Ep. 49: When Stepping In Undermines Your Leadership
Dec 24, 2025The meeting is scheduled for the next day.
A decision needs to be made. Teams are waiting for direction.
As you review the materials one final time, you see it immediately: the analysis is incomplete. Key inputs are missing. Several assumptions haven’t been tested.
This is not new.
You’ve been clear about expectations before. And there is no time left to send it back without delaying the decision.
So you make a choice.
In this episode of Grounded and Aligned™, Karen Gombault examines a pattern common at Director–SVP level: stepping in to protect outcomes, and the longer-term cost that decision quietly creates.
This is not about commitment or competence.
It is about what happens when responsibility repeatedly shifts toward you, without being explicitly agreed, named, or corrected.
The episode explores how consistent intervention changes accountability, increases cognitive load, and alters how authority is experienced, not visibly, but structurally.
If you often find yourself compensating so the business does not absorb the impact of someone else’s gaps, this conversation will feel familiar.
What this episode looks at:
- How repeatedly absorbing work that isn’t yours reshapes accountability — even when done for sound reasons
- Why unresolved performance issues persist when consequences never land where they belong
- How authority erodes quietly through accumulated mental load, not overt challenge
- The difference between short-term decision protection and long-term organizational strength
- When stepping back is not avoidance, but an intentional leadership decision
“Staying accountable to outcomes is of course part of senior leadership. But taking on work that isn’t yours repeatedly, that is not.”
— Karen Gombault
At senior levels, leadership is not demonstrated by how much you absorb. It is demonstrated by where responsibility sits and how you install boundaries.
Next steps:
If this pattern shows up in your job, I offer a free 15-minute Executive Pulse Call.
One situation.
Clear perspective.
A grounded decision on what to do about it.
