Focus Confidence Momentum

I coach many clients around delegation. It comes up when leadership, time managment, business development, work life quality and conflict resolution are the reason for the coaching relationship. There are many reasons that executives don’t delegate as much as they should. Here are four.

1] Anxiety that the delegated project won’t be done well enough and soon enough. That will often be the case but delegation presents a learning opportunity to the employee. When the employee has some experience suddenly the executive has many more options for delegation and that buys them a lot of time. It is worth the investment to work through the anxiety.

2] Anxiety that the project will be done too well. This is subconsious, of course, and more true when someone feels insecure about their tenure. I’ve always felt it’s best to hire good people who will push you up not out. And you have to delegate to them.

3] Misorganized. No I don’t mean disorganized. Misorganized is when you are organized but not in the right way. The right way has the right person doing the right work. So if your earning power is $200 an hour and you find yourself doing $10 an hour work, you’re misorganized. You may be working your ‘to do’ list quite nicely but you’re not delivering value.

4] Too much Type A; not enough Type B. It takes Type B behaviour to be a good delgater. That is, you have to slow down to deliver a good brief and entertain questions and discussion about the project you’re delegating. With too much Type A an executive will not delegate so well. They’ll do it too fast with too little attention to detail. Much less chance of getting it done right the first time.