we hope we don't need but, in fact, probably will.

Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.