After a recent team meeting, one of my clients made a pointed observation. Marian, a senior executive at a private research university, joked that just locking eyes with her boss was enough to get a new assignment. Beneath the humor, though, was real frustration. Her boss kept singling her out for extra work—not because her peers weren’t capable, but because Marian was known for getting things done. That reliability was now pushing her toward burnout.
Marian’s situation is one I’ve been seeing more on executive teams. Many organizations are navigating layoffs and budget cuts, but employee expectations haven’t decreased. Senior leaders are still asked to achieve ambitious goals, even with fewer people and fewer resources. When extra work surfaces without a clear home, the boss often gives it to the leader they can count on most.
I call this dynamic the assignment “magnet effect.” It occurs when high-performing team members unintentionally attract extra responsibilities by doing their jobs exceptionally well. The problem, as I saw with Marian, is that it can lead to project overload, diminish a leader’s strategic focus, and reduce their overall effectiveness.
How to Manage the Assignment “Magnet Effect”
If you’re that reliable leader—and suspect the magnet effect is happening to you—there are ways to address it. The first step is to identify what’s driving the problem. In my work with leaders facing this challenge, I’ve found it’s typically a mix of individual strengths and organizational weaknesses:
Individual strengths:
- Quality of work: You have a track record of delivering strong results.
- Communication: You have strong, trusting relationships with your boss and other leaders.
- Dedication: You follow through, and say “yes,” even when deadlines are demanding.
Organizational weaknesses:
- Lack of visibility: Your boss and colleagues don’t have a true sense of your workload.
- Lack of delegation: Your boss doesn’t have a clear process for delegating new tasks.
- Lack of awareness: Your boss doesn’t realize that projects are being unevenly distributed.
For Marian, it became clear that these combined factors were fueling the issue. Together, we explored how she could shift them. Our goal wasn’t to offload projects, but to engage her boss and executive peers in creating a more strategic approach, together.
Here’s how we did it, and how you can do the same.
1) Learn to prioritize without overcommitting.
The magnet effect is often made worse by capacity issues— without enough people to share the work, those gaps in visibility, delegation, and awareness become more pronounced. While you can’t solve a staffing problem overnight, you can make smarter choices about how to allocate your own time.
When you’re given a new project, weigh it against the organization’s broader goals. Then, suggest to your boss how that project should be prioritized relative to your other responsibilities. The idea is to take initiative—proactively recommending a path forward rather than passively taking on extra work—and to stay aligned on where your efforts will have the greatest impact.
For instance, let’s say your boss gives you two deliverables within a short window: preparing materials for an upcoming board meeting and updating the company’s financial projections. Consider which task most aligns with the organization’s near-term goals or leadership needs, and which can safely be postponed. In this case, you might decide that the board meeting requires more urgent attention—it’s time-bound, high-visibility, and critical to shaping leadership decisions.
You could say, “Based on the time sensitivity of the upcoming board meeting and the new materials we’ll need to create, I’m going to focus on finalizing the presentation this week, which means the projections will be completed the following week. If you’d like me to adjust the order of these priorities, I welcome your feedback.”
In this scenario, you’re making your priorities visible and confirming with your boss how to focus your time—without complaining or being defensive.
2) Clarify ownership and collaborate across departments.
As you move higher in an organization, projects are less likely to fit neatly into a single vertical and more likely to span multiple teams or functions. That means you’ll have to learn how to lead across departments and disciplines. But “leading across” doesn’t mean taking on everything yourself. It’s about bringing the right people together and clarifying ownership—especially if someone else has the expertise to lead a project more effectively.
If you’re assigned work beyond your scope or capacity, you can propose an alternate approach—such as recommending someone better suited to lead it or inviting another senior executive to co-lead with you. This models a more balanced way to share responsibility and helps solve the delegation problem from the top down.
As an example, suppose you’re asked to oversee a company-wide pricing initiative. Your expertise lies in operations and finance, but much of the work depends on customer research and market trends. You might invite your CMO to co-lead, given their insight into consumer behavior and brand strategy.
You could say, “This initiative overlaps both of our verticals, and I believe we’ll get a stronger outcome from our shared expertise. Would you be open to co-owning this strategy?”
Collaborating across can also extend to the team members that report to your senior peers. That said, assigning project ownership diagonally requires nuance. You don’t want to overstep by directing another leader’s team or reassigning work that’s yours to handle. The key is to ensure the work would genuinely benefit from that team’s expertise—and to frame the project as an opportunity for their growth as well as a way to advance the organization’s priorities.
If the work you want to hand off fits that criteria, you might approach the other leader and say, “This sounds like an important project for our organization. We’ve talked about trying to elevate [team member’s] visibility and this could be a valuable next step in their development. I can support you in managing them to ensure it gets completed in the way our team expects.”
3) Have a strategic conversation about capacity issues.
Sometimes you may not be able to shift deadlines or share ownership. The project might be tied to an immovable date, or your peers may already be at full capacity. In these cases, resist the urge to quietly take on extra work at the expense of your bandwidth and focus. At the executive level, your workload doesn’t just affect you—it influences organizational outcomes, and your overextension can cascade down to your team. To prevent that, address the issue head-on.
Find a time to have a candid conversation with your boss. This conversation isn’t about saying “no” to the work—it’s about clarifying expectations when there’s no clear solution. While the outcome may ultimately involve adjusting timelines or shifting ownership, go into it with the goal of defining the strategic trade-offs you can make together. Approach the discussion as a peer, with curiosity.
In a private meeting, you might say, “I’ve noticed that I’ve been given several high-priority projects over the past few weeks. I appreciate your trust in me and I want to continue focusing my energy where it will make the most impact. At the same time, the pace and volume of new assignments is stretching my capacity—and I don’t think it’s sustainable. I’d like to clarify which projects are most critical to the organization’s goals, and how I can best direct my time and attention.”
If it becomes clear that the underlying issue is a resourcing challenge, it’s appropriate to broaden the conversation. You can use what you’ve learned about your own limits to highlight the larger pattern and propose solutions: “I know we’re all understaffed right now, and I’m committed to helping us fill this gap. I’d like to suggest we review each team’s existing projects and deadlines, so we can support each other to assess capacity and realign resources to what will be most important this quarter.”
4) Redefine your relationship to being the “go-to” person.
Managing assignments and setting expectations is half of the equation. The other half is examining how your own behavior might be reinforcing the “magnet effect.” That’s why it’s worth spending some time reflecting on your relationship with being the “go-to” person.
Being the leader that everyone counts on can be validating—it may even feel like a compliment. But the same instinct that fuels your reliability can also feed your ego. When your value becomes tied to being indispensable, it’s easy to mistake constant involvement for impact. The test is whether you’re saying “yes” because it serves a goal or because it reinforces your sense of worth.
If you find yourself agreeing to new projects without considering whether they align with your role, growth, or organization’s priorities, you may be reinforcing the pattern that’s holding you back. While it may feel good to be trusted in the moment, over time, being the “go-to” decreases your ability to move up in the organization.
If you’re stuck executing projects, it’s harder to be seen as a strategic leader. The more your energy is used to make things happen, the less space you have to create a strong vision, build influence, and coach your team.
Remember that your job is to ensure the right work gets done by the right people. Protecting your bandwidth not only supports you—it sets the tone for what strong leadership looks like in your organization. By clarifying priorities, roles, and expectations, you can focus your energy where it matters most: sustaining the organization’s momentum without sacrificing your own.
Credit: www.hbr.org/
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