Developing from being a good manager who is excellent in executing tasks like scheduling, payroll, and managing his team members by setting expectations and holding them accountable, to a leader who delegates tasks to his team member and focuses more on developing and growing his people, is necessary if you want your organization and yourself to succeed.
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The obvious power of delegating is that by ‘delegating’ tasks and responsibilities to your team you can focus on the vision and long-term goals of the organization.
So delegating clears up your schedule so you’ll able to do other stuff, right? Yes, but there is so much more to it… and by the way as easy as it sounds to just give stuff away to your people it’s a learning process and not that easy at all (read my article on how did I become a micro-manager).
The first hidden power of delegating is ownership, and taking ownership is fundamental if you want to change the culture within your organization from THEY to US.
I remember when I started to assign more trainings and projects to my employees and fully gave them the responsibility (and credit as well) to train the entire team on new standard operations procedures and processes, and the impact it made. Not only would I never have had the time and resources to do all this myself, even if I would have worked endless hours, it would have been just about me, and I already knew how to train a team or run projects and have done it many times before.
But by assigning it to someone else not only did I change the perception from the team that only THEY in management are responsible to a feeling of US, a feeling of ownership. In addition and that’s the second hidden power of delegating it created an opportunity for growth and development for someone else, and to step out of the comfort zone and do something new… and personal growth and the feeling of accomplishment are key factors to happiness.
Delegating is so important, not because you as a leader don’t have the time to do it yourself, but because it offers opportunities for your employees to grow, take ownership for their work, and identify themselves with the organization.
Question: What’s your experience with delegating and what are some of the challenges?