How Can I Stop Doing My Boss's Work? (Ask Christa! S6E62)

Introduction

Hi everyone and welcome to Ask Christa! where I answer listener questions about business challenges and workplace issues. Thanks for tuning in—we’re at episode 62 in Season SIX, which focuses on Dealing with Bad Bosses. Remember, most people aren’t prepared to become a manager, and if you’re having issues with YOUR boss, chances are your boss is having issues with THEIR boss, too, which keeps the bad-boss cycle going.

Today’s episode is about what to do when YOU’RE doing YOUR BOSS’S job… 

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Listener Question

Here’s the listener question, “Last week my boss asked all of us to start preparing our performance reviews, which we’ll have in a couple of months. During the meeting, he looked at me and asked if I’d follow-up with everyone to track progress and help my teammates finish their reviews if they need the help. I instinctively agreed, but after the meeting a teammate pulled me aside and mentioned how this is another task our manager is giving to me that he should be doing. She then mentioned the number of times I’ve facilitated our manager’s team meetings, how I’ve taken responsibility to assure his next steps are done, and how I’ve prepared the reports he gives to his manager. Now I’m furious. I feel like a fool thinking I’m being helpful and a part of the team, when in reality, I’m doing portions of my boss’s job without being recognized, rewarded, ASKED, or paid. He suggests a task for me, and I do it. What’s worse for me is I’m a female in the early part of my career and in hindsight, I feel like I’ve become his secretary and not the senior analyst with an MBA that I am. But now I feel stuck, like I can’t say no. How can I stop doing his work?”

Boundaries, Girl. Boundaries.

Oh boy. Yuck. That was my first reaction. 

OK… actually, that wasn’t my first reaction… or my second or third one, but I’m trying to keep this family-friendly…

There are two aspects of this issue that are probably wrapped up in our listener’s head: FOR SURE, she is right that it is inappropriate to exploit an employee like this, where the employee is handling the extras AND the core tasks that the manager should be handling. 

But it’s also deeply disrespectful. Like… takes my breath away disrespectful, because my guess is that this employee is a super star if she’s given all the extra work the manager either doesn’t want to do, doesn’t know how to do, or prefers not to do, for whatever reason. And her level of talent is being buried AND squandered.

There’s no acknowledgement, recognition, purpose for her doing portions of her boss’s job. There’s just an assumption that she’ll do it. And she does. And yeah… that feels awful.

Here’s where boundaries matter, and I get it—it’s a foregone conclusion, at least from her boss, that she’s not going to say no… and I also understand the complexity associated with having to reset boundaries that our listener never had a chance to set to begin with. But there are ways to reset boundaries in this case and then hold those boundaries steady.

Three Ways to Unstick from a Sticky Situation

So… to our listener and ANYONE realizing lately—or maybe with this episode—that your boss is taking advantage and putting their work on you without benefit to you: You’re in it. This “do my job for me” boss behavior has become such a norm, that for our listener, it took someone ELSE to point it out.

But let’s talk about how to get out of it with a POWERFUL mindset shift with these three steps:

 Number 1: revisit your job description AND your goals for the year, then re-align to both. If your job description is outdated, and if you work in an at-will state, your job tasks can change at any time, draft an update and include that in with your files. Quick aside: if you work in a highly regulated environment, you may be in a role where your work must match your job description by law, so when the time is comfortable for you, ask HR or your Compliance Officer about that. But that’s additive to this episode, and should only be done if it feels right. For now, your goal is to revisit your job description and your goals for the year, then re-align to both. This is the workplace version of “touching grass.”

Number 2: make a list of the extras you are doing, presumably those tasks within your boss’s job description and THEIR goals. Then categorize which ones you will keep doing as part of your professional development, and we’ll talk about that in a minute, which ones you will ask your boss to take back to free you up to expand your value to the organization, and which ones you will ask your boss to consider re-assigning to others so they, too, have opportunities to develop.

