A few weeks ago, I attended a webinar on project management. The presenter reeled off a list of objectionable behaviors, naming “over-functioning” as one. He was swiftly interrupted and asked to clarify. After all, to do more than expected seems like an admirable trait.

Over-functioning, as the presenter explained, is stepping in and doing someone else’s work.

“Damn,” I immediately reckoned, “I’m an over-functioner.”

Applause from recipients

Disturbed by the shame of over-functioning, I tuned-out the rest of the webinar. For the next few days, I couldn’t stop ruminating how I’d failed to realize my being a team player and helping others by picking up the slack or completing a task, so a project didn’t falter, was my downfall.

I can cite examples of being on teams with members who were like Mikey in Life cereal commercials, barking “Give it to Julie.” I’ve even had managers tell me it was my job to motivate my co-workers – many who were senior to me – and then in the next breath say I’d be dinged if a project wasn’t completed on-time or met the desired objectives.

It was irrelevant that I had completed my agreed upon assignments, and had repeatedly nudged others to finish theirs. Equally inconsequential was the reality that the success of these projects was often tied to my picking up the slack for apathetic team members.

Happily, after a few days, my fury over being an “over-functioner” calmed.

It was ignited on a Saturday morning. I noticed a couple, who I’d earlier seen on a passenger ferry, ordering breakfast a few tables away. I initiated a conversation. An IT professional for a local greenhouse company, the man had recently volunteered to help resolve fulfillment issues.

He’d spent nearly two hours – on a weekend – driving and taking a ferry to deliver several parts to a woman who received the wrong ones. His trip back home would take another two hours (or more, depending on the ferry schedule).

His dedication to customer service could be lumped in with over-functioning. It would have taken just a few minutes to say, “We’ll send you the parts.” However, he recognized the woman had a limited timeframe in which to complete the greenhouse. Indeed, she was overjoyed to exchange the incorrect parts for the correct ones.

Conversely, my co-workers (and manager) were delighted in the success of team projects, admitting much of the work was done by me, owing to their savvy at sidestepping their responsibilities.

Perceptions based on the characters

When it comes to day-to-day activities, we expect exceptional service from waitstaff noticing we need more water to store managers opening additional registers when lines form, and store clerks verifying whether products are available at other stores. We’re pleased when we can contact a support person who can immediately alleviate our issues, even if that means they must step outside their roles.

Our perceptions of how people perform their jobs is partially influenced by the TV programs we watch. Don Draper of Mad Men and his male associates were often inexcusably late, took long lunches, and delegated the nitty-gritty to a cadre of women always at their desks, ready to oblige. Nevertheless, you were left with the impression, skirting work wasn’t the norm. Burning the “midnight oil” to generate a cutting-edge ad campaign for a client meeting the following morning was the expectation.

Mary Tyler Moore moved from the drudgery of typing to the typically male-dominated world of producing news programs in the long-running series The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Her upward mobility was tied to her rock-solid work ethic of doing whatever was necessary to achieve the desired outcomes.

Murphy Brown, starring Candice Bergen, pushed through the glass ceiling as an investigative journalist and later anchor on a cable morning news show. Once again, the underlying message was to work hard, take on additional responsibilities and push through the drudgery, especially if you were a woman.

Both Mary Tyler Moore and Murphy Brown felt their bosses were too demanding and yearn to have their lives back. The Office continued the narrative of the importance of hard work despite the futility of dead-end jobs.

The desirability of over-functioning was heightened in The Apprentice. Shirkers and those who didn’t make the cut were quickly and unapologetically “fired.” The winners weren’t just charismatic and skilled at circumventing the inevitable animosity among the participants, but were willing to “roll up their sleeves” in any situation.

Changes to the plot lines

In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today the respective figures are only 1 percent and 20 percent. To survive as a farmer, rancher, or simply a merchant in a rural town required over-functioning. Sleeping-in meant missing the opportunity to plant, water, harvest, and bring crops to market. During the cold months, there were fences and barns to build, livestock to tend, and acreage to plant with cover crops.

Even if you weren’t a farmer or rancher, the job of being a shop owner, clerk, educator, tradesman, medical professional or municipal worker could mean working 6 days a week from early morning to late evening, doing whatever was necessary to meet citizens’ needs. Teachers had to develop lesson plans for kids of all ages, attending “one-room” school houses. Physicians and midwives needed to be available to make house calls at all hours.

