Executive or Babysitter?

Research shows that CEOs spend less than 30 percent of their time on strategic work. The remaining time is often consumed by meetings, operational distractions, and what I frequently observe in high-performance organizations: executive babysitting

This pattern severely limits execution capacity. When leaders are required to do the work others should be doing themselves, they are pulled away from the high-value contributions that only they can make

Executive babysitting typically manifests in three ways:

First, the leader becomes the referee. Team members escalate interpersonal issues instead of addressing them directly, and the leader is expected to mediate

Second, the leader becomes the taskmaster. Rather than owning their responsibilities, others rely on the leader to follow up on deadlines, metrics, and deliverables.

Third, the leader becomes the monkey magnet. Problems that should be solved at lower levels are instead brought to the leader. These problems are handed off during meetings and remain on the leader’s desk long after everyone else has moved on.

When this happens, the issue is not simply the team’s behavior. It is often a reflection of leadership habits that unintentionally enable the situation. Leaders who routinely step in to referee, chase, or solve begin to normalize the very dependency they seek to avoid.

Effective leadership requires creating the conditions for others to take ownership. This begins by recognizing where your own actions may be reinforcing the wrong dynamics. Then choose to lead in a way that builds capability, not reliance.