The competence penalty: why the most capable woman on the team gets the most dumped on her, and how to stop being the default

Whoever on a team is most competent often winds up buried under the largest share of work, and that outcome is no tribute to them. It's a routing decision. Work drawn from The No Club shows that women receive requests for non-promotable tasks roughly 50% more frequently than men do, and they comply more readily; at one professional-services firm, that imbalance amounted to about 200 hours each year. That same study revealed the imbalance disappears when every member of the group is a woman. Such requests seldom reflect how gifted you are. Instead, they reflect which people a room assumes will agree.

Becoming the go-to person is nothing you should blame yourself for. It's a position, and positions can be vacated. The ten statements below show how firmly you're rooted in it. Count your yes answers.

The quiz

First Whenever a pressing task with no owner appears, colleagues turn to you before anyone else says a word.

Second Over the last few weeks, someone has asked you to "just take a first pass" at a project that falls outside your job.

Third You are currently responsible for at least one ongoing duty that was meant to last only a short while.

Fourth You notice when something has slipped through the cracks, so you are the one who grabs it.

Fifth While handing you a task, your manager has remarked along the lines of "I know I can always rely on you."

Sixth Try recalling the last time a colleague at your level was given the kind of assignment you keep getting, and you may come up blank.

Seventh Rather than return someone's half-finished work, you ended up completing it yourself.

Eighth Your most recent performance evaluation spent more time commending your dependability than your outcomes.

Ninth Before you check your calendar, you've already said yes to something.

Tenth item. Picturing yourself declining, your mind jumps to the work collapsing rather than to someone else stepping up.

If you answered yes zero to three times, you are holding your ground.

When someone asks, the decision is yours to make. Hold on to that stance with a single, straightforward routine. Before accepting anything, try saying, "Let me see what that would push aside and I'll confirm by end of day." That brief delay is exactly where your real choices are made.

Four to six: the one you can rely on.

The room turns to you, and part of why is that you keep extending a hand in return. For your next step, choose the recurring duty that your manager sees least and that costs you the most, then say, "I've been handling this for a year. It's time it rotated. Who takes it next?" Rotating duties is a process, and a process does not require you to be the one who pushes back.

Seven to ten: the go-to approach.

Your team has come to see that whatever lacks an owner is yours. Nothing here reflects poorly on who you are as a person. It is a judgment of a setup that spotted a dependable resource and kept drawing on it. Next step: write the list. Every task you handle outside your role, with hours per month beside it. Bring this to your manager with a single question: "Which of these should I keep, and how do we handle the remainder?" Laying out the list brings the hidden workload into view, and once work is visible, it can be decided on.

Why the score matters

Having the skill isn't what holds you back. Being the default is. What separates a deliberate yes from a knee-jerk one comes down to intent, and you are the only one who knows which you gave. Capable women in Richmond's offices, firms and agencies don't need to become less helpful. They require support to bear a cost that someone else can actually see.

Send us your total, plus the single task you plan to pass along this month, from the Richmond chapter.