Are you a workhorse?
Do you have a reputation for being a highly competent YES person who can get a lot of work done? And people see you as the GO-TO for help And even though you often feel burned out with little work-life balance, does this grind mentality give you a sense of value and worthiness?
You’re likely a workhorse.
I used to be one. Having spent most of my career in fast-paced, high-growth environments, I thought having a workhorse grind mentality was my key to success. I learned the hard way that the reward for a workhorse is not more money or a promotion. It’s more work!
And most companies are SMART. Why would they promote a workhorse and lose out on their ability to capitalize on an employee’s willingness and ability to do everything?
Give them a surprise bonus. Throw them a cost of living adjustment. It’s enough to keep them around.
They’re promoting the showhorse! Someone groomed, well-fed, well-taken care of, who surfaces up their value/contributions in other ways.
If you’re a workhorse, here’s the truth. It’s not your environment that’s causing it. Sure, there are toxic workplaces that will EXPLOIT THE HELL out of workhorses.
It’s you. It’s your mindset. Because it’s likely that even if you were to go to another company tomorrow, you would bring the workhorse mentality along.
So, what can be done about it?
Step 1: Do mindfulness work to determine where it’s coming from.
Once you can identify what belief is telling you that to be successful/feel worthy/be seen as valuable, you have to be a workhorse, you can start to rewrite that belief. For me, it comes from being a child of immigrants.
We must work hard to prove that we are worthy of keeping our jobs. That we are worthy of being in this country.
That mindset worked for my parents as a way of survival. It doesn’t serve me anymore. So I get to rewrite that belief.
Because of my parent’s sacrifices, I now have the privilege of being worthy and deserving of a balanced life. But it is up to me to design that for myself.
Beliefs drive our actions. Our actions directly impact our results.
Step 2: Put together a proposal to hire help.
Surface up all of the work that you're doing. Document everything that can and should be outsourced to someone else. And remember that just because you’re proposing a new hire doesn’t mean your job is on the line. Your company already knows that you are (willingly) doing the job of 2-3 people and saving them money.
Step 3: Speak up and draw boundaries.
Some powerful phrases you can start to use:
I won’t be able to complete X project until I hire someone for Y responsibilities.
We’ll need to assign work to others on the team until we hire someone.
My suggestion for fixing X pressing issue is Y temporary solution that is not sustainable until we hire someone.
I know this project I am delivering is not of the highest quality, but we have not hired help yet.
Step 4: End the workhorse mentality.
You’ll want to be seen as being proactive and solutions-driven and not failing to do your job. However, you’ll also want to ensure that others (not just you) feel the pain of not having hired help.
Shift things around to prioritize getting your most important responsibilities done. This is why surfacing everything you’re doing in Step 2 is critical.
And as you are motivating decision-makers to approve your hiring proposal, you HAVE to resist the temptation of just doing the work.
Your hire will never get approved if your company knows you will just do the work.
This is how the workhorse lives on.
