ONE of the first inequalities I discovered when I started working after college was that the good ones were always assigned to the difficult projects. I learned that firsthand when I pulled all stops to get ahead of my colleagues and showed my first boss that I was up to any task he assigned. When promotion season came, I was passed over for someone who successfully closed a project only the previous month while I was slaving to complete projects since I started. After a few weeks, I started looking for new work and I got my promotion in another organization.
While being good at work makes you reliable and dependable, it can also have its drawbacks. One is that you keep being assigned to challenging projects because they know you can deliver. But your manager does not always know how much effort is exerted because what they monitor are results. Most of the time, they do not even know the process, or how many people you coordinated with to get the results. All of these take time and effort which your manager may not know. If left unchecked, it could result in missed deadlines and more problems.
Worse, they might think you can do more with less. Once, I was assigned to make a training video where I had to work with a talent who had limited availability and where I had to use my personal equipment. My manager expected me to know how to do my own production and to set up my own sets. I pulled it off but it took a toll on me because there were unfamiliar procedures that I had to learn the hard way. But because I was good at most of my workload, my manager assumed I could do well in anything.
But the worst part of being good at work is being asked to come in when a team member is not doing well. You are expected to help out on top of your ongoing workload because they rely on you to solve whatever issues you might encounter, and they assume you know the historical background of the project.
There are also cases when you are so good at what you do that your work is too valuable that you cannot be promoted. You work so hard at creating a process or a tool for making the work easier for everyone that you get stuck at maintaining and sustaining it because it is too technical to be taught to someone else. So you end up getting passed over for promotion because you have made yourself irreplaceable.
However you look at it, being reliable can be extremely exhausting. If you are overly reliable and dependable, you need to protect yourself from falling into any of these pitfalls. One thing you can do is to present to your manager a timetable of all your deliverables so that they can understand your workload. If you are asked to do more than what you are capable of, show them the timetable and ask which ones can be moved to another deadline.
You can also walk your manager through your work process so they can understand how tedious your work really is. If possible, offer to teach other team members by showing them how you do your work faster so that they can be up to par with your productivity level. If you do not want to teach the entire group, teach someone who can.
If you are stuck in a position because you are the only expert in that field, aside from teaching someone who will replace you, find the time to train yourself so you can learn other skills, or find opportunities to expand what you can do for the team. Ask for small projects where you can get your feet wet and discover other paths to your professional development.
Another pitfall to being good at work is the expectation that you can maintain your level of performance every single time. This puts you under immense pressure to perform such that you will have no choice but to let work encroach on your personal time. The problem is that people think you have always been efficient and productive so when you tone down your performance, they will think you are slacking off. If you have always been an excellent employee, you will always be expected to be efficient and productive all the time.
This also increases the pressure to consistently perform at your peak because your boss expects you to either maintain your performance or improve it. In organizations where profit is the bottom line, your manager will always expect you to deliver your best every single time. When you are at your peak every single day, it increases your danger of burning out which will eventually force you to look for another job.
To reduce unrealistic expectations, you need to pace yourself by tempering your manager’s expectations. A previous colleague taught me to underpromise and overdeliver. Be realistic in setting your goals and leave room for unexpected delays in your deliverables. If your manager insists on a deadline that is unattainable, ask them what can be taken out from your list of deliverables so they can make an informed decision. Or, you can ask them how they can help you in achieving the target and make them commit to the action plan. That way, it becomes a shared responsibility.
You should also manage your manager by setting clear boundaries at work. Learn to say “no” to projects and additional assignments by either asking your manager to deprioritize some of your existing projects or recommending the assignment to a colleague who might benefit from the experience. Either way, your manager needs to understand your limitations so they know when to push and pull.
Once you notice that most of the work is being assigned to you, take steps to let your manager know that there are other team members who can pick up the slack. Protect yourself by keeping a tracker of your tasks and keep your manager updated. Take the time to upskill yourself and find ways to make your work more enjoyable, because being good at work does not necessarily mean slaving yourself beyond your limits. And if you are aiming for a promotion, make sure that your manager acknowledges and values your contribution to the team.