When Working Harder Makes Things Worse

Imagine stepping into quicksand.

Your instinct is to fight your way out. You pull harder, move faster, and put everything you've got into getting free. Unfortunately, that frantic movement can make escaping even more difficult.

I've seen something remarkably similar happen with leaders.

A project falls behind, a team isn't delivering, or an important decision keeps getting delayed. The leader responds by putting in more hours, getting closer to the details, and taking greater control.

Makes sense, right? When you're responsible for the results, you don't exactly have the luxury of ignoring the problem.

But then something interesting happens. The leader gets busier, the team becomes more dependent on them, and the situation doesn't improve.

So the leader doubles down.

Welcome to the Quicksand Effect.

It's one of the key concepts in my upcoming book, Inspired by LIFE, and it captures a pattern I've seen throughout my work with leaders: sometimes the very actions we take to solve a problem end up making it worse.

What makes this so difficult to recognize is that we're often relying on strengths that have served us incredibly well.

Think about the leader who built a career on being the person everyone could count on. They were the one who stepped in when things went sideways, found answers when others couldn't, and made sure the work got done.

That reputation didn't happen by accident. They earned it.

Now they're leading a larger team, and those same instincts kick in whenever something goes wrong. They jump into meetings, review work that others should own, and make decisions their people could probably make themselves.

The leader believes they're helping. And in the moment, they probably are. A problem gets resolved, a decision gets made, and everyone can move forward.

But what happens the next time?

The team remembers who solved the problem. They know where to go when they're uncertain. Why struggle through a difficult decision when the boss can make it faster?

Before long, the leader is overwhelmed and frustrated that nobody seems willing to take ownership.

And here's the uncomfortable part: the leader may have helped create the very dependency they're now complaining about.

I've had conversations with leaders who genuinely want their teams to become more independent, yet struggle to give people the room to develop that independence. They know they need to delegate, but watching someone take a different approach, make a slower decision, or produce work that isn't quite how they would have done it can be excruciating.

Especially when they're accountable for the outcome.

It's easy to tell someone to step back. It's a lot harder when you're the person whose name is attached to the results.

But the Quicksand Effect isn't limited to delegation.

I've seen leaders respond to uncertainty by demanding more information, long after another report is unlikely to change the decision. Others try to improve performance by adding meetings and status updates, leaving their teams with even less time to do the work. And sometimes a leader becomes so determined to prevent mistakes that people stop taking the initiative altogether.

The frustrating part is that each response can seem perfectly reasonable at the time. You want a sound decision, better visibility, or fewer mistakes. Who could argue with that?

The trouble is that we can become so focused on what we're trying to accomplish that we stop noticing what our approach is producing.

That's why I think the Quicksand Effect deserves more attention. Recognizing it may require us to question something we've spent years being proud of.

Our work ethic. Our expertise. Our ability to take charge and get things done.

And when the pressure is on, those are often the last things we want to question.

Yet leadership changes as our responsibilities grow. The ability to personally solve difficult problems remains valuable, but our success increasingly depends on developing people who can solve problems without us.

This is also one of the reasons the Quicksand Effect belongs in Inspired by LIFE: Redefining the Future of Leadership.

We're entering a period when the world of work is changing faster than many of the approaches we've relied on. AI is transforming how work gets done, expectations are shifting, and leaders are encountering challenges that don't always respond to familiar solutions.

The experience that brought us this far is still important. But we can't assume that applying more of it will always take us where we need to go next.

I think the most difficult part is recognizing when we've reached that point. There's no warning light that tells us our involvement has become excessive or that our determination to get something right is now slowing everyone else down. We're usually too busy trying to fix the situation to notice.

Which brings me back to the quicksand.

Getting free requires recognizing what's happening and changing how you respond. Continuing to struggle in the same way can leave you even more stuck.

So here's something I'd encourage you to consider this week.

Think about a problem that's been consuming an unusual amount of your time and energy. Perhaps you've been putting in longer hours, taking on additional responsibility, or getting more involved because the results haven't been what you expected.

Take a close look at what's happened since you increased your efforts. Has the situation improved? Or have you simply become more involved in a problem that continues to grow?

If you're not seeing the progress you expected, consider what might happen if you changed your approach instead of increasing your effort.

What are you doing more of today that might actually be making your job harder tomorrow?