What do you do when your team is overwhelmed, overworked, and coming apart at the seams?

You take work off their plate for them, right? I mean, that might instinctively seem like an obvious answer. Or you might push everyone to work harder, optimize their time, and somehow get more done.

But what if there’s a third option?

In this episode, I’m talking about what happens when there is simply too much work moving through too few people — and why the answer isn’t always to work harder. Instead, we need to ask a different question: Who is best suited to do this work, and where does the work actually belong?

I share a story from my time as a VP running a billion-dollar sales team, when I learned that my greatest value wasn’t in doing the tactical work my team was already doing. My value was in the strategic thinking, identifying opportunities, and moving the business forward. I also share my “90% approach” — getting the work to 90%, then bringing in the people closest to the work to add what I couldn’t see.

Because great leadership isn’t about doing everything yourself. It’s about knowing where you add the most value, trusting your team’s expertise, and creating enough space for everyone to do their best work.

3 Key Takeaways

1. Overload can be a routing problem.
   When too much work is passing through too few people, the answer may not be to work harder. Look at who is best suited to do the work and where the work actually belongs.
2. Know your zone of genius.
   As a leader, your job isn’t to go back and do the work you were once promoted for doing. Get clear on where you bring the greatest value, where you are energized, and where your strengths can move the business forward.
3. Get to 90%, then invite your team in.
   You don't need to finish everything alone. Get clear on the direction, then ask your team: What am I missing? What would you add? What would you delete? This creates ownership, uses their expertise, and builds trust.

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode:

The 90% Approach – Lori’s practice of getting strategic work to 90% before bringing in her team to add their expertise, perspective, and knowledge.

Zone of Genius – Understanding where you, as a leader, add the most value and where your strengths, energy, and perspective are best used.

Ritz-Carlton – Lori references the well-known example of Ritz-Carlton empowering employees to resolve guest issues on the spot, illustrating what can happen when leaders trust their people to make decisions.

Positive Intent – The leadership practice of trusting that people are showing up each day intending to do the right thing and give their best.

✨ Reflection Prompts:

What work are you currently doing that someone else may actually be better suited to own?

Where is your zone of genius, and are you spending enough of your time there?

What could you bring to 90% and then hand to your team by asking, “What am I missing? What would you add? What would you delete?”

What is one decision your team could make without you?

🧠 Who This Episode Is For:

CEOs, executives, and leaders managing overloaded teams

Leaders who find themselves absorbing work instead of leading strategically

Managers who want to create more ownership and decision-making within their teams

High-achieving women who want to lead with more trust, clarity, and joy

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

Follow Lori on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

Book a Leadership Strategy Call with Lori at loripine.com.

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⭐️ Leave a five-star review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show.
📲 Share this episode with a leader who may be carrying work that doesn’t belong to them.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to the Joy CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Lori Pine. I am so glad to have you here with me today. This is a podcast where we talk about leadership and joy, how your joy can actually fuel your leadership and make you a leader that people want to be around, respect, and trust, but it all starts with you.

Today, I want to talk to you about the work that is happening for your team. There's more than they can handle. You know it, they know it, and you're the one deciding what happens next. Most leaders will do one of two things, and today I want to offer you a third option. If you are new here, welcome. I am so glad you found your way to me, and if you are returning, welcome back.

You know I love you, and so glad that you come back week after week. This is [00:01:00] a show for ambitious women who want to lead and live with joy This is the second of four episodes that I'm doing on building a team and sharpening your leadership skills. Last week, we talked about clarity and the thinking work that a leader really needs to do in the dark, I call it.

And today, we're going to take a very real look into a problem, I think, that is affecting most teams. There is too much work. So I want to share with you how I handled a similar situation, how a group of women that I mentor talked to me about how they're handling too much work right now, and what I learned about where the work really belongs.

We have two instincts [00:02:00] when it comes to too much work. Instinct one, you're going to absorb all of the work yourself. You're going to see that your team is buckling, they're struggling, they can't keep up. It's like the fire hydrant is coming right at their face, and you feel bad. So you say, "Okay, give it to me.

I can absorb it." And it feels like loyalty. It feels like the right thing to do. Instinct number two is you push the team harder. You encourage them to get really crystal clear on how to maximize their time, optimize their output, and that feels like leadership. Both put the burden on people. One of those people is you, the other is your team and those who report to you.

But the question I want to ask instead is not how do we fit it all [00:03:00] in, but rather who is best suited to do the work, and where do we put this work, and who decides how the work gets done? Overload can be a routing problem with just too much passing through too many people, too few people. It's like the electric current when you decorate for the Christmas, and you have too many lights trying to run through your little circuit panel, and it all short-circuits, and the lights can't go on because there isn't enough power in the box to light it all up.