Of course, this is all in the spirit of re-aligning to your goals and being in position to focus on and then advance those goals. But it’s also an important step in shifting the mindset from being taken advantage of, where it’s “happening TO you,” and toward using this as a benefit: there are in fact portions of what you’re doing today that, if at the manager level, is developing you for a management position. While it might feel infuriating to think about HOW this work was assigned, I want you to shift gears and see at least some of this as opportunistic for you. I also recommend you learn more about performance reviews and best practices so you can update your resume with how you increased the quality of your teammates’ performance reviews, coached them through preparation with best practices, and enabled them to complete the reviews process as assigned.

But, it’s just as important that you shuffle and when appropriate discard some of the other things you’re doing for your boss, which leads me to… 

Number 3: approach your boss alongside the timing of your own performance review, and it might sound like this: “First, thank you for assigning me a lead role on our team for the upcoming performance reviews. It gave me an opportunity to revisit my job description and my goals and have the right perspective to setup for next year. It also prompted me to learn about the best practices related to performance reviews, which should make things easier for everyone. Throughout this work, I realized I’m over capacity for the upcoming year where I hope to continue expanding my responsibilities. 

I’ve made a list of management-related assignments you have given me over the last year that I’d like to keep doing as part of my future manager development, and management-related tasks I’d like to enable my teammates to take on as part of their development, too.”

See what happens. Scary? YEAH. Resetting boundaries when someone has already moved in AND with someone who has the power dynamic of being your boss is really uncomfortable. So take your time, talk to those you trust, create your outline or your script, and practice. Repetition takes the bite out of anything that’s new or scary.

When Doing Your Boss’s Work Is a Sign of Trust and Respect

Now—there’s one thing I want to be very clear about: if your boss is asking you to take on some of their work as a direct way to develop you, you’ve had the discussion, and you’ve agreed, that’s different. Likewise, if your boss is assigning you things that they are supposed to be doing AND THEN recognizes you for your good work, making sure others know how well you’re doing with expanded scope, AND enables you some level of advancement and reward, that’s different, too.

Our listener is describing a situation where she’s only now realizing, with the help of a co-worker, that she’s doing her boss’s work, and from how it is described, it sounds manipulative and exploitative, and no… we’ll have none of that.

My three steps are designed to set up for a discussion where our listener at least keeps management work that will be beneficial to her (and look pretty good on a resume).

Additional Resources

For your resources, located in the show notes, I’ve included two articles—and usually I include three to four, but this was a hard topic to find additional information for you to learn about:

The first resource is from Monster, called “5 signs you’re being taken advantage of at work,” written by Venus Gentile and published in May 2025. There’s a 44 second video that comes with the article, too. It’s always nice to see a person and not just read the text. 

According to this article, there are three signs relevant to our listener’s issue: Playing Personal Assistant, Juggling 2 Jobs for the Price of 1, and a Boss Stealing Recognition for your work (and THAT is also a listener question for this season that will be produced in a couple of weeks).

I like the article because it’s brief and the writer offers practical, constructive ways to manage these situations—complete with phrasing, which always matters in these situations.

The second resource is “10 signs of a manipulative boss (and how to handle them at work). This is from the Brighter Monday Kenya site, written by Eric Mutawe, and published in September 2025.

It offers a table of contents with links to the sections in the article that might be the most relevant to you; what I like is a table toward the end of the article that compares and contracts a manipulative boss with a tough boss, which offers essential clarity for this topic. There is also a Q&A section that I found insightful.

Wrap Up & Submitting Your Question

And there it is, Episode 62—and yes, please, hit like and subscribe here, but why not send in a question? Go to my site, AskChrista.com, that’s Christa with a C-H and click on Submit Your Question. You’ll also see all my other episodes there, listed by category and season, and every season has a theme. Sign up for my More Answers newsletter to get quick tips and resource boosts for the workplace.

As always, thank you for your support. And remember, if you have a business challenge or a workplace issue—Ask Christa!