We’ve recently had one of our “manager campfires” at work and I was on to bring a topic up for discussion with my other fellow managers. I chose Delegating.
As managers, we often talk about the necessity to delegate responsibilities to others in order to avoid becoming a bottleneck as well as to allow others to grow and find meaning at work. However delegating comes in different shapes or forms depending on the challenge at hand and those involved (personalities, skillset, level of trust, criticality of the problem at hand, …).
As managers, we often talk about the necessity to delegate responsibilities to others in order to avoid becoming a bottleneck as well as to allow others to grow and find meaning at work. However delegating comes in different shapes or forms depending on the challenge at hand and those involved (personalities, skillset, level of trust, criticality of the problem at hand, …).
It’s been creeping in for a while but I had a moment of self-realisation recently where it became apparent to me that I am extremely bad at delegating. Reflecting deeper on this, there are several layers to this.
My way or the wrong way
I am very much biased towards the need for elegance, tidiness and efficiency in processes. As a consequence, I have, more often than not, a very bi-polar view on how things should be done: the right way (my way) or the wrong way. That may be tied to the responsibilities I’ve held at work and certainly to my personality, but it is nonetheless an absurd approach to business that is pretty detrimental to the personal growth of my teammates.
If I can’t solve this, nobody can
If I can’t solve this, nobody can
Another element to this is a tendency to constantly wanting to solve problems on my own. While this has served me well at SalesScreen, it became clear that this is the my first hurdle to delegate. If I cannot frame the contours of a viable solution to a problem, I default to “there is no solution”. While it is absolutely not intentional, that approach is very arrogant as it could easily be rephrased as “I’m smarter than everyone else, so if I can’t solve this, nobody else can”. It also leaves a lot of potential creativity on the table for the company as a whole.
Delegating bit-sized tasks instead of projects
Delegating bit-sized tasks instead of projects
As a a consequence of the two points above, I am subpar at Delegating projects, not tasks. I always analyse the problem at hand, dissect it, frame the contour of a solution, go ten levels deeper around its intricacies, catalogue all the tasks and their order before even starting to delegate bit-sized tasks to teammates. Very rarely have I delegated a whole project with just a concise project-brief.
Dealing with the boomerang
The last element of the freudian introspective is my fear of dealing with the boomerang, i.e. that delegating a project to some individuals whose potentials shortcomings or mistakes will come and haunt me. That fixing these mistakes will be on me and will somehow be more costly or harder to do so than solving the problem myself correctly in the first place.
For many, delegating is the path of less-friction, but it’s just not that simple for me. But acknowledging it is the first step to improve.
I might not as busy at work as I think, a lot of it is self inflicted. I just chose to throw one more ball in my daily juggling, I chose the easy way out of not delegating.
I might not as busy at work as I think, a lot of it is self inflicted. I just chose to throw one more ball in my daily juggling, I chose the easy way out of not delegating.