Extra time: Taking up the duties of a forgetful boss can hamper your work

A reader writes: “My boss is a kindly gent who has been in this organisation for ages. He’s also past retirement age. It’s gotten to the point where he’s forgetting things, making mistakes and having lapses in judgement. A lot of work is getting dumped on me, because I used to be a supervisor.

“I took a pay cut to come here and get away from the stress of supervision, to do more interesting work. Now I’m immersed in budget and answering everyone’s questions, or asking the boss for answers.

“My boss’s boss is busy or absent. How do I disengage from all the boss stuff and get back to the interesting work I was hired to do? Is it possible to do that without ticking everyone off?”

The response: In the simplest terms, you are being asked to step in to help close a competency gap on your team. Your boss could use someone like you to serve as a backstop, and your colleagues are eager for leadership and direction.

Yet, despite your proficiency as a supervisor, you have no interest in performing those functions. Without alienating your team, what can you do to keep from having your interesting work swallowed up by assistant supervisor duties?

Everyone gets asked to do something outside of his or her job description now and then. It may be due to a spike in work, increased turnover, or, in your case, helping a struggling co-worker. It is bad form to refuse the occasional call for help. But it is not unreasonable for you to open a dialogue about how to balance these supervisory duties with the job that you were hired to do.

My guess is that, with all of the administrative tasks you have taken on, you are having difficulty completing your regular assignments on time or with your customary attention to detail. It also sounds like your new duties have sprouted up in a somewhat organic fashion, with little forethought and long-range planning. Those are the two critical points for you to make in a discussion with your supervisor.

Stress that you are very willing to help, but that your regular work is suffering. Propose ways in which your assistant supervisor duties could be circumscribed. For example, someone else on staff might be equally capable of assisting with the budget function, and you could suggest that this person assume some or all of those responsibilities. As well, you could define a rotation system whereby a different person is “on call” to answer questions on certain days of the week. In essence, ask that the work be spread across the team so that you can still find the time to do your job.

The wisdom of this approach is that it creates redundancy across the department so that no one person is the sole authority on a particular matter. Then your organisation can count upon a backup system to get things done rather than rely upon people like you to drop everything and come to the rescue. What you are doing is noble and, for the moment at least, necessary. But it is not efficient, and you should point that out.