The Most Frequent [And Costly] Delegation Mistake Leaders Make
“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.”
- John C. Maxwell, American author
Most of today’s leaders are looking at delegation through the wrong lens
You have a specific number of hours in the day. In that time, it’s imperative to prioritize items that truly require your personal attention.
You may be aware of the need to delegate in order to leverage your time, but you’re likely thinking of delegating through a limiting lens.
Many leaders think of delegating tasks, but this method of delegation does little to free up time or streamline workflows.
If you delegate a task, but remain responsible for the outcome, you keep yourself tied to the work in an unnecessary way.
You hit a glass ceiling because, again, there are a specific number of hours in the day.
You can only oversee so many projects, and then you’re saturated. At that point, you have no bandwidth to better utilize your skills and time to move the company forward.
When you focus on delegating tasks instead of responsibilities, you limit your team’s growth. Without a chance to expand their skillsets, your team becomes stagnate and uninspired.
To grow the talent in your organization, be willing to transfer responsibility.
Allowing someone else to own the outcome frees up more of your time, and shows your team that you have confidence in their abilities.
People often rise to the expectation you set for them, so allow them to become more responsible for related outcomes.
Your attention can then shift from responsibility for micro-outcomes to periodic check-ins to monitor progress.
To help you make progress, ask yourself these questions…
Who else could do this?
What does success look like in this endeavor?
What does this person need to be successful?
How often do I need progress reports?
What fear am I holding onto that makes it hard for me to delegate responsibility for outcome?
Letting go of responsibility for outcome can feel scary at first. Like with most things, practice diminishes struggle.
If you want to increase your impact, your delegation efforts have to surpass handing out tasks, and move into assigning responsibility.