Do you have a tendency to take control of things that don’t belong to you in meetings? Let me explain. When someone brings up something that should be done following the meeting—sending out notes, sending out a new invite for the next meeting, asking someone outside of the meeting for something—do you volunteer? Are you quick to offer to send out the minutes? To organize the follow up items? If you are—let me guess—it’s because you care and want to make sure it gets done. Because you are on a team and you are only as good as your team’s output? But what if your team’s output was imbalanced because you’ve taken on more than your fair share of responsibility? What would happen if you didn’t pick up all the balls?

Realistically people may start to look at you—waiting for you to volunteer because you’ve conditioned them to let you pick up the balls. But if you look back at them and ask if they could do one of these tasks, just imagine how things might change.

Part of the problem with our tendency to take control of what does not need to be ours is that we’ve been praised for doing so—our value has appeared to increase. We have become instrumental to operations and therefore essential to the team. However, is that the only way to secure our worth? I’m here to tell you that it isn’t. And that doing that method risks cornering you as the person who ties up loose ends so others don’t have to. 

The first time you let go it will be scary. But the sky will not fall. Look out the window—pigs will not fly. But your world will shift ever so slightly. And when someone else will pick up the slack instead of you, what will you do with your time? What would you do if you got that hour back—the one you sacrifice daily to picking up balls others have dropped? Try it and see. Tell me how it goes in the comments below.