Have you ever noticed that the people everyone relies on aren’t always the people who get promoted?
It’s one of the biggest career paradoxes I see.
The women who work the hardest, solve the biggest problems and hold everything together often assume that’s exactly what leadership looks like. If they keep delivering, surely someone will notice.
And they do notice.
That’s part of the problem.
You become the person everyone trusts. The person who can sort it. The person who gets handed the difficult projects, picks up the pieces and says yes because, frankly, you know you can do it better and faster than most people.
Being the Safe Pair of Hands feels good.
Until it doesn’t.
It makes me think of Diana.
Diana absolutely loved her role. She was brilliant at it and hugely respected. She thrived on being the go-to person, the one people trusted to make things happen.
For years, that felt like success.
But slowly, something started to change.
People began leapfrogging her for promotions.
She was still respected. Still relied upon. Still incredibly busy.
But she was no longer being included in some of the bigger conversations and decisions.
When she raised the question of her own progression, she was told to be patient.
And that’s when she realised something had to change.
Because Diana hadn’t suddenly become less capable.
She’d become trapped by her own capability.
The more she proved she could do, the more work came her way. The more she said yes, the more indispensable she became.
And the more indispensable she became to the work she was already doing, the less anyone stopped to consider what else she was capable of.
She was being rewarded with more responsibility, but not more progression.
Working together, we started to change that.
We put careful boundaries in place. Diana stopped automatically saying yes to everything simply because she knew she could do it.
We looked at where she was spending her time and energy, and where she was using her real Zone of Genius.
She started creating space to contribute at a different level. To make her thinking more visible. To stop being known for everything she could do and start being recognised for the distinctive value she could bring.
Because the antidote to the Safe Pair of Hands Trap isn’t becoming less helpful, less committed or less bloody good at your job.
It’s Strategic Value.
It’s recognising that your career won’t necessarily progress because you keep proving you can carry more.
Sometimes you need to put some of it down so people can see what else you’re capable of.
The shift
Ask yourself:
Am I being recognised for the value of my thinking and contribution, or am I mostly being rewarded with more work because I’m good at getting things done?
That question might be uncomfortable.
It’s also worth answering.
Borrow Belief
I’ve worked with so many women who thought the answer was to work harder, prove themselves further or wait patiently for someone to recognise they were ready.
It wasn’t.
They were already ready.
The shift came when they stopped allowing their capability to hide their potential.
Career Reflection
If you stopped saying yes to everything you can do, where could you create more space for the work only you can do?
