u/Decent_Shallot7564 — reddlx

I'm sorry, this is long but I really need some advice to anyone willing to offer.

I’m a Content Director working in sports marketing. Our company works with three sports teams and runs their marketing/content. I oversee our video production team and overall content strategy.

My team consists of:

2 producers
3 editors
1 3D animator
1 junior intern

I’m having a difficult issue with one of my producers, who I’ll call John.

John is 40, has around 10-12 years of industry experience, and has been with us for about 4-5 years. I hired him originally at $85k as a Content Producer, and he’s now making $105k after raises.

He was my first hire and was brought in to be my “right-hand man.” At the time, I was severely overworked. I was developing content ideas, producing the content, editing videos, publishing across channels, and essentially functioning as a one-person production department.

The goal in hiring John was to take producing off my plate. He was supposed to develop new content ideas and, alongside an assigned editor, own projects from concept through completion with minimal oversight from me. His resume was strong and he had experience running his own content projects.

For the first couple years, things were good. I worked closely with him during the first year to get him up to speed on our workflow, and he did well on projects I assigned him. After that, I started encouraging him to develop and own more of his own ideas.

That’s when I started to notice a major confidence issue. He constantly doubts himself and seems afraid to move forward without my approval. For example, almost every time he pitches an idea, he starts with something like, “This is probably a really bad idea, but…”

Over the past two years, things have shifted in a negative direction.

The sports teams we make content for have been performing poorly. In sports marketing,

winning matters a lot. When the teams are losing, fan interest drops, views decline, engagement declines, and the overall marketing/content results suffer, even if the quality of the work remains the same.

Our CEO has noticed the decline in performance and has become much more hands-on with the marketing department. That has put more pressure on me, which has naturally put more pressure on my team. I try to be transparent with them about expectations and what leadership is looking for.

Here’s where the issue with John has become much worse.

Most of our company is remote, but we do have an office where the CEO and operations team work regularly. About once a week, we have an all-hands meeting where roughly half the staff comes into the office. I personally go in about two days a week.

John moved about two minutes away from the office around a year and a half ago. Since then, he has started going into the office every day. Because he’s physically present, he has made himself very visible and available to the CEO and operations team.

Over time, they’ve started pulling him into random tasks that have nothing to do with his actual content producer role. Things like fetching mail, ordering food, fixing computers, dealing with network issues, gathering random data, and other operational errands.

From what I can tell, John enjoys this work. He seems to like being useful to everyone. But the result is that he has almost completely drifted away from his actual job and is now spending a significant amount of his time functioning more like the CEO’s assistant or general office helper than a senior content producer.

I’ve spoken with him multiple times about this. I’ve told him that I need him focused on his actual role and that he can’t keep prioritizing random tasks for other departments while our content work suffers.

His response is usually some version of: “I just do what I’m told. I just work here. I can’t say no to the CEO.”

This has created a lot of frustration for me. I hired him to relieve pressure from me, not add to it. Instead, I now feel like I’ve lost my lead content producer, and his responsibilities are falling back onto me.

It has also created tension between us. We’ve had several one-on-ones about this issue, and I can tell he’s tired of hearing it from me. I think he has grown resentful of me, and I’m sure he can tell I’m frustrated with him.

I’ve also tried raising the issue with the CEO, but he tends to brush it off and say that John “brings value to the company.” And to be fair, other people in the company love John. Whenever his name comes up, people rave about how helpful he is.

But that’s part of the problem. Of course they love him. He’s making their jobs easier while mine gets harder.

My read on the situation is this:

When our content and team performance were strong, John had more confidence and passion for the actual producer role. But as the teams started losing and content performance became more difficult, he seemed to turtle. Instead of leaning into the hard part of the job, he shifted toward being broadly helpful around the company, probably because it gives him a sense of security and positive reinforcement.

The problem is that his version of job security may be damaging mine. I’m down a senior content producer, but leadership still sees him as valuable because he’s helpful to everyone else.

I’m not sure what the right move is here.

Do I keep trying to redirect him back into the role he was hired for? Do I need to formally redefine his responsibilities and set hard boundaries? Do I escalate this more seriously with leadership? Or is this a sign that he has effectively outgrown, avoided, or abandoned the role and I need to start thinking about replacing him?

I’d really appreciate feedback from other marketing, content, or creative leaders who have dealt with something similar.

How would you handle an employee who is beloved by the company because they’re helpful to everyone, but is no longer doing the core job you actually need them to do?