By 1920, more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas, finding work at factories, constructing buildings and infrastructure, working in the public sector, and filling a plethora of newly created blue- and white-collar jobs that fueled burgeoning metropolises. New norms emerged, dictating professional etiquette in the workplace, from factory workers being expected to clock in-and-out at precise times to office workers, donning suits and dresses, upholding prescribed decorum, and hoping their hard work furthered their careers.

Over the years, the rules of business protocol and expectation of office workers has radically changed. In 1978, The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette cast a shadow on women wanting to quickly advance up the ranks stating, “A young woman who becomes someone’s secretary and then asks for a promotion to a junior executive’s job after six months is making error. She doesn’t deserve that promotion. It takes time to prove one’s ability to act in an executive capacity.” Her role is more attuned to doing “…the gracious thing in his office relationships – including writing thank you notes, sending gifts, and calling someone when the occasion warrants it – both inside the office and out of it.”¹

Ensemble determines the outcome

Happily, women in most professions have pushed through the “glass ceiling” and are continuing to make headway in job equity. Simultaneously, the complexity of the work environment – both for men and women – often dictates working in teams with sometimes hundreds of people striding towards a common goal such as development and release of a new application or piece of hardware.

While collaboration and teamwork are the foundation of break-through innovation, they’re also the medium for a mix of work styles from proactive go-getters to procrastinators who don’t spring into action until a deadline approaches. This dynamic can result in mediocre, hastily completed work, potentially jeopardizing the quality of the final product.

It also triggers over-functioning with leaders and hard workers jumping in and doing the work to ensure it’s completed on-time, and if necessary, revised to ensure it meets the objectives.

Nevertheless, over-functioning is deemed unacceptable behavior because it makes others under-function, becoming less competent and capable, and sometimes frustrated, believing they’re being marginalized and undermined.

In my experience, when I scaled back my efforts, enabling others to “step up to the plate” or at the minimum do their assigned tasks, the repercussions were directed at me. Several years ago, I was paired with a woman who struggled to do the most elementary tasks, even though she was senior to me.

When I stopped helping her, she accused me of not being a team player. I calmly shared our tracking spreadsheet, which clearly showed I’d completed at least three-fourths of the work. She then spun the narrative, clarifying her role was simply to project manage (me), and I was the worker bee.

When I shared my experience with our manager, he assured me she was “very smart” and “had a lot to offer.” Really?

Final curtain call

When you search for “over functioning” and “under functioning” on the Internet, it’s surprising the number of articles. Most disparage over-functioners, classifying their behavior as disruptive and the cause of those who under-function.

That’s backwards.

It’s like reprimanding studious kids who get their homework done on time and take the initiative to do additional work, while “giving a pass” to the kids whose homework is late or partially completed.

During his talk on “5 best rules for success in life,” author and motivational speaker Simon Sinek, elaborated on the selection process for U.S. Navy Seals. He said the men with huge bulging muscles covered in tattoos, wanting to prove their toughness, don’t make it through training. Preening leaders who delegate also don’t make it, along with star college athletes who’ve never been tested to the core.

The candidates who make it to the end of training are sometimes skinny, scrawny, and shiver out of fear. According to Sinek, “All the guys who make it through, when they find themselves physically spent, emotionally spent, when they have nothing left to give physically or emotionally, somehow some way, they are able to find the energy to dig down deep inside themselves to find the energy to help the guy next to them. They become seals.”

He continues explaining, “If you want to be an elite warrior, you better get really good at helping the person to the left of you and helping the person to the right of you. Because that’s how people advance in the world.”

I’m not going to stop being an over-functioner. It’s who I am. I will, however, be more conscientious of where my roles start and stop. And while I might nibble off my fingernails, waiting for others to complete their parts, I’ll fight the urge to do it for them.

¹ “Upward Mobility for a Secretary. A talented, hard-working secretary can almost always ‘move up” today if she wants to and if she has properly given her job enough time. Many executive secretaries like their jobs immensely, have a lot of responsibilities, receive excellent perquisites, and are well paid. A young woman who becomes someone’s secretary and then asks for a promotion to a junior executive’s job after six months is making error. She doesn’t deserve that promotion. It takes time to prove one’s ability to act in an executive capacity.” The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette, A Guide to Contemporary Living, Revised and Expanded by Letitia Baldrige, Doubleday & Company, 1978

Thank you to Nadim Merrikh, Les Anderson, and Edu Lauton for their amazing photos on Unsplash