Balancing the Seesaw: Overfunctioning, Underfunctioning, and the Work In Between

Overfunctioning and underfunctioning, forms of anxiety-driven reactivity, are a frequent topic in Resilient Leadership coaching. They exist in a reciprocal dynamic, like a seesaw: when one appears, it is almost always enabling the other somewhere else in the system.

Yet what many struggle with most is a subtler form of overfunctioning. It often goes undetected because it doesn’t show up in the usual, observable ways. Although their calendars may look manageable, their task lists entirely reasonable they still experience a kind of lingering mental exhaustion, that rest doesn’t resolve. Some of my clients have described it as something feeling just slightly too heavy, a weight they can’t shift.

This type of overfunctioning isn’t rooted in what they’re doing, but in what they’re feeling responsible for.

Different Kinds of Overfunctioning
When most people hear the word “overfunctioning,” they think of things that are observable and quantifiable like too many tasks, too many hours, or a workload that has exceeded capacity. But below that visible and more observable layer, lies emotional overfunctioning that comes from feeling responsible for outcomes, feelings, and situations that belong to someone else. Things like worrying about another colleague’s performance on a new project or a team member’s low morale you feel personally accountable for lifting.

These are not the types of things that show up on a calendar or a to-do list, but they carry weight nonetheless. Oddly enough, the solution to this kind of emotional overfunctioning isn’t to do less. It’s to feel less responsible for what was never yours to own.

The Camouflage Problem
One reason this kind of overfunctioning can be hard to discern is that it rarely announces itself as overwork or stress. Instead, it can show up dressed as conscientiousness or as caring. The very qualities many of us may have been rewarded for, which makes them genuinely difficult to examine with any sense of critical distance.

This feeling of responsibility, particularly for leaders, can be so seamlessly integrated into a sense of professional identity that questioning it can feel like questioning who you are. And so the overfunctioning goes unchecked, keeping up a sort of low-grade vigilance that runs in the background even during the hours when you’re supposed to be off.

This is anxiety doing what anxiety does best; generating the illusion that our worry and our readiness to step in is what’s keeping things from going wrong.

Seeing the Seesaw
Like a seesaw, every system – whether a team, a family, an organization – seeks a kind of equilibrium. When one person consistently carries more than their share of emotional or functional weight, the system adjusts. Someone, somewhere, carries less in response. It happens, usually unconsciously, through the ordinary gravitational pull of repeated patterns.  The more reliably you step in, the less necessary it becomes for others to step up. Not because they’re lazy or unaware, but because the system has found its balance although it’s perhaps not a particularly healthy one.

And this is where systems thinking becomes so valuable, because the reciprocal dynamic doesn’t always show up in the most obvious place. It may not be the person you’re overfunctioning for who begins to underfunction. The imbalance can ripple elsewhere; into your own capacity to lead in other areas, into relationships where you’re no longer as present, even into the parts of yourself that have gone unattended while you were busy managing everyone else’s portion of the world.

All of this means the act of balancing the seesaw is never just personal. When you take your hands off something that wasn’t yours to hold, you are doing something for the system, not just for yourself. You are creating the conditions for someone else to discover that they too are competent and capable, which may be something that your steady presence in the gap has been unintentionally hindering.

A Practice of Feeling Less Responsible
If the problem lives in the emotional world, the practices need to meet it there and that means starting with awareness before moving to action.

Notice what responsibility actually feels like in your body. Emotional overfunctioning can have physical signatures such as low-grade tension, a particular kind of alertness that doesn’t switch off, or a heaviness that settles in around certain people or situations. Getting familiar with that felt sense is the first step toward recognizing it earlier.

Get curious about the story underneath the feeling. When you notice yourself feeling responsible for someone else’s outcome, it’s worth asking: what do I believe will happen if I don’t step in? The fear is usually specific, even if it’s rarely examined. And when it is examined, it often turns out to be less inevitable (and less yours to prevent) than underlying anxiety has been insisting.

Practice distinguishing concern from ownership. Concern for someone is relational and healthy; it keeps us connected and present. Ownership of their outcomes is something different because it assumes their results are primarily ours to produce or prevent. The difference can be subtle, but learning to feel it is one of the more useful things a leader can develop.
Experiment with staying in the room without picking up the rope. The behavioral experiment that corresponds to this inner work is simply this: the next time you feel the urge to step in, pause. Don’t suppress the impulse; just notice it, name what you’re feeling responsible for, and wait. See what happens. More often than not, the system responds and someone else steps forward. The crisis doesn’t materialize. Or if it does, it turns out to be workable and informative for everyone involved, not just you.

Trust the reciprocal nature of the system. This may be the hardest practice of all, because it requires tolerating the uncertainty of not knowing exactly how things will unfold when you stop managing them. But the seesaw truly does rebalance. Adjusting your functioning, most especially your emotional functioning, is where you have choice and influence. You don’t have to orchestrate the outcome on the other end.

Closing Thoughts
There is a meaningful difference between being deeply committed to the people and work around you and feeling personally accountable for others’ performance and outcomes. The first is leadership. The second is exhaustion, albeit often cloaked in a very convincing costume.

The invitation here is to get curious about your own overfunctioning not by not just looking at what’s on the calendar or the to-do list, but by reflecting on what shows up in your inner experience. Consider where you might be carrying an emotional sense of responsibility for others that was never meant for you to carry.  And what might become possible, not only for you but for others on your team or in your organization, if you were to choose to put it down.

📞 Curious about how cultivating conviction can strengthen your leadership? Call, click, or email us today to start the conversation.
EileenWiediger, Certified Resilient Leadership Coach

EileenWiediger, Certified Resilient Leadership Coach

Eileen is an ICF-certified coach who empowers individuals at all levels to navigate the dynamic journey from self-awareness to self-transcendence. She has worked as a strategist, instructional designer, and facilitator solving complex problems and creating systems for learning and growth. You can reach her at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-eileen-wiediger/ or through her website: https://www.steeproad.com.