I have a direct report who is smart, passionate about her job and can be really innovative. However she carries this enormous weight of responsibility, for needing to do everything, do it right, make sure it's perfect, not trusting colleagues to help. It creates dread and panic and overwhelming workload and a terrible attitude for her and I am speaking with her this week to start to shift her mindset. Any tips in navigating how to let go of this heavy idea of "responsibility"?

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She needs better help from team members. It’s hard for the talent on the team to carry the weight of the team because other people are lacking. You can address this by incorporating more team assignments or providing team incentives for helping each other or setting team goals. Also, encourage her to move some assignments to others (or make her) and don’t fault her if someone else fails at a shifted assignment. She needs to know that if she’s a perfectionist.

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Sounds like a perfectionist. Hopefully your talk with her allowed her to have “permission” to not have to be perfect and be a little messy. This may allow her to work smarter instead of harder. Many people suffer from this and when given permission or having this pointed out, allows them to feel less tension and feel more relaxed to do their work in a way without such high pressure. With you as her manager, it’s really your role to ensure there isn’t an environment that further creates fear of failure. It may take awhile to ensure her of this but it’s great you’re being open and trying to help her!

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