EPISODE
Over-functioning or Helping Too Much with Reality-Based Leadership?
One of the core philosophies of living Reality-Based Leadership at work is to stop judging, start helping. People love this as a way to get started and dive right in, but sometimes their helping becomes doing everyone else's work, or jumping in to fix a lot of things. This creates the risk of becoming an over-functioner or an enabler in your workplace. So many people that just start reality-based leadership say that I started to say how can I help and next thing you know I was busier than ever and couldn't get my work done. This is another step in the evolution of being a reality-based leader is how to jump in to help without taking on everyone else's work.
In this episode, Cy and Alex talk about this pattern and how to watch for it and how to see when you're helping is actually hurting and how to begin saying yes and separating out how the work gets done to be able to keep momentum going and agree to goals but also keep your boundaries. With these boundaries, you're able to then take on the short term issues that need to be taken care of where you do jump in and fix, but then you can leave some space to have others help you with midterm issues and then long-term issues in the workplace.
Truly a powerful episode to make sure that one of the best tools of reality-based leadership doesn't get weaponized and used for evil. Enjoy, share with your colleagues and make sure you subscribe to the podcast and have discussions on this topic. We can't wait to hear from you.
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117: Why Learned Helplessness Holds Teams Back and Is the Opposite of Accountability
What happens when your team stops trying - not because they can't, but because they've decided it won't matter anyway? Alex Dorr, CEO and host of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast, unpacks the psychological phenomenon behind stalled accountability: learned helplessness. It's the belief that your actions no longer shape your outcomes. It's contagious. And it's often hiding in plain sight, disguised as "that's just how things are here."
Alex walks through two classic experiments to show how deeply this pattern gets wired in, then turns the mirror on himself with a personal story about a phantom leg cramp that limited him for six years. From there, he offers three practical techniques leaders can use immediately: naming excuses and asking "what else could we try," swapping victim-questions for ownership-questions, and reframing impossible goals into small, doable next steps.
Learned helplessness isn't a character flaw. It's a habit. And habits can be broken. Listen in, then go work on it with your team this week.
Episode Highlights
00:02:27 What learned helplessness actually is
00:04:02 The flea experiment
00:06:38 The five monkeys experiment
00:08:27 Phrases that signal learned helplessness
00:10:03 Alex's personal story: the lunges that haunted him
00:14:04 Technique 1: name the excuse, ask what else
00:15:08 Technique 2: swap why and who for what and how
00:17:41 Technique 3: thinking inside-the-box
117: Why Learned Helplessness Holds Teams Back and Is the Opposite of Accountability
What happens when your team stops trying - not because they can't, but because they've decided it won't matter anyway? Alex Dorr, CEO and host of the Reality-Based Leadership Podcast, unpacks the psychological phenomenon behind stalled accountability: learned helplessness. It's the belief that your actions no longer shape your outcomes. It's contagious. And it's often hiding in plain sight, disguised as "that's just how things are here."
Alex walks through two classic experiments to show how deeply this pattern gets wired in, then turns the mirror on himself with a personal story about a phantom leg cramp that limited him for six years. From there, he offers three practical techniques leaders can use immediately: naming excuses and asking "what else could we try," swapping victim-questions for ownership-questions, and reframing impossible goals into small, doable next steps.
Learned helplessness isn't a character flaw. It's a habit. And habits can be broken. Listen in, then go work on it with your team this week.
Episode Highlights
00:02:27 What learned helplessness actually is
00:04:02 The flea experiment
00:06:38 The five monkeys experiment
00:08:27 Phrases that signal learned helplessness
00:10:03 Alex's personal story: the lunges that haunted him
00:14:04 Technique 1: name the excuse, ask what else
00:15:08 Technique 2: swap why and who for what and how
00:17:41 Technique 3: thinking inside-the-box
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