"I've got this person in my team, and they just solve all the problems — they're so great. But I don't always know what they're doing, and I've got people around me saying 'but what are they doing exactly', and I have to justify it. And I'm not sure how."

What's happening: a language gap

You know this person is valuable. Problems disappear. Communication flows. People connect across teams. In a crisis, they hold things together. You trust them, and you rely on them.

But when someone asks you to account for them, in a budget conversation or a performance review, you find yourself reaching for words. 'They're a generalist.' 'They work across teams.' 'They're hard to categorise.' It's not quite defensive, but it's not convincing either.

The discomfort is real. If you can't explain what they do, you can't protect their role, justify their salary, or make the case for their seniority. With this comes a sense of responsibility, for them and the org. If you move on, or if you come under pressure, they're exposed.

We describe the same problem from a different angle in [this use case-link]. The work exists, the value is real, but it hasn't been described in the right institutional vocabulary.

You have the positional authority to do something about it.

What you can do: become their advocate

The most useful thing you can do for this person is help make their work legible: to yourself first, to themselves at the same time, and then to the organisation.

You can start by getting curious about what they actually do, in a regular one-on-one or even in a more informal catch up. Not their JD, but their actual work. Look for the patterns. When are they called in? What's hard about what they do? How do they talk about their work? If you can find some answers to those questions, you're already most of the way there.

The shapeshifter framework gives you vocabulary to take that understanding further. It describes the capabilities that enable this kind of responsive, cross-functional, contextual work, in language that HR and organisational systems can understand.

From there, the practical move is to work with them on a JD that actually reflects the role. This doesn't have to be a formal process. It can start as a shared document, or a conversation. What matters is that you, as their manager, are willing to put your name to a description of their work that goes up the chain.

A restructure, a budget cycle, or a performance review is the natural moment to make this official. When the org is already renegotiating roles and structures, proposing a more accurate description feels like good management, not special pleading.

Is this your situation?

• You have someone in your team whose value you see clearly but struggle to articulate
• You've found yourself defending their role without quite knowing how to frame it
• Their title or JD doesn't reflect what they actually do, and you both know it
• A restructure, a budget conversation, or a performance review is putting pressure on you to account for them

Where to start

• Have a conversation with them directly: ask them to describe what they actually do, in their own words. The gap between that and their JD is your starting point