Hoarding Hinders Success
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Face it. Unless your goals are very small, you're going to need help. Or at least some support. Unless you can do the work of the whole team by yourself, both performance and morale are going to suffer. You must quit hoarding and learn to delegate.
Be honest.
- Do you hoard tasks, keeping your favorite ones for yourself?
- Do you "throw" tasks at people without an overall plan or sufficient follow-up? And then complain because they never really got it?
- Do you micromanage because you don't trust others to do it "right?"
- Do you think it's easier or faster to just do it yourself?
If you answered yes to some of the questions above, you may have a delegation problem. The majority of managers do.
Andrew Carnegie said years ago, "No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it." Wanting all the credit is one thing; wanting to do it all yourself, for whatever reason, is another.
Time is our most precious commodity. There's never enough. One of the main reasons is that managers do too much themselves. They often do too much themselves because of their discomfort with delegation.
We all know cognitively that delegation frees up valuable time. Delegation motivates. Delegation develops people. It gets more done. It's a skill that first-line supervisors are supposed to learn.
Yet, many high level executives still haven't grasped it.
Even senior leaders can be guilty of doing the tactical stuff first and letting everything strategic go until last. And when they do that, they don't have time to develop others. That makes them even more reluctant to delegate work because their team members aren't ready to accept it. Duh!
If you know you hoard tasks and don't delegate effectively, try this:
- Identify an important goal that's looming for you and your team.
- Who's most critical to you and the team achieving that success?
- What are the specifics of what that person needs to know to help achieve that goal?
- Spend time now with that person and make sure they understand the why as well as the how of the task or project.
- Then be available to that individual to answer questions, re-direct and reinforce.
You'll find yourself agreeing with William Feather, American author and publisher, who said, "Next to doing a good job yourself, the greatest joy is in having someone else do a first-class job under your direction."
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