The Career Cost of Being the Go-To Person

You answer every Slack ping. You jump on calls to “quickly help” with things outside your role. Your manager knows you’ll say yes when others say no.

This isn’t dedication. It’s a trap that keeps high performers stuck while less helpful colleagues get promoted.

The Problem

You’ve become the person everyone turns to when something needs fixing. A coworker can’t figure out the analytics dashboard—you spend 20 minutes walking them through it. A project hits a snag—you’re pulled in to troubleshoot even though it’s not your responsibility. Someone needs context on a decision made months ago—you’re the institutional memory.

Each request feels small. Saying yes feels easier than the awkwardness of saying no. You’re helping the team, being a good colleague, proving your value.

But you’re also working late to finish your actual work. Your own projects slip. You haven’t had uninterrupted time to think deeply in weeks. Meanwhile, the person who joined after you just got promoted to lead a new initiative you didn’t even know existed.

The worst part isn’t the workload. It’s realizing that being indispensable at the tactical level has made you invisible at the strategic level.

Why this happens to knowledge workers

Your brain is wired to feel good when you solve problems. Each time you help someone, you get a small hit of accomplishment. It’s immediate, visible, and appreciated. Your actual project work is ambiguous, slow, and might not matter for months.

Many people find themselves stuck in this pattern because responsiveness has been rewarded their entire career. In school, being helpful got you into group projects. Early in your career, being available made you valuable. Your manager praised your “can-do attitude.”

But that same behavior becomes a ceiling. Research suggests that people who are perceived as “helpful” are seen as essential to daily operations but not strategic enough for leadership. You’re solving today’s problems, but leaders are supposed to be preventing tomorrow’s.

The go-to person becomes a dependency. And dependencies don’t get promoted—they get leaned on harder.

What Most People Try

The standard advice is to “set boundaries” and “learn to say no.” So you try. You let a Slack message sit for an hour before responding. You suggest someone check the documentation. You say you’re busy when asked to help with something.

It feels terrible. Your coworker seems annoyed. Your manager notices you’re “less collaborative than usual.” You feel guilty—what if they really need you? What if this makes you look bad? You cave and say yes to the next three requests to compensate.

Or you go the opposite direction: you try to do it all. You’ll be both the helpful person and the strategic thinker. You start coming in earlier, working later, batch-processing interruptions. You create documentation so you don’t have to answer the same questions repeatedly.

This works for a while. You’re proud of your systems. But documentation doesn’t stop people from asking you directly—it’s easier to ping you than read a doc. And you’re now exhausted from trying to do two jobs: your actual role and being the team’s support system.

Some people try to make their helpfulness more visible. They mention in meetings how many people they’ve helped. They track their “collaboration hours” hoping their manager will notice the sacrifice.

But this backfires. Talking about how busy you are with helping others signals that you’re stretched thin, not that you’re ready for more responsibility. Leaders want people who create leverage, not people who are at capacity doing other people’s work.

The real issue isn’t time management or boundary-setting technique. It’s that you’ve built an identity and reputation around being helpful, and the system now depends on you staying exactly where you are.

What Actually Helps

1. Shift from solving problems to building capability

Stop being the person with answers. Become the person who makes others capable of finding their own answers.

When someone asks you a question, don’t immediately solve it. Pause and ask: “What have you tried so far?” or “Where did you look for this information?” Most people haven’t tried anything—they just went straight to you because it’s easier.

Walk them through your thinking process instead of giving them the answer. If someone asks how to pull a report, don’t pull it for them. Screen-share while they drive, narrating your thought process: “First I check if it’s already in the dashboard. Then I look at the data source. Then I filter by…”

This feels slower in the moment. It is slower. But it’s an investment. The same person asking you the same question every week is a leak in your time. Teaching them once is plugging the leak.

Start saying: “I can help you figure this out” instead of “I’ll take care of that.” The distinction matters. One builds dependency, the other builds capability.

For recurring questions, record a quick Loom video or write a brief doc while you help someone. Next time, you send the link. After the third person asks, you have an FAQ. After the tenth, you have a resource other teams want.

You’re still being helpful. But now you’re creating leverage. And leaders notice people who create systems that scale.

2. Protect your strategic work like it’s your only job

Your calendar should have immovable blocks for your actual priorities. Not “focus time” that you’ll move if someone needs you. Immovable.

Treat these blocks like external meetings. If someone asks for your time during a protected block, you’re “in a meeting”—because you are. With your most important work.

Many people find it helpful to be explicit about this with their team: “I’m blocking 9-11am for deep work on [project]. I’ll be unresponsive during that time but will check messages at 11.”

This isn’t rude. It’s professional. Surgeons don’t answer emails during surgery. Engineers don’t take calls while deploying code. Your strategic work deserves the same respect.

During these blocks, close Slack. Turn off email notifications. Put your phone in another room. The requests will still be there in two hours, and almost none of them will actually be urgent.

The key is consistency. Do this daily, same time, for at least three weeks. People will learn your rhythm and stop expecting instant responses during those hours.

And here’s what happens: you’ll actually finish important work. That project you’ve been “almost done” with for six weeks gets completed. You have time to think about the bigger picture. You start contributing strategic ideas in meetings instead of just tactical updates.

Visibility comes from output, not availability. When you’re known for completing high-impact work, being occasionally unreachable becomes a feature, not a bug.

3. Redirect requests to increase others’ visibility

You don’t have to do the work or teach people yourself. You can route requests to others who are trying to build their visibility.

When someone asks for help, ask yourself: who else could handle this? Is there a junior person trying to learn this skill? A peer who wants to be seen as a subject matter expert? A teammate who’s mentioned wanting more cross-functional exposure?

Reply with: “This is actually right in [person’s] wheelhouse—they’ve been working on this exact thing. I’ll loop them in.”

You’re still being helpful. But now you’re distributing the dependency. And you’re doing your colleagues a favor—being the go-to person on something is valuable when it’s intentional and scoped.

This also reveals who the chronic interrupters are. Some people will say “actually never mind” when you can’t personally help them. Those requests were never urgent. Others will genuinely need help and appreciate being connected to the right person.

As you redirect more requests, something interesting happens: people start going directly to those other people instead of routing through you first. You’ve helped distribute the load and raised others’ profiles.

Your manager notices this too. You’re not just solving problems—you’re developing others and thinking about team capacity. That’s leadership.

The Takeaway

Being helpful isn’t the problem. Being the only person who helps is. Your career grows when you move from being the person with all the answers to the person who ensures the team can find answers without you. That’s not selfishness—it’s the difference between being busy and being strategic.