Is Your Practice Being Held Hostage by a Hoarder? The Hidden Problem Sabotaging Your Growth
Mar 19, 2025How many hoarders do you have in your practice?
No, I’m not talking about the ones who keep every expired piece of clinical inventory or refuse to throw out broken office equipment. I’m talking about something far more damaging—team members who hoard responsibilities.
And yes, it’s a bigger problem than you think.
The Problem: The Hoarder and the Handicapped Team
Does this sound familiar?
You have an assistant, an office manager, or a treatment coordinator who can do just about everything. They take care of problems before they even become problems. They don’t ask for help. In fact, they discourage others from stepping in.
Their motto? “Don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it.”
And yet, if you look closely, that same person is often frustrated, burned out, and short-tempered with the rest of the team. Meanwhile, other team members seem disengaged, less proactive, or even lazy—at least on the surface.
Sound familiar? If so, your practice is handicapped in more ways than you realize.
The Real Cost of Responsibility Hoarders
It might seem like a blessing to have one ultra-reliable person who can do it all. But in reality, it’s a bottleneck that will limit your practice’s growth and efficiency in several critical ways:
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When the hoarder is out sick, the practice suffers. No one else knows how to handle their responsibilities. Productivity drops, stress skyrockets, and chaos follows.
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The rest of the team stops growing. If one person hoards all the expertise, others never develop the skills to contribute at the same level. Over time, they disengage.
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The hoarder resents the team. They feel like they’re carrying the weight of the practice alone, even though they’re the ones who refuse to let go.
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You are vulnerable. If that key team member quits tomorrow, how much institutional knowledge leaves with them?
This dynamic isn’t just unhealthy—it’s dangerous. It limits your practice’s potential, stifles team development, and creates a ticking time bomb of frustration.
The Solution: Hit the Reset Button
You, as the leader, need to break this cycle. And it starts with forcing change—because waiting for it to happen naturally is a losing strategy.
Step 1: Assign Cross-Training as a Priority
Make it clear that knowledge and skills should be shared, not guarded. Team members should train their replacements—not out of fear of losing their job, but out of a responsibility to make the team stronger.
Step 2: Implement Role-Swapping Exercises
One of my favorite strategies? Trade places for a day.
Make your lead assistant take a backseat while another assistant steps up. Have your front desk team switch roles for a shift. Force the hoarder to step aside so others can step up.
Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Yes, there will be mistakes. But those are temporary pains compared to the disaster of being unprepared when your key player unexpectedly calls out.
Step 3: Hold the Hoarder Accountable
If a team member refuses to let go, you have to address it head-on. Remind them that their job is not just to do—it’s to develop others. That’s the only way to build a strong, scalable practice.
Final Thought: Don’t Let One Person Hold Your Practice Hostage
Allowing a responsibility hoarder to control your practice might feel like an easy fix in the moment, but in the long run, it’s a crippling liability.
Your practice should be a well-oiled machine, not a house of cards that collapses when one person is missing. Break the cycle. Build a team where everyone can step up. Because when that happens, your practice will finally reach its full potential.