It's the same through with... It's the same thing with overload. There's too much work passing through too few people And the leader is often one of those people. There isn't enough voltage to be [00:04:00] held in the panel box. So let me tell you a little story about when I couldn't absorb the team's work, and I've shared with you before that when I was a VP running a billion-dollar sales team, I had never actually done their job.

So when it came to the brass tacks of doing the job, the tactical work, I didn't really know how to do it So when my team became overwhelmed, I wasn't going into the system, I wasn't inputting the pricing data and the weekly ad data that they would do. What I was able to pick up instead was the strategic work.

So we had presentations scheduled in all 13 of the divisions. We were meeting with division presidents and vice presidents. We were trying to map out the spots where the [00:05:00] business had the most opportunity, where we could drive revenue for both the customer and for us, and that was my sweet spot. So I could do all of that work, stay at a really high level, and look for those really tremendous opportunities that we could execute against.

I would point to it all, get it, the presentation, to about a 90%, and then sort through it by level. At that point, I knew where my strengths were. So my question for you is, do you know where you add the most value, where you as the leader can show up and actually contribute and move the needle? And do you also know where you are not best suited?

It's important [00:06:00] to be able to distinguish between those two. So most of us were promoted for the excellent work that we did, and the pull is to go back and do the work. It's comfortable, and it looks like helping. Your natural pull tells you where your zone of genius is. You know it intuitively, I believe.

I know it intuitively where I belong. I am a strategic thinker. I can look at something and tell you the forest through the trees and the path to get there. So if you're questioning where your zone of genius is, where your strengths lie, go quiet. Go to the dark. That's where you're going to lean into you so that you can trust where you're most valuable, where you can put your efforts and get the greatest return [00:07:00] You know, this could also be where you're energized, where you light up doing the work, and it can also be where you know that you have a special gift of seeing the business in ways that other people don't see the business.

So I want you to think about this in a way, kind of like we talked about in the last episode, where this is your thinking work, and it happens where nobody sees it, where you're gonna go inward, you're gonna really just do some discernment about who you are, what your strengths are, and what you bring to the party Now, let's talk about the 90%.

What I do with the strategic approach is I don't want to complete the whole thing. I don't want it to be my work and my work only and get it to [00:08:00] 100%, so I try to get it to 90%, and then I bring my team in, and that's just kind of a rule of thumb for me. I know enough about the business, the division, the personalities, the people, the brands that I know how to move us to the 90%.

But then for the 10%, I have to ask questions. I have to be really curious. What am I missing? What would you add? What would you delete? What narrative is important? What don't I know about this particular group of people? What dynamic is in play? And why this works is at 90%, I've committed to the direction, I've committed to the actions we're gonna take, and so there's no real vagueness.

We are in it, and we are heading [00:09:00] towards the path of how we move the needle. But I've left room for my team to give me their expertise because what I don't want to do is take away opportunities for them to grow or for them to shine. I want for them to shine. I want them to have ownership in this high-level strategic thinking process so that when we're in the meeting, they have a part, and they have a contribution to make.

That is critical. Also, they're an expert. They're the ones who are in the system all day, every day, each and every week, and so they're the ones that have all the real tea about what's happening. So making sure that you ask the questions, what would you add? What would you delete? It's really important, especially the delete part, because we wanna make sure that [00:10:00] we're cutting out things just as much as we're adding things if they don't make sense or if they don't fit that particular conversation So this happened, I, I did this a lot, um, when I was in role, and at one point I did this with one particular teammate, and there was a competitive situation that I didn't know anything about, and this competitor was paying a large amount of money for space, and I was surprised to learn that that was happening in that division, and that a small competitor of that size would pay those kind of dollars.

But my team member told me the reason. It was to secure the space. Without the space, you can't be on shelf, and with- without being on shelf, you can't actually sell your product in a supermarket. So I was able to make sure that we communicated that our brands earned the right to [00:11:00] be on shelf, on end caps, on displays because of how much we sold, how much the consumer wanted our brands.

And that data was really what highlighted the entire presentation and would continue the growth trajectory for that division, both in dollars and in market share. So important to be able to suss out, you know, what's happening and know the facts, but we have to get those facts from the actual experts, of which I was not, and happy to admit that.

So if I had done it all alone, I would have presented a much weaker presentation because there were facts that I was not aware of. That's why it's so important to bring in the team and their expertise and to let them have a part of that. [00:12:00] But in an environment where everybody's overloaded, I couldn't leave all of that work on them to do and to produce while they were doing all of the other work that was keeping the business moving on a day in and day out basis And so we trust the decision in advance.

I knew that I was good to get that to 90%. I then knew I would bring in the team to get this presentation across the finish line to 100%. I also knew that the team, they were the experts in actually doing the day-to-day business. That was not for me to do. So if I was going to be helpful to them, I had to do this higher level, more strategic work.

