Delegate or DIY?
Ali Merchant
| Executive coach | Leadership advisor | Former Head of L&D | Founder of All-In Manager
My favorite bosses had one thing in common.
They were?master delegators.
They figured out the secret to performance wasn't doing everything. The secret was to?delegate to elevate.
Most leaders don’t know, don’t care, or don’t want to delegate.?YIKES!
Savvy leaders spread their work. They understand the importance of working at their level. They resist the urge to hold on to tasks. If they can delegate a task to someone,?they default to that option.
If you want to become an effective delegator, you have to understand what it means to delegate.
Delegation isn’t just “assigning tasks”. Delegation is also assigning responsibility. It's building capability on your team and teaching everyone to work at their level. Including yourself.
One reason why busy managers don’t delegate is because delegation takes time and effort. However, a little bit of planning in the short run pays huge dividends in the long run.
As leaders, we have two options when it comes to spreading work:
? Delegate work to our team. This requires spending time teaching employees how to accomplish the task so they can get better and faster at their jobs.
? D.I.Y in the short run. This requires adding more workload to our plate by not assigning work to our team.
Risk of option #1 (Delegate)
???? Time investment up-front to teach employees.
???? The outcome might not meet your standards.
???? Trading quality for time (in the short term)
Risk of option #2 (D.I.Y)
???? You’re stuck doing the work.
???? You can’t find time to do higher value work (you should be doing)
???? Employees struggle due to lack of development.
???? Not a sustainable strategy in the long run.
[CHECKLIST] How can you become a better delegator?
领英推荐
Effective delegation requires six specific steps.
State your need for help
Describe the task in detail
Clarify the deadline and your expectations
Discuss accountability
Discuss training needs
Cocreate next steps
Once the handoff is complete, the best leaders will work hard to stay?appropriately involved?as the project matures.
Should I ever D.I.Y?
You bet. There are times when delegating isn't the right answer.
When it comes to delegation, my best advice is to remain supportive and present throughout the process. This doesn't mean zooming in and out. This means giving your employees every opportunity to find their own way.
Water the plant, but stop hovering over it. Let the plant do its thing.
Keep leading.
Ali
PS: What's your biggest challenge when it comes to delegation? Share in the comments below. I'll share mine too.
Project Manager | People Management and Training| Focused on Developing Employees' EIIP Skills| 2x Revenue Growth
2 年If a proper balance is maintained between delegation and DIY, things would positively move forward smoothly. Moreover, I resonate with the point that team members should be aware of their accountability and responsibility towards the assigned task. Ali Merchant
Agile Leadership Expert | Corporate Consultant | Educator | Driving Organizational Transformation and Student Success
2 年great insight. my challenge is: first be intentional about my time to create clarity and accountability for the task to be delegated. second to let something go so that a team member can develop new skills and raise up to the next level.
Founder ZJ Advisory | Marketing Science Expert | Keynote Speaker Data and AI | APAC CIO Outlook Magazine Top IT Leader| CDAO Sydney Advisory Board Member
2 年Earlier in my career, my biggest challenge in delegation used to be the fear that the output would not be up to the standards that I wanted it. When I did a self reflection, I realised that this mentality created overload for myself and prevented me from leading the team to even broader success. It also creates what i want to call a trust deficit. My team felt I didn’t trust them to do this so they were content with just doing bare minimum tasks, while I then in return found artificial validation that I was right. The paradigm shift happened when I realised that if I can build a team that is trusted to do the more advanced actions and stepped back to role of facilitator, I in turn received a high performance and motivated team that reached new levels of success. The lesson here is simply trust you team, lead, don’t manage and ultimately train your teams to take your job so you can do broader ones. That’s how growth happens. I now consider myself an expert delegator and there is no shame in trusting your teams to do what you hired them to do in the first place.
Community Leader + Marketing Coach @ THE GYM ? The community where online entrepreneurs build their marketing muscle and mindset to grow stronger revenue together ? "Your personal growth marketer."
2 年I enjoyed this read a lot, Ali — your long form content is still just as actionable as your posts!
Co-Founder - Brainium Information Technologies | Custom Software Development | Digital Marketing | Blockchain | AR/VR | Author of The 12th Man and The Diamond Way | Business Writer | Sales Coach.
2 年Great managers are good delegators. They are great in time management too. And you manage your time effectively when you know what you need to do yourself, what you can ignore and what you can delegate!