by Lois Barth, Human Development Expert, Motivational Speaker, Executive and Leadership Coach, and Author

One of the things I love about being an executive leadership coach is getting to work with smart, scrappy, heart-centered, mission-driven leaders who are up to a big game, committed to their company’s vision, and champion their teams to grow. That’s my sweet spot demographic. I call them my fabulous fierce ones. When I asked one client one of the biggest gains, he said, ‘I tell people Lois will help you get out of your own way.’  

As a female motivational speaker, my work is about supporting the participants in being more courageous, taking more inspired risks, and not letting their negative self-talk impede their growth.

What I see over and over in teams that undermines impact, efficiency, and connection is social loafing. Social loafing is a social psychology term that states that people put in less effort when working in a group than when working alone. It’s often a reason why groups are less productive than the sum of their individual efforts.   When social loafing is present, it impacts a company from a morale, productivity, and engagement standpoint.

How about you? Do you notice the same members being the major problem solvers causing them to over-function while others to slide under the radar? Sound familiar!

You spot it. You got it!

Great News, there’s A LOT you can do about it.

Case in point. A C-Suite leader, we’ll call her Sally, came to me to work with her direct report, we’ll call her Wendy. Wendy came up the ranks as a young woman in a male-dominated industry with next to no background.  Wendy hit the ground sprinting, she was a voracious learner and did whatever it took to get up to speed. She also wanted to be liked and part of the team, so she quickly plummeted into the all-things-to-all-people rabbit hole. People from all different departments start coming to her for info, support, and help. She became the Go to Girl! She felt terrific about being part of the team and well-respected.

One of my LOIS-isms is “Our greatest gifts are often our biggest challenges,” and that was true with Wendy. Her gifts of generosity, smarts, hard work, and wanting to be a team player served her in her early years and now were undermining her. Why?

Because her boss brought me in to coach her to “say no” to the team when bombarded with all these requests. She was frustrated because she wanted to promote Wendy but felt she couldn’t because she was constantly tending to other people’s requests.

When I met with Wendy, she was upset. She kept defending and rationalizing her behavior, with “I just want to help, I still get all my work done, these departments are connected with our revenue goals, I don’t see it as a problem.”

These are the steps we took together to shift her thinking and behavior to move her to a higher level of leadership and put an end to the social loafing of her colleagues.

1. You can’t attack something you can’t track.

In our initial stage, I listened to Wendy’s concerns, fears, and resistance to let go of being “nice,” “helpful,” a “team player.” She had conflated all of those qualities with basically over-functioning and being a garden-variety people-pleaser.

I listened and empathized with how confronting change can be. When I asked her what her bigger goals and aspirations were, she got excited and shared what she wanted to step into. I also asked her if she thought she was a nice, helpful, and team player in general. She agreed she was. When I responded by saying, “So why are you trying to prove something you already are?” she got it.

I asked her how many hours in a week she “helps out,” and does she sees a pattern in what she helps out with. Themes? Systems? Focuses? She had no idea.

Time and Project Tracking– I suggested she meticulously track every time she helps someone and the categories or themes she seems to help with. And just notice how much repetition there was.

2. Gaining clarity of where your time and focus is going

When I returned for our session she had a troubled look on her face. She couldn’t believe over the last two weeks that she had given 10 hours of her time to different projects, rather than her earlier guestimation of 15 to 30 minutes a day. Wendy also noted that about half of what she offered was repetitive and she wasn’t learning anything from sharing the information. Lastly, and this made me very happy, she realized attached to the role of one-stop-shopping Go to Girl she had become, and loved the accolades, but it was growing thin.

I asked her where else she may spend her time if she wasn’t focusing on these things. Her face lit up, there were industry trends she wanted to study, professional development courses, and hey it would be nice to get back to my gym workout 3 times a week versus working late to play catch up.

3. Don’t just say NO, help others to be in the KNOW.

While it’s true that often you just need to say No, if you’re dealing with a systemic social loafing issue just saying No won’t address the issue. I asked her if she’d be willing to spend a few hours putting together an editable document (not a PDF) to address all the questions people had in different categories, to help shorten their learning curve, and to also invite them to contribute in order to support the team. After completing it, Wendy put it into a Google Drive so her co-workers could refer to it and collectively contribute.

4. Navigating the course of resistance in service of real change

After generating the document which took about 3 hours, Wendy created a wonderful warm boundary-setting email to the different teams. We made sure her passion for learning, and the desire to uplevel the team was present in the email and welcomed others to contribute.

Change is not an overnight or easy thing, just ask me about titrating from my “passion” of not-so-dark chocolate. People kept coming to her with “Aww just this one time, I’m on a tight timeframe,” and other excuses. While she caved in once in a while, her new mantra, said with a smile, “It’s all in the document.

5. The ripple effect when you let go of social loafing

Within a couple of months, Wendy rarely got a request to save the day. She was excited when she noticed others contributing solutions and resources to this document and she celebrated them. Soon the team started to share the wealth and take a role in helping to up-level the whole team.

Great News! Wendy got that time back and used it to step into more of a leadership role, which happened when she set a parameter, put work into creating the document, and supported the development of the team.  And yes, she eventually did get promoted!

So I ask you right now, where in your team, department, or company is social loafing happening, and what’s one step you can take to start shifting it?

I’d love to know. Need to brainstorm on it a bit? Feel free to book a 30-minute Discovery call.