You're paying your team well—so why are you still doing their work? If you've ever found yourself finishing tasks your employees should have handled, this episode is for you.

In this episode of Fix My Business, Carlos asks a question every business owner has faced: "I'm paying my team very good, but I'm still doing tasks they should have handled. How do I address this without becoming the bottleneck or turning into a micromanager?" Sound familiar? Scott Todd breaks down exactly why employees don't get work done and gives you a proven four-step framework to fix it without losing your mind or your weekend.

In This Episode:

• The only 3 reasons employees don't complete their work (competency, resources, or motivation)
• How to diagnose which problem you're actually facing with each task
• The exact conversation script to use when addressing underperformance with your team
• Why doing their work for them teaches them the wrong lesson—and what to do instead
• A four-step action plan to stop being the safety net and start leading effectively

Stop picking up the paintbrush and painting the house you hired someone else to paint. This is your roadmap to getting your time back and building a team that actually owns their responsibilities.

Got a business problem you need solved? Head over to scotttodd.net/ask and submit your question—you might be featured in an upcoming episode!

Enjoying the show? Leave us a review and share this episode with a fellow business owner who needs to hear it. Your support helps us reach more entrepreneurs who need real solutions to real problems.

What do you do when your employees are not getting their job done? I'm Scott Todd and welcome to Fix My Business, the show that answers your business problems so that you can get unstuck and keep growing.

And our question today comes from Carlos and he says, I'm paying my team very good, but I'm still doing tasks they should have handled. How do I address this without becoming the bottleneck or turning into a micromanager? man.

Carlos, my friend, listen, I think every business owner watching this right now is nodding their head. They are feeling the exact same pain. I guarantee you, every business executive watching this, when I had my corporate gig, I would have said, yes, that happens to me too. It's a reality of being a leader and a manager. And it's really a reality that's got to stop. You see, you're paying people good money, and yet you're still the one doing the work, and that's maddening.

And look, if I was sitting with you right now, if you were sitting here with me, I would ask you to make a list of all the tasks that they should be handling. Write them down. Look, I'm serious. Pause the video right now and make a list because that list is going to tell us everything. Is it emails that they're not sending? Are they not making calls that they should be? Are they not making reports or producing reports that they should be running?

Are they not making decisions? Those are all problems that, well, you probably end up having to deal with. And I want you to literally pause and write that down because once we know what you're doing, then we can figure out why they're not doing it.

And in my experience, there's only three reasons employees don't get the work done. First, they don't know how to do it. That's a competency issue. Second, they don't have the tools or the skills. Those are resource issues. Or third, they flat out just don't want to do it. That comes to motivation or it comes to fit. That's it. Those are the three reasons why work doesn't get done. And every task

that you're doing falls into one of those buckets, every single one of them.

So doing the work for them would be like hiring a painter and then you painting your house. You wouldn't do that. I wouldn't do it either. But I had to learn this the hard way. See, here's what happened to me is a number of years ago, I had a marketing team that I was working with and we sat down and we created a launch package. We were going to make a sale for a course. We had a whole launch package. I asked the director, the marketing director to make a list.

you know, a rollout plan, a launch plan, he did it. My expectation was that everything on that list, all of the assignments were going to be carried out. Everything that was going to, that they said they were going to do was going to get done. The images were going to get done. The emails would get queued up and sent. They'd be sent at the exact right time. But then guess what happened? It fell apart.

So I had to jump in. I had to save the day. And what happened was I was sitting at home. It was a weekend. And I'm looking to see, hey, wait, did the email go out? And guess what? The email had not gone out. It hadn't even been scheduled. It hadn't even been written. I mean, it was theoretically written. It was on a launch plan.

but it was never actually written. So what did I do? I sat down on a weekend and I start typing the email away. I start banging it out. I start doing the team's job for them. I start doing the leader's job for him. It's the leader's fault, not the team members. He didn't lead. So I started doing the work. And guess what? I'm sitting there doing the work and while they are enjoying their weekend off, guess what Scott's doing?

He's doing their job. I was doing two jobs. And my wife's like, hey, let's go get lunch. I'm like, whoa, hold on. I got to send this email out. The team dropped the ball. They didn't do it. She's like, why are you doing it? See, I had to save their bacon. I had to produce revenue for the company because somebody had to pay their bills. Somebody had to have the money to come in to pay their salaries.

