Be indispensable, but not like you think
Dana Zellers, PCC, ELI-MP
Executive Coach | Facilitator | Speaker | I help busy professionals succeed at work without sacrificing their personal lives
With a long weekend coming up, people are hopefully looking at how they can take advantage of some time off. I know when a holiday falls on a Thursday, Friday is often an extra day off. And Wednesday? I mean really, I feel like you want to clock out early, maybe just a little am remote work?
Here's the challenge with taking time off. Can someone else cover for you? So many people mention that they are indispensable because nobody knows how to do what they do.
That's the wrong way to be indispensable
Why? People might be less likely to get promoted because they're needed in that role. They might not be respected because they're not able to manage their deliverables better, things probably aren't well documented because they know how to do it. They might not be able to take on elevated work because they're too busy doing that thing. And I promise you people have been laid off who were the only people who knew how to do what they did. Invariably they were not well perceived after the fact.
Not so indispensable.
At one of the jobs I had, we realized that there was no redundancy when someone was supposed to be out of the office. They were trying to finish everything up before they left. But some lingering issues would have to be done. And no one knew how to do them. And the instructions for how we could cobble together for coverage were not only confusing but they didn't account for the myriad of things that could change.
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So they left information on how to contact them to take care of it. Not a great vacation.
So how do we be indispensable?
You want to focus your attention on some of the soft skills that make you a can-do person:
As you're planning for your time off think about what things on your plate you want to get someone else up to speed on.
And enjoy any time off!