The colleague everybody confides in

Two resources worth bookmarking before we start:

I remember an analyst on a team I supported whose desk became the place people stopped after difficult meetings. Someone would come out frustrated, look around the floor and end up beside her. “Do you have a minute?” She usually did. The conversations were rarely about the work she’d been hired to do. Someone had received feedback they didn’t understand. Somebody else was angry about a decision and wanted to say it out loud before deciding what to do next.

Her manager could look at the team and see that things were functioning reasonably well. What he couldn’t see was how much of that stability depended on conversations happening one desk away.

You may know that position, or be the person sitting in it. I think introverts can end up there quite easily, although I wouldn’t pretend this belongs only to introverts. If you listen without taking over the conversation, people notice. If you don’t rush to fix what they’re saying, they tend to come back.

I recognize that in myself too. I need time to think, and I value people who give me that space rather than filling it for me. That can make you a top colleague to work with. It can also create a piece of work nobody has formally given you.

One conversation takes twenty minutes. Another arrives the following afternoon. Someone messages late because they know you’ll understand the background. Your own work is still there, so you finish it later. That’s where I start paying attention. I don’t want the answer to be “stop caring.” The introvert’s job here is more practical: stay supportive without quietly becoming responsible for problems that still belong to somebody else.

The research helps explain why this can become draining even when helping people still feels worthwhile.

One study followed 203 full-time employees in China across two survey points. Helping colleagues was associated with higher perceived job demands. Those demands related to strain and lower career satisfaction. The picture wasn’t entirely negative. Helping behavior itself also had a positive relationship with career satisfaction. The effect depended partly on whether people felt they were working from their strengths. I like that finding because it doesn’t reduce helping to a problem. You can value being trusted and still reach a point where the volume is affecting the rest of your work.

The second study looked at 2,742 service workers in Sweden. Emotional demands from colleagues and other people in the workplace were associated with exhaustion, sometimes more strongly than demands from clients. It was a cross-sectional study, so it can’t establish causation. One finding matters here: the relationship was weaker when employees felt management treated psychological health as a priority. That puts some of the responsibility elsewhere.

If one person on my team is carrying the difficult conversations everybody else avoids bringing to me, I need to know. Sometimes that person is simply trusted, or sometimes they’ve become the unofficial place where people go because the official conversation didn’t work.

I need to be able to tell the difference.

I don’t think the goal is to stop people coming to you. It’s to know where your part ends.

If a colleague tells you they’re unhappy with their manager, listen and help them think through what they want to say. But if they come back the following week and nothing has changed, the next move is still theirs. You can say:

“I’m happy to talk this through. What do you want to do next?”

And if the issue needs somebody with authority:

“I can listen, but I can’t fix this from where I sit. You need to raise it with your manager.”

I’d also make the workload visible. One sentence in your one-on-one is enough:

“A fair part of my week goes into helping people after difficult conversations. I’m glad to do some of it, but I’d like it to count when we talk about my workload.”

Then the manager has work to do. If everyone on my team keeps going to the same person after something difficult happens, I’d ask:

“What keeps landing with you that should probably be coming to me?”

I’d ask for themes rather than names. Maybe people don’t feel comfortable raising certain issues with me. Maybe my communication leaves too much room for interpretation. The colleague may simply be someone people trust. I need to know which one it is. If people regularly need a second conversation to understand feedback I’ve given them, I haven’t finished the first conversation properly. I’d follow up on difficult feedback within the week and explain decisions people are struggling with.

I’d also tell the person carrying those conversations:

“If it’s about me or a decision I made, send them to me. I’d rather hear it.”

But asking people to come back to me won’t be enough if they’ve already learned that difficult conversations don’t go well. That changes through what happens next. I need to listen before defending myself. I can ask:

“What part of this have you been holding back?”

And if I say I’m going to act on something, I need to come back and explain what happened. That’s how psychological safety gets built. People learn whether it’s actually safe to raise difficult issues with me.

There’s an organizational question too. If a colleague with no authority feels safer than the formal routes, HR should want to understand why. If the same pattern shows up in more than one team, it’s a leadership question.

Managers learn how to receive bad news by watching how their own leaders receive it. The business shouldn’t rely on one trusted employee to carry problems nobody else is dealing with. It shouldn’t act surprised when that person becomes exhausted.

If you sit on a leadership team, ask yourselves one thing: what happened to the last person who told you something you didn’t want to hear?

The next time someone brings you a problem, listen properly. Before the conversation ends, decide where your part stops. If the next move belongs to them, ask:

“What do you think your next step is?”

Then, if these conversations are taking meaningful time from your work, name that in a single sentence at your next one-on-one. If you manage people, decide who owns the chair on your team. Ask them what people bring there and what it’s taking them away from. Then take one of those conversations back this month. Expect it to feel awkward. You’re changing what people count on when they bring you something difficult, and the first few times matter.

If you think by talking, the conversation may feel like part of solving the problem. For the person listening, it may be another twenty minutes of emotional work they hadn’t planned for. Ask first:

“Do you have the headspace for me to talk something through?”

If the answer is no, leave it there. You can also help when a quieter colleague is carrying something that belongs with a manager. Sometimes the useful thing to say is:

“You need to take that to them.”

That can remove a conversation from somebody else’s desk before it becomes theirs to carry.

I’ve been nominated for the K100, a new list of LinkedIn creators from Kleo and Favikon.

They judge content quality, growth and impact over follower numbers. A creator with 20,000 followers can rank above one with 200,000. That sits close to what this newsletter stands for.

If my writing has helped you at work, a nomination from you would mean a lot. It takes about two minutes. Choose “Another creator” and add my name with my LinkedIn profile under the Careers & Future of Work category. Nominations close on November 26.

I’d use this when you can’t tell which conversations to keep and which to hand back.

Remove names, confidential information and sensitive company details first, and use a work-approved AI tool.

The next time somebody brings you a problem that still belongs to them, listen all the way through. Then ask:

“What do you think your next step is?”

See what changes when the answer stays with them.

If you manage people, ask the person who owns the chair on your team what people bring them after difficult moments. Then decide which of those conversations should have been yours.

You became the note-taker again

Useful work can leave you with less evidence for the career you actually want.

I like working with people who notice when a colleague is struggling. I’ve also watched the dependable listener become the way a team copes with problems nobody has dealt with. That person shouldn’t have to care less. They should know which problems still belong to somebody else, and the care they give shouldn’t disappear into their evenings as though it costs nothing. And if people on my team keep needing someone else to make sense of my feedback or my decisions, that’s work being done on my behalf. I should want to know why. Then I should be prepared to hear that the answer is me, and change something about how I lead.

That’s the only way those conversations come back.

In your corner,
— Steven

P.S. Know someone who’s become the colleague everybody confides in? Forward this to them. They may be carrying more than anyone has noticed.

P.P.S. Who on your team would notice if you stopped carrying those conversations tomorrow? Download the free From Invisible to Unforgettable guide that helps you make the work you already do count.