When Competence Becomes Over functioning

The Leadership Pattern Mash Majesty Exposed in Me

Okay, round two. If you read the last post, you know the headline version of Mash Majesty: audacity, humility, an inaugural Toronto Carnival section that sold out, a spreadsheet that didn't. Good story. Mostly true. But it's also the version where I get to be the plucky rookie who took a smart risk because of what it won me, and honestly? That's the easy part to tell you.

This is the part where I tell you what the project exposed about me that had nothing to do with Carnival at all.

The pattern I didn't see coming

I did this whole thing with my younger sister, Shan. Getting to build something with her again should have been pure joy. And it mostly was. But somewhere in the middle of it, I fell into a pattern I have spent years coaching other people out of, and did not catch myself doing it until it was already a problem.

I over-functioned. Hard.

I took on more than my share without being asked. I avoided asking Shan for help because some part of me decided that asking would be a burden on her, or worse, evidence that I couldn't actually handle what I signed up for. I tried to protect her from stress that honestly should have been shared. I was so locked in on vendors, customers, partners, and keeping the whole machine running that I forgot to do something as basic as thank my own sister properly for showing up the way she did. I was so busy being reliable that I stopped being a partner.

If you know me, you know this should not surprise you even a little bit. I am a textbook firstborn daughter. Carrying more has always felt safer than asking for less. But watching myself do it in real time, on a project I cared about, with someone I love, was a different kind of uncomfortable than reading about it in a leadership book.

Why "don’t worry, I got this" is not always the best brand

I want to be really clear about something, because I think we glorify this pattern constantly, especially for women, and especially for Black women navigating corporate spaces that already feel unstable. Being the person who can handle everything looks like strength from the outside. It gets you praised. It gets you called reliable, a rock, low maintenance, easy to work with.

It is also, very often, a survival strategy wearing a strength costume. Rarely asking, and frequently adapting.

I know this because I coach it out of people for a living, and yet there I was, doing the exact thing. Being indispensable felt like it would protect the business. Reliability felt like proof I was leading well. My competence told me I should be able to carry this alone, and asking for help felt like it would cost me credibility I couldn't afford to lose. Flying under the radar, not making noise about how much I was actually holding, felt safe.

None of that is leadership. It's armor. And armor is heavy, even when you're the one who built it.

What it actually cost

Overfunctioning didn't just wear me out, though it absolutely did that too. It quietly eroded things I actually care about. It ate into gratitude I owed someone. It kept me from real partnership when partnership was exactly what the project needed. It meant some of our community members ended up using me the way you'd use a search engine, texting me at all hours for answers I hadn't signed up to give on demand, because I never drew the line that would have taught people where my role actually ended.

There was a point during the buildup, after a failed first photoshoot and a string of things going sideways, where quitting felt like a genuinely live option. Not a dramatic, storm-out kind of quitting. The quiet kind, where you start doing the math on whether this is worth what it's taking out of you.

I didn't quit. But I want to be honest that the thought was there, because I think we do people a disservice when we only show the moment we powered through and skip the moment we seriously considered not.

The coaching irony I can't ignore

Here's the part that actually stopped me in my tracks while writing this. Someone once asked me, in a leadership workshop, what the hardest part of coaching is for me personally. My answer was immediate: resisting the urge to rescue someone from their own discomfort.

Effective coaching means I don't jump in with reassurance the second someone gets uncomfortable. I don't fill the silence when someone's stuck on a hard question. I don't hand someone my answer because it would be faster and would make both of us feel better in the moment. Every time I resist that urge, what I'm actually doing is refusing to rob someone of the chance to find their own clarity, challenge their own narrative, and get genuinely committed to their own growth, because the answer came from them and not from me.

I have built an entire practice around holding that space without rescuing.

And then I turned around and rescued everyone around me during Mash Majesty. I overfunctioned for vendors. I overfunctioned for community members. I overfunctioned for my own sister. The exact instinct I train myself daily to resist in a coaching room, I let run completely unchecked in my own business.

That's not a cute contradiction. That's a blind spot. And it's precisely the kind of blind spot that competence hides really well, because from the outside it just looks like someone doing an excellent job.

What I actually needed

Not a productivity hack. Not a better system. I needed a mirror and a real conversation about the difference between the version of leadership that protects me and the version that actually builds trust with the people around me. I needed someone to ask me the question I ask my clients constantly: what are you actually afraid would happen if you asked for help right now?

That's the work I do with people. It's also, apparently, the work I still need done on myself sometimes, credentials and experience notwithstanding.

If any of this sounds familiar

Maybe you're the person at work who's become indispensable, and some part of you suspects that's less about your value and more about your fear of what happens if you're not needed every single day. Maybe you've confused being reliable with being strategic, and you've noticed your actual influence hasn't grown even though your workload keeps expanding. Maybe you're carrying team dysfunction that was never yours to carry alone, protecting people from consequences instead of building the kind of shared accountability that would actually make things better.

If over functioning has started to look less like your strength and more like the thing quietly limiting your influence, exhausting your capacity, and straining the relationships you depend on, that's worth an actual conversation, not another article you nod along to and then close the tab on.

I'd like to have that conversation with you directly. Book a Private Clarity Call and let's find the challenge underneath the challenge, the pattern that looks productive from the outside but is quietly costing you more than it's giving you back.

I promise I won't rescue you from the discomfort of that conversation. That's kind of the whole point.