Managers, Stop Collecting Monkeys!

I expected a lot of things when I stepped into my first management role, but I never expected to become a caretaker of other people’s monkeys.

When I started in management, I quickly realized that every employee has monkeys: problems to solve, difficult decisions to make, projects to complete, etc. Each employee carries around these monkeys on their back, looking for someone who can help lighten the burden.

As their manager, employees looked to me as their potential monkey caretaker. After all, I had proven adept at solving problems, and I loved to play the hero by rescuing others from their problems.

Gradually, I shouldered one monkey after another:

• Donna was wondering if Bob would trade her shifts on Thursday, so I volunteered to talk to Bob for her.
• Becky was hesitant to give feedback to Tracy, so I shared the feedback on Becky’s behalf.
• Tim was stuck on a project and didn’t know what to do next, so I took over the project from Tim.

I figuratively carried around a backpack full of other people’s monkeys, collecting more work from my team members every day.

With each new task I accepted, I became more exhausted.

Thankfully, around this time, I stumbled on the book The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Ken Blanchard, William Oncken Jr., and Hal Burrows. The book opened my eyes to my monkey problem and gave me ideas for how I could solve it.

The authors define a monkey as “the next move” for solving any problem. Most managers have been promoted into management due to their problem-solving skills and initiative. As a manager, when you hear someone describing a problem, it’s natural to begin brainstorming how you would solve that problem. It’s also natural to want to take immediate action and suggest a next step to fix the issue.

The problem is that once you start caring for other people’s monkeys, you run out of time to complete your own work. Others become dependent upon you and stop attempting to solve their own problems.

“As a manager, to the extent that you can get people to care for and feed their own monkeys, they are really managing the work for themselves.” -Blanchard, Oncken, and Burrows

In my experience, you can determine whether you’ve fallen into the monkey trap by listening for these phrases in your words and thoughts:

• “How does my team have free time, but I’m slammed with work?”
• “Why don’t these people solve their own problems?”
• “I don’t trust anyone to fill in for me when I’m gone.”

If you catch yourself thinking these things, you have likely become a monkey caretaker. By absorbing so much of the team’s work and taking responsibility for the next steps to solve any problem, you have conditioned your team to rely on you too much. You could be slowly crippling your team’s ability to work independently and solve their own problems.

But don’t lose hope! It’s remarkably simple to begin reversing the trend.

The answer lies in one key change: begin articulating any action steps from the employee’s perspective rather than from your perspective.

As an example, let’s say your employee Daniel just came to you and described his struggles with a new project. Rather than donning your superhero cape and cowl to come to the rescue, you could ask Daniel a few questions about the problem to ensure he’s thinking about all of his possible options.

Choose questions that clearly indicate that Daniel is owning the next step. Pay attention to the difference between the two versions of each comment or question below:

• “How can I help?” → “What can I do to support you with this?”
• “I’ll look into this and follow-up with you next week.” → “Do you want to try that idea and come let me know next week how it went?”
• “What would you like me to do?” → “What is the next action step you want to take to move forward?”

By simply becoming aware of the monkey trap and tweaking the way you problem-solve with employees, you can avoid extra work and also empower your team to grow.