Are you doing more but accomplishing less? Does everyone need something from you yesterday? Do the words "coping" and "surviving" creep into your daily conversations or thoughts? If you’re overloaded, overworked or overstressed, then I have a simple solution: Don’t take on a problem if it isn’t yours!

You may be able to identify with this example.

Let’s say that I’m walking down the hall when I encounter one of my people who says, "Good morning, boss. Can I see you for a minute? We have a problem."

I need to know my people’s problems, so I stand there in the hallway listening while he explains the problem in some detail. I get sucked into the middle of it, and because problem solving is my cup of tea, time flies. When I finally glance at my watch what seems like five minutes has become 30 minutes.

The discussion has made me late for another obligation. I know just enough about the problem to know I will have to be involved, but not enough to make a decision. So I say, "This is a very important problem, but I don’t have any more time to discuss it right now. Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you." And with that, the two of us part company.

As a perceptive observer, it was probably easy for you to see what happened in that scenario. It is much harder to see the picture when you are in the middle of it. Before the two of us met in the hall, the monkey was on the staff member’s back. While we were talking, the matter was under joint consideration, so the monkey had one leg on each of our backs. But when I said, "Let me think it over and get back to you," the monkey moved its leg from my sub-ordinate’s back onto my back and my subordinate walked away 30 pounds lighter. The monkey then had both feet on my back.

Now, let’s assume that the matter under consideration was part of my staff member’s job. And let us further assume that he was perfectly capable of bringing along some proposed solutions to accompany the problems he raised. That being the case, when I allowed that monkey to leap onto my back, I volunteered to do two things that a person working for me is generally expected to do: 1) I accepted the responsibility for the problem from the person, and 2) I promised the person a progress report. Remember:For Every Monkey, There Are Two Parties Involved: One To Work It And One To Supervise It.

In the example above, you can see that I acquired the worker role and my staff member assumed the supervisory role. And just to make sure that I know who’s the new boss, the next day he will stop by my office several times to say, "Hi, boss. How’s it coming?" (a manager’s question!) And if I have not resolved the matter to his satisfaction, he will be pressuring me to do what is actually his job.

Some of you will recognize the "monkey on the back" concept as the genius of William Oncken, Jr. Mr. Oncken’s classic Harvard Business Review article, "Managing Management Time: Who Owns the Monkey?" is one of the most read articles on this subject. Bill Oncken and Hall Burrows, one of his long-time colleagues and "Managing Management Time" presenters, co-authored The One Minute Manager Meets The Monkey with me.

Picking other people’s monkeys up has become a disease in our country. In the book, we call it "rescuing." Stephen Karpman described rescuing as "doing something for people that they can do for themselves." So keeping monkeys where they belong is not "buck passing." What it’s about is keeping the initiative and responsibility where they belong.

When managers take the initiative and responsibility away from staff members, they not only overload their own duties, but in a subtle way, they are telling their employees that they’re "not OK." This can erode their self-esteem. What managers need to do is "teach them to fish, not give them a fish."