The Competency Trap: Why Doing Everything Well Is Keeping You From Leading Great

There’s a moment in every leader’s journey when competence becomes the enemy of excellence. Mine came in a swimming pool.

I was training for an Ironman triathlon, determined to master every discipline. My swimming coach laid out the plan: ten hours per week in the pool for a year. The promised return? I’d save twenty minutes in my race time.

I sat there doing the math—520 hours of training to save 20 minutes—and realized I’d been making the same calculation error in my leadership for years. I’d been investing enormous energy becoming marginally better at things that didn’t matter, while neglecting the few areas where I could create disproportionate value.

Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it’s the best use of your time. In fact, the biggest threat to your impact as a leader isn’t weakness—it’s distraction from your unique strengths.

The Return on Invested Time

Every ounce of effort and energy we have is an investment. It’s an intentional investment of time, even when we’re not purposeful about it. Choosing not to step back and reflect is, in itself, an intentional choice.

In business, we obsess over return on invested capital. We calculate expected returns down to the decimal point. Yet most leaders never apply this same rigor to their most precious resource: time.

Here’s what happens when we’re not careful with how we measure the investment of our time: dilution of value. We get trapped doing too much for ourselves, doing the wrong things, and often it’s precisely because we’re good at them. We may even be the best at them right now.

But that’s the wrong question. The right question is: What are the things that only I can do?

Research from the Harvard Business Review’s study on executive time allocation reveals a troubling pattern. Senior leaders spend an average of 72% of their time on activities that could be delegated or eliminated entirely. When executives shifted their focus to strategic priorities—the work only they could do—organizational performance improved by 25% within six months.

When we look at our investment of time and energy through the lens of “What is the single most important and impactful thing that only I can do, and how much of my time is going toward that?”—that’s when we start to grasp the real scope of the problem.

The Fallacy of the Well-Rounded Leader

I first encountered this concept at a John Maxwell Leadercast years ago. John told the audience we’d been sharpening the wrong saw. I remember sitting there thinking, “Wait—I’m supposed to be sharpening my saw. I’m supposed to be getting better at everything.”

That’s the trap. We buy into the fallacy that to be a great leader, we have to be a ten in every dimension of leadership. And it’s just not true.

Here’s the metaphor that changed my thinking: If you’re really good at accounting—it’s your seven skill—isn’t it far better to invest your precious time and energy making that seven a nine or a ten, where it becomes truly unique and differentiated, than taking that same effort and making your writing skills go from a two to a four?

Don’t misunderstand—there’s a necessary minimum standard of performance required for any skill. You have to be competent enough. But if you want to be genuinely unique and leverage your God-given talents, you must focus your development energy on the areas where you can create the most impact.

Competency Trap Mathematics

Consider the mathematics: You have ten hours per week to invest in development. You can work on making your seven a nine, or you can work on making your four a six.

Six doesn’t stand out. A six doesn’t create unique differentiation or value. The six doesn’t create outcomes that only you can deliver.

Research from Gallup’s strengths-based leadership studies supports this counterintuitive approach. Leaders who spent 75% of their development time amplifying existing strengths rather than fixing weaknesses showed 23% higher team engagement scores and 18% higher productivity outcomes than leaders using traditional “well-rounded” development approaches.

The swimming pool lesson applies perfectly: I didn’t need ten hours to become an elite swimmer. I needed just enough time to stay safe and competent, then redirect the bulk of my energy to cycling—where my body type and abilities could create a real competitive advantage.

The Competency Trap That Burns You Out

Here’s where it gets particularly insidious. The places where you’re competent but not energized—where you’re effective but not creating your highest value—these are what the Table Group calls “competency traps” in their Working Genius framework.

These are the danger zones. You’re skilled enough that the work comes easily. People rely on you for it. It still needs to get done. But if you live there too long, burnout is inevitable.

The hardest leadership work isn’t doing more—it’s doing less of the wrong things. It’s having the courage to step out of the familiar and focus on the few things only you can do.

I was working with a CEO recently who’d built his company from the ground up. He was still personally reviewing every contract, not because no one else could do it, but because he was great at it. It was his competency trap.

When we calculated the opportunity cost—the strategic planning, partnership development, and culture work he wasn’t doing—the number was staggering. His contract review was costing the company roughly $2 million annually in unrealized growth opportunities.

The One-Sentence Job Description That Changes Everything

At another leadership conference, I heard Andy Stanley share a story that indicted me immediately. He was talking about the power of a one-sentence job description, an exercise everyone in his organization had completed.

His assistant had written what he called the most brilliant one-sentence job description he’d ever seen:

“I am going to focus on doing the things that I do best in the world so that Andy can focus on doing the things only Andy can do.”

Read that again. She understood her role wasn’t just to do tasks—it was to create space for her leader to operate in his zone of unique contribution.

That’s the shift. Delegation isn’t about offloading work you don’t want to do. It’s about stewardship of your unique capacity to create value.

Doing what only you can do isn’t selfish—it’s stewardship. In fact, when you’re doing work others could do, you may be stealing their opportunity to stretch and grow.

Your Path Forward: The Two-List Exercise

Breaking free from competency traps requires installing circuit breakers—systems that prevent you from getting pulled back into work that feels important but isn’t your highest use.

Here’s the practical starting point: For the next two weeks, conduct an end-of-day audit. Look at all the tasks you completed and break them into two lists:

List One: Work only I can do List Two: Work others could or should do

This binary approach forces clarity. If you have to categorize every task as either “only me” or “someone else should do this,” you’ll quickly identify where you’re stuck because you haven’t let go.

Most high-performing leaders discover they’re spending 60-70% of their time on List Two activities. That’s not a personal failure—it’s a systems problem.

The difference between good leaders and great ones often comes down to this: Are you doing the work that only you can do, or are you still busy proving how much you can handle?

Focus Equals Impact. Dilution Equals Drift.

Great leaders are ruthless about how they invest their time, maximizing return by focusing relentlessly on the things only they can do. They don’t achieve this overnight. They get better one day at a time, one task at a time, one delegation at a time.

What would happen if you gave your best energy to your highest calling—to that area where you create the most value? What if you took your level-seven skill and made it a nine instead of taking five mediocre skills from four to five?

The work still has to get done. That’s the excuse we tell ourselves. But on a leadership team, in a leadership environment, you’re not stuck doing the work. You’re stuck in a pattern of thinking that says you should be.

Start with the two-list exercise. Install the circuit breaker. Create space for strategic thinking by removing tactical execution that someone else should own.

Your unique strengths aren’t meant to be diluted across a hundred tasks. They’re meant to be concentrated on the few things that only you can do.

Ready to identify your highest-value work? Complete our free leadership impact assessment:

Please be sure to listen to the full episode discussing the competency trap and practical strategies for breaking free on Leadership Unlocked Episode 14.

FAQ: Breaking Free From Competency Traps