Are You the Bottleneck? When There is More Work Than Your Team Can Do

When teams are overloaded, managers often become the bottleneck by absorbing work or pushing staff harder. This episode summarizes Melody Wilding’s Harvard Business Review advice and tells the story of a leader who burned out doing others’ work.

It offers five practical moves: have the team decide what to pause, make decision rules visible, hand off authority (not just tasks), tie new work to people’s goals, and be honest about priorities and strain, plus a simple one-week homework plan to get time back and grow your team.