And I was the one doing it. And my wife called me out on it. She's like, why are you doing someone's job and paying them? I was like, wow, that's a very good question. So, Carlos, here's what I want you to understand. Every task on that list that you just made, it falls into one of those three categories. They don't know how to do it. They don't have the tools or skills to do it.

or frankly, they don't have the desire to do it. It's one of those three reasons. And it's your job to figure out which of the three it is. That's it. Like that's what being a leader is. When the system breaks, when people aren't doing their work, you have to figure out the why behind it. And what you're going to do is you're going to figure it out. And when you do, you're going to give an antidote to each one of those. Because look, if they don't know how to do it,

Well, that's simple. You need to train them. And if you've already trained them and they still don't know how to do it again, you got to train them again. If you train them again, they don't know how to do it. Guess what? You might have a person problem. That's just the reality. OK, but let's say you've trained them, but then they don't have the tools. Well, then you didn't equip them to do the job. That's a you problem. And you got to fix that one. But then if you've equipped them, you've trained them and guess what? They still don't get it done. Well, then you know what you have to do. You have to replace them. That's

it because guess what? If you don't, you are going to continue to have this problem. And every time that you do it for them, you are going to teach them that you will save the day. And it's really a weird situation because when you save the day, you're actually saving and serving your company, your clients and your reputation. But if you let the ball drop, well, now they actually have to own it.

And when they own that problem, we all know when we own a problem, we're in trouble. That's the way that it is. Okay? So you have to not cover for them. You have to make sure that they have what they need to do the job. And when you do, and when they do, all should work. Otherwise, you get a new person working with you.

So here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna give you kind of four steps of what I would do. First of all, I'm gonna make that list. I told you to go make it. I hope that you made it. But I'm gonna take that list and I'm gonna be specific. Okay, I'm gonna make the list and next to each item I've got that should be covered by somebody else, I'm gonna ask which of the three buckets or steps or reasons should apply. I'm gonna ask myself.

Are they trained to do it? Do they know how to do it? Do they lack the tools or skills to do it? Or guess what? Are they trying to avoid it? I'm going to be honest with myself about it because if I didn't train them, that's on me. Okay? If they're avoiding it, that's on them. The third thing I'm going to do is I'm going to have the conversation. Now, this is where most business owners either wimp out or they come in way too hot.

And it's a delicate balance here, it really is. And so here's what I want you to say to them. When you have this meeting with them, I want you to sit down with them and I want you to be candid, but at the same time, I want you to be curious. It's a very fine line. And you got to say to them, hey, look, we got to talk about something, something I've noticed. And over the past two weeks or over the past week or over the last month,

I've noticed that I've had to step in to solve the problems for you. I've had to solve these tasks for you. And I'm going to give them examples. One, two, three. And I'm going tell them, look, this is not sustainable. When I'm doing your work, I can't do mine. And that means that strategic priorities get dropped. And it also means that you are not developing in your role. ⁓

And I need you to own these responsibilities completely. And that means that if something isn't going to get done, you come to me before that happens. And you tell me, hey, look, this isn't going to get done. Or I don't know how to do this. I don't understand how to do it. Can I get training? Can I get a tool to do this? This is how we're going to do it, my friend. This is what we're saying to our employees, our team members.

And after we do that, we're going to stop talking and we're to listen. Because you see, their answer is going to tell you everything that you need to know. It's going to tell you everything because they're going to say, yeah, I don't know how to do that. OK, that's a training issue. Or they might say, well, this happened or I don't have the tool to do that. Great. And then if they start making excuses, well, then you know the last one.

But then step four of this whole equation is that you're gonna set expectations going forward. And you're basically gonna say, hey, listen, this cannot happen. It will not happen again. I hired you because I believed you could handle this work. And right now, the pattern I'm seeing does not match that belief. So let's fix it together. And we can't keep this pattern occurring. Is that fair? And we're waiting for them to say, yes. And then lastly,

is I'm going to put a note on the calendar and I'm going check back on that work in two weeks. Okay. We're going to coach them through this.

We're not going to be a micromanager about it. We're not going to keep following up on every single task. We're going to set our expectation and expect them to deliver. And if they fall short of that expectation, then we're going to remind them of this conversation that we had. But just doing the work on their behalf, maybe you do it one time, but then you have this conversation. But to keep doing it and covering for them is unsustainable. And it will just drive you crazy. So you're not going to become the bottleneck.

but you're also not going to tolerate work that somebody else should be doing and they're not doing it. You're not going to pick up that paintbrush and do it for them. All right, Carlos, here's your homework. Make a list of the tasks that you're doing that you shouldn't be. Diagnose why. it, again, is it do they not know how? Do they not have the tools? Do they not want to have the conversation? Write out what you want to say to them. Come back here and tell me.

what happened. I truly want to know. So does everybody else. And I want to know your success on it. And if you're watching this and you have the same problem, well, then you know it's fixable. And by the way, if you have your own question about your business, head over to my website, scotttodd.net forward slash ask and submit it there. I give you three ways in which you can submit your question. I want to help you fix next, fix what's next. And I will see you in our next episode. And by the way.

Put down that paintbrush.