Very often we talk about leading by example. If you want your team to behave a certain way, there is immense power in them seeing you do it. Live your word. However, this isn’t always the best practice. There are times when your role is so different, you must act differently.

An example came up recently with one of my coaching clients who was working endless hours to get work done. He was putting in long hours he felt were required for leading the development team. He wanted to be the model of this team, and ensure that he could say “I’m working as hard as you guys are working.” When I talked to his team, one of his leaders said “I want to find a way to figure out how he can work less hours.” Their goal was to help reduce the number of hours he had to work. By pushing himself to work exhaustive hours, not only was my client pushing his own limits he was foiling his team’s attempts to get a “win".

Your role as a leader is different than the other roles on your team. You have a platform and a responsibility to plan and communicate how your organization will achieve its goals. Nobody else can do that work for you. You have folks on your team that do the tactical work and make progress in the direction you set. When you spend time doing the work of your team, you rob yourself of time spent leading.

Certainly there are times when you need to set an example. You must set an example for the ethics and values of your organization. You must be seen supporting the firm’s policies and procedures. You must be a role model for how you communicate and treat other people. But you don’t need to act like everyone’s role is the same and everyone should be equally willing to do the same work. It simply isn’t the way a modern organization is set up to be effective.

I recall at one time holding on to the belief that I shouldn’t be asking my team to do anything I wasn’t also willing to do. I would take occasional support tickets. I would try and do some code commits. I wanted my team to see that I was contributing in the same way I was asking them to contribute. At one point, I had a team member actually pull me aside and say “You know, that’s MY job to be doing this work. You should be spending your time on higher level more important stuff.” It shocked me. Not only was she not appreciative of my chipping in, she inferred that I wasn’t doing my job because I was spending time doing her job.

Our teams are smarter than we give them credit for being. They see how the organization works. They realize that teams need leaders and organizations need plans and direction. They also realize they need feedback and support to be successful themselves. Some of your team have been in organizations that don’t have leaders or plans, and they know that’s terrible.

Don’t be condescending. Differentiation of roles can be used as a negative, giving the impression that certain work is “below” someone. Value your team and the work that they do. It doesn’t mean you have to do that work, though. Some work fits better in someone else’s work queue. Frame the work distribution in a way where your team understands and feels valued. Explain that you need folks to do their work (work the cases or do the coding) so you can focus on work only you can do (hiring, planning and communicating).