I am firmly of the opinion that a major failure of organizations of any size is too much care for others work. I'm not as good as others at their job and they aren't as good at mine. When we take time to do others work or make their decisions we rob ourselves and our organizations.

People don't like to hear, "I don't care" and understandably so. It smacks of disdain and derision. However, in the work place the fewer people that care about your job the better.

How do you separate caring about the person and not caring about their job?

I care if a person is overwhelmed and experiencing stress, but I don't care for them to recount their todo list to me.

The workplace culture is one where you have to constantly prove to others that you are busy as a way of convincing them that you are properly balancing their priorities. We have a workplace where it is assumed people can't do their job.

I assume the person doing the job is competent. Some may say this is dangerous, but if someone can't do the job their failure will be an issue at some point and I'd rather sooner than later.

So when I ask you for something and you give me an estimate of when it will be ready, I don't need any more explanation than that. If that time line doesn't work, we'll negotiate further. Either way I'm confident you are correctly prioritizing your work.

When we stop trying to do others job we have more time to actually care for the person. To find time to do our own job better to help them or to provide some helpful encouragement. That's where we should be spending our energy.