The High Cost of Being Low Maintenance

Leaders who brand themselves as low-maintenance often see short-term praise for being self-sufficient, but the real cost is hidden. When you never ask for help, the weight of problems builds up in silence, leading to burnout and missed signals that teammates could have addressed early.

The internal math of asking for help is emotional: fear of looking incompetent, fear of owing a favor, and cultural pressures that label help-seeking as weakness. Marginalized groups feel these pressures more sharply, and gender bias can make women's requests appear as lack of capability, reinforcing the reluctance to ask.

That reluctance hurts the team. People stop checking in, stop offering support, and meetings suffer when the sole owner carries the load. The author recounts cancelling a recurring meeting, feeling guilty, and realizing a teammate was ready to step in-but the request never left the author's mind. The result is a hidden bottleneck that erodes meeting effectiveness and overall team health.

The antidote is to build a culture where asking is normal and expected. Leaders should model curiosity, ask what's been tried before a request, and frame delegation as a collaborative design problem. Shifting the conversation from "What can you do for me?" to "What are you good at, and where can we share the load?" helps break the debt mindset and spreads ownership, keeping teams resilient and aligned.