The risk was that that might have been some fun work, that might have been work [00:13:00] that could have been helpful to their development, so I had to do it in a way that was able to teach them, to help them grow, to be inclusive, but where they weren't burdened with 20 or 30 hours work of strategic compilation for a presentation of that magnitude.

And trusting that that's how it was gonna be set up, and then executing against that, letting them be the experts where they were and me be the expert where I was the expert, and that two-way synergy for that. They had to trust me, I had to trust them. And trust was the decision made in advance. I was going to do that, and I was going to work to let them trust me.

And over time, we became just such a well-oiled machine. They did what they needed to do, I did my [00:14:00] part, and in doing my part, I brought in all the collaboration I need from category management, business analysts, finance, and I'm telling you, it was seamless and really a lot of fun to do. So here's what happens, though, when nobody can decide.

S- so some teams and individuals will have little decision-making ability, and then what happens is the business is gonna get jammed up, and you're not gonna be able to get through. And that's really dangerous, because time will be lost, sales will be lost, opportunities missed, decisions will just won't get made on time or they'll get made in default, and it likely won't be the best decision, and we just can't get those back So a team that actually doesn't decide may be mirroring a [00:15:00] leader who doesn't feel safe in committing.

I wanna make sure that you get yourself to a place as a leader that you can commit. Team, this is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to approach this feeling of overload, how we're gonna get out of the backlog and get unjammed so that we can actually thrive Y- you know, it reminds me of Ritz Carlton.

Ritz Carlton empowers every employee to fix a guest issue on the spot up to $2,000 per employee per guest, and this has been well-cited. It's in lots of articles, and it's kind of the, the folklore, if you will, of what makes Ritz Carlton so amazing. It was even referenced in an article I was just recently reading in Or- in Forbes.

But in this, [00:16:00] this policy began back in the 1980s. Why? Because unhappy guests were costly to the company. So if-- the theory was if we empower our employees to take care of little things while they're still little, then we won't have to take care of big things when they become really expensive. So there are many stories about an em- a guest at the Ritz Carlton who left their laptop, and the employee couldn't get it to them overnight, what have you, hired a courier.

It was under the $2,000 mark. The laptop got to them by that afternoon before their presentation, and all was well. That guest wro- wrote a glowing re- review, happened to be a CEO of a company, and continues to do business with Ritz Carlton to this day. [00:17:00] There's a million stories like that, but what had to happen was Ritz Carlton had to trust the employees, had to trust that they would be good stewards of this money, good stewards of the guest, good stewards of the brand, and it all started with trust.

Sometimes it's really hard for us to trust, but in a previous episode, you've heard me talk about the power of positive intent. When we believe people want to do the right thing, that they show up each and every day to give their best, well, then, we can trust them until the day comes when maybe we can't.

But in the meanwhile, we can, and perhaps we should Okay, so it's your [00:18:00] turn now. What would you like to try this week? Perhaps you could sort your work by level. What's genuinely yours to do, and what belongs to someone who might be closer to the actual work? Maybe it's not you. Number two, can you name your zone of genius?

What is it that you are best at? Perhaps you have to go dark, go inward, and really get clear on where you add the most value. Number three, bring something to 90%, and then ask your team, "What am I missing? What would you add? What would you delete?" And last but not least, pick one decision that your team can make without you and tell them that they are empowered to do so Okay, my friends.

In closing, a leader who does her [00:19:00] own genius work and trusts her team to do theirs has room to actually breathe, and so does her team. That is joyous leadership, and you, my friend, are well on your way to being a leader who leads with joy. This is not a perk of the job. This is not a consolation prize.

This is the reason we show up each and every day. I'm so glad you are here with me today. Next week, we're gonna do episode three in this four-part series, and I'm going to ask a question that gets a little bit more personal. What if the thing that's wearing you out is your own ambition? Ooh, ooh, ooh. It's gonna be good.

So I will see you back next week where things [00:20:00] are gonna get spicy. I'm Lori Pine, the Joy CEO. So glad to be doing this with you. If you have any interest in any of my programs, coming to my Hudson Valley retreat October 14th through the 16th, joining my Connect, my group coaching community where women come together to thrive and be seen, or my one-on-one coaching, please slide into my DMs or send me an email, lori@loripine.com, and I'd love to have a chat with you.

In the meanwhile, find some joy in your leadership, and I will see you back here next week. Glad to be doing it with you. Thanks for listening to the Joy CEO. I hope today's conversation left you feeling seen, stretched, and a little more grounded in your own joy. If something resonated, be sure to hit subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this episode with someone walking a similar path.

And if you're ready to take this work deeper, connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram [00:21:00] @loripine, or head over to my website, loripine.com, to learn more about coaching, retreats, and how we can work together. Because joy isn't just personal, it's powerful, and when you lead with joy, you don't just rise, you bring others with you.

Until next time, keep leading with heart, and don't forget to claim your joy.