The Curse of Competence

When Being Good at Your Job Starts Working Against You

There is a strange thing that happens to highly competent people in the workplace.

You become the person everybody can depend on.

Something goes wrong? Call Keith.

A project is behind schedule? Give it to the person who always delivers.

Someone else drops the ball? Don’t worry—the reliable employee will clean it up.

At first, this feels like a compliment. Leadership trusts you. Your coworkers respect your abilities. You become indispensable.

And then one day you look around and realize something:

Everybody else’s career is moving while you’re still standing there holding the organization together.

Welcome to the curse of competence.

The curse of competence describes the phenomenon in which excessive work burdens disproportionately fall upon highly skilled people precisely because they are capable of handling them. Their competence becomes the reason they receive more work, more responsibility, and more expectations.

But not necessarily more money.

Not necessarily more recognition.

And certainly not always more opportunity.

For Black professionals, this phenomenon can take on an even more complicated dimension.

Overburdened but Under-Recognized

Highly competent Black employees can quickly become the people organizations depend upon to “keep things running.”

You solve problems.

You take the difficult assignments.

You rescue projects.

You answer questions nobody else seems to know how to answer.

Eventually, exceptional performance becomes your normal performance.

That’s when the danger begins.

Because once excellence becomes expected, people sometimes stop treating it as exceptional.

What once generated praise becomes merely the price of admission.

Meanwhile, another employee completes one highly visible project and suddenly everyone is talking about their “leadership potential.”

You may be thinking:

Wait a minute. I’ve been doing that for three years.

Exactly.

Too Valuable to Promote

One of the most frustrating manifestations of the curse of competence occurs when your very effectiveness becomes an argument for keeping you exactly where you are.

Think about the irony.

You become extraordinarily good at your job.

Your supervisor depends on you.

The organization depends on you.

Nobody wants to imagine the department without you.

Then a promotion or developmental assignment becomes available.

Instead of leadership saying:

“This person has clearly demonstrated the ability to operate at the next level.”

someone says:

“But we really need them where they are.”

Read that again.

The thing you thought would earn your promotion—becoming indispensable—may become the thing keeping you from it.

Your manager’s operational comfort can quietly become more important than your professional development.

And because you’re competent, you keep delivering.

Which makes them need you even more.

The trap reinforces itself.

The Recognition–Responsibility Gap

One of the easiest ways to identify the curse of competence is to examine the distance between your responsibility and your recognition.

Ask yourself:

Are you routinely performing responsibilities above your pay grade?

Are you solving problems normally handled by more senior employees?

Are people constantly coming to you for answers?

Are you training coworkers who hold the same title—or a higher one?

Are you trusted with important work but somehow overlooked when awards, promotions, developmental assignments, or leadership opportunities appear?

If so, you may have a recognition–responsibility gap.

And that gap matters.

Because organizations can become very comfortable receiving executive-level performance at employee-level prices.

Higher Standards of Proof

There is another dimension Black professionals should watch carefully: continually having to prove what has already been proven.

You succeed once.

Prove it again.

You succeed twice.

Let’s see whether you can do it consistently.

You succeed repeatedly.

Well, perhaps the circumstances were favorable.

Meanwhile, someone else demonstrates “potential” and receives an opportunity to grow into a position.

You were required to demonstrate competence before receiving the opportunity.

They received the opportunity so they could demonstrate competence.

Those are two entirely different career paths.

This is why simply telling Black professionals to “work hard” is incomplete career advice.

Hard work matters.

Competence matters.

Performance absolutely matters.

But professional advancement involves considerably more than being the person who performs the most work.

When Being the Go-To Person Becomes a Warning Sign

There is nothing inherently wrong with being the person people trust.

You want to have a reputation for excellence.

But you should start paying attention when being the “go-to person” becomes a permanent organizational role instead of a steppingstone.

Look for patterns.

You repeatedly receive extra assignments because you “always deliver.”

Your work expands beyond your position description, but your compensation and authority do not.

You receive praise for getting things done but little discussion about your future.

Your contributions are quietly accepted while someone else’s are publicly celebrated.

You’re considered too important to lose from your current position but apparently not important enough to promote.

You receive more responsibility without corresponding visibility.

And perhaps the most dangerous sign of all:

You have become so busy proving how valuable you are in your current job that you have no time to position yourself for the next one.

That’s the curse.

Competence should create leverage.

It should create opportunity.

It should expand your career.

It should never become a cage.

So if you’re the person everybody calls when something absolutely, positively has to get done, congratulations.

That’s a powerful reputation to have.

But you need to ask yourself a second question:

Is my competence moving my career forward—or simply making everybody else’s job easier?

Because recognizing the curse of competence is only the beginning.

Breaking it requires an entirely different strategy.