It started as a small delay.
One of my team members occasionally missed deadlines. Not by a lot, just enough to cause a bottleneck. So I stepped in to help. A few small tasks here, a few emails there. It was meant to be temporary.
But then, they started moving even slower. The more I stepped in, the more they pulled back.
Our banter started to quiet down, except for their occasional passive-aggressive comments. “Oh, I didn’t realize you wanted to do my job too.”
I thought I was solving the problem. In reality, I was creating a new one.
👉I was frustrated, so I started “helping.”
👉They got frustrated because I was stepping on their toes.
👉Resentment built up on both sides and somehow, I ended up doing two jobs.
What began as a minor difficulty turned into a full-blown conflict because I kept repeating a flawed “solution” over and over again, expecting to get different results.
It’s a simple pattern that’s obvious once someone points it out to you:
1️⃣ Something is bothering you, so you try to fix it.
2️⃣ When your solution doesn’t work, you keep doing more of the same.
When performance slips, stepping in isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, it’s the start of a new problem. And the longer you avoid the real conversation, the more tangled it becomes.
That’s how workplace tension quietly escalates into a toxic environment.
Have you ever found yourself “solving” a problem in a way that actually made it worse?
References: Fisch R, Weakland J, Segal L. The Tactics of Change: Doing Therapy Briefly. Josey-Bass Publishers; 1986.
Post Title: Sometimes the best way to escalate a problem is to keep “helping.”
When Helping Hurts: The Danger of Overstepping at Work
