If you’re frustrated with your team members not delivering high-quality work, you might be the root cause of the problem. It’s time to stop being an enabler of their bad behaviors.

Alan leads a team of highly intelligent scientists. Although most of their time is spent on scientific work, a portion of their roles are administrative. Many of these scientists haven’t been trained for these responsibilities because their previous leader tended to do all this administrative work herself. Alan fell into that same habit when he took over the team.

During a hectic period, Alan and I spoke about how stressed-out he was. “I don’t have enough hours in the day to get all this stuff done,” he said.

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