Raise your hand if you are a control freak. Very few people raise their hand when I ask the leader groups that question. But pretty much every successful leader has been a control freak at one point or another, myself included. The problem, of course, is that you burn yourself out, impede the growth of the organization, encourage the top contributors to leave, and lose countless opportunities to develop those around you.
Robert Schuller, founder of The Crystal Cathedral, once wrote, “Some people are afraid to delegate because they think no one else can do as good a job as they can. I’ve gone through that. But I came to this conclusion. It’s better to let somebody else do a worse job than I would do, than not have it get done at all. The surprising thing is that, more often than not, they do a better job than I would have done.”
Yet, for the control freak this can be heresy. After all, there’s that voice running in the background that keeps saying, “What if they screw it up? What if they do it the wrong way? What if their mistake costs time, money or reputation?” Do you hear that voice? I used to hear it and still do occasionally.
But here’s the thing, the leader can’t afford to have that voice running in the background all the time. It becomes a distraction and, over time, debilitating. Watch the best leaders around you. They don’t suffer this malady. When something does go wrong, they fix it and learn from the experience. They don’t point fingers. After all, they’re the one who delegated the task.
So how can the rest of us emulate this approach? In my personal experience and observations of others, it comes down to two elements, clarity and trust. Let’s talk about both. Think about the last time you delegated a task. How clear were you in your own mind about what you wanted the person to do? How clearly did you explain it? I am forever advising people to avoid the “Yups” as in “You got what I just explained?” “Yup.”
Taking time to truly clarify what you want the person to do and how its completion will be measured is worth the effort up front. But how many times do we get overwhelmed and start shoving stuff off on people just to get it off our plates? When they don’t do it the way we would do it or get a poor outcome, we become exasperated and try to fix it ourselves while they watch. This has two impacts. It returns the task to our plate and humiliates them, even if the leader doesn’t say that directly. When that same leader tries to delegate something else, the employee becomes wary from the get-go.
So, how do you get past this? Work collaboratively. Rather than saying, “Do this. Here are the steps,” say something like, “I’d like you to take on responsibility for this. This what it looks like when it’s completed and this is how I typically approach it. But if you think of another way to get it done, give that idea a try. As long as you achieve the same goal, I don’t care how you get there.”
Now, let’s be honest here. Doing this will probably scare the beegeesus out of the average control freak. So start small. But resist the urge to jump in if you see them doing it a different way than you’ve done it. This is even more relevant now with the emergence of artificial intelligence.
If you practice this kind of approach, the second element, trust, emerges over time. You can say, “I trust you,” all you want. But to most workers, actions speak louder than words.
What secrets do you use to ensure your delegation is successful? Share them in the comments below and remember to subscribe to this channel so you’ll be notified of more practical ideas just like this one.