Delegate or Die
Do you tend to be a lone ranger? If so, it is limiting you.
The implicit messages within advertising are often ludicrous. I don’t watch TV but did indulge in the Super Bowl, and saw these everywhere:
Having lots of money will make you happy.
Life is about material success, pleasure, prestige, and fame.
The purpose of work is to retire early and wealthy.
You have no limits, you can be or become whoever you want.
I disagree with all of these. Lived to their logical conclusions, they’ll likely make you miserable. Implied within all of them is a kind of hyper-individualism. One outgrowth of that is a trap that many leaders fall into: they don’t delegate enough.
I was that guy. In leadership positions earlier in my career, I realized I’d never been trained to delegate. It was entirely off my radar.
I stumbled onto it out of necessity. In over my head, I needed help. What was amazing is that help was readily available if I could just find it and deploy it wisely.
In this article I won’t address how to delegate. (Check out Coaching for Leaders if you want help with that.) Rather, let’s talk about the reasons why we don’t delegate, and their rebuttals.
It’s faster if I do it myself. Short-term yes. But if you delegate well, you may never need to do that task again! Take dinner dishes. For years our pattern was: my wife cooks (I’m terrible and messy), and I do the dishes. As the kids grew, we trained them to do dishes. Now, I only do dishes on Sunday nights.
It won’t be done as well. That might be true, but as John Maxwell points out, if it’s 80% as good as if you had done it, isn’t that good enough? Beware the other trap—perfectionism. And much of this can be mitigated by clarifying measurable quality expectations. Sometimes we fail because we don’t take time to think through what success looks like to you, and then communicate that picture clearly. Example: two summers ago I wanted a hedge trimmed. I realized my teenaged daughter could do that. But if I only said “please trim the hedge” and didn’t clarify by when and to what standard, I’m setting her up for ambiguity and myself for unmet expectations.
I don’t want to give someone tasks that I don’t like to do. While admirable, this can be myopic. First, people dislike different things than you, no? Second, people aren’t that brittle. They can also, generally speaking, say no! (Although if any of my dear children are reading this, that last point doesn’t apply to you.)
People are busy, I don’t want to bother them. But isn’t what you’re doing worthwhile? And similar to #3, can’t people make their own decisions about what they commit to? If you’re worried that people will feel compelled to say yes, perhaps evaluate how you’re influencing them. De facto coercion isn’t an effective leadership situation!
This month, try to delegate a little more. As Jim Brown notes in The Imperfect Board Member, it’s the key to “multiplied results". And it’s one of the keys to living in a more human, unisolated manner.
My colleague Pavel taught me an ancient proverb years ago that goes something like this: if you want to go fast, do it yourself. If you want to go far, do it together. A little cheesy, but it’s very true!
What are you holding onto that you should be delegating?