If your personal trainer lifts the weights, they get the workout.
You only get the benefit when you do the work yourself. A good trainer is there to guide you, push you a bit and make sure you don’t injure yourself. The lifting is still yours. As I said on my podcast, “Hiring a personal trainer doesn’t get you off the hook of actually doing the training.”
Samuel Smiles saw the same thing in 1859, on the first page of the first chapter of Self-Help:
The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, Chapter I, Self-Help: National and Individual (1859)
Enfeebling is an old word, and a good one. Help that does the job for people can leave them weaker. Help that gets them doing it themselves makes them stronger.
Paying a salary and doing the job anyway
You see this in so many areas of life. A parent is there to guide and support their child. They still have to let that child live their own life, make their own mistakes and do the work.
At work, it’s the employer who coaches, trains and mentors their team. How frustrating is it when you pay someone a salary and still end up doing their job for them?
The more you get involved in the detail, the less room you leave for anyone else to grow. The more you encourage and support people, and let them step out of their comfort zone, the better they become. Everybody wins.
The graduate who never got comfortable
There was a time in my career when I had a young graduate working for me. When he eventually moved on to do something else, he told me something I’ve never forgotten.
Every time he started to feel comfortable, I’d offer him a different task. A different project, a different challenge. He said it made him realise his own potential, and see that there was more in him than was obvious.
He’s now in a very senior role in a large corporation. I’m not saying that’s down to me, but it’s nice to know I was maybe a small stepping stone on that journey.
There’s something in it for you, too. Some of my biggest lessons have come from helping others. You learn and grow too when you step into that role.
So which task are you still lifting for someone on your team?
