Delegating Tasks
Being able to entrust assignments to your teammates is an important skill to practice on. As budding leaders or managers begin to tackle on bigger assignments, we have to let go of doing everything ourselves.
This is tough to practice since we’ve been trained since associates to handle our stuff on our own. It may feel unnatural to hand something off to someone else to do. Perhaps you may feel like you’re being perceived as lazy or not hardworking.
But that’s not it.
As we move up to more senior positions, we have to rely on our team to get things done. The first part of delegating is the action-piece. We all know this: give people certain assignments that they are responsible for. Check.
The second piece (perhaps not as self-evident) is that the person who delegated the work remains accountable for the outcome of the delegated work.
It may be an insecure perception thing, but honestly sometimes, I think it’s because as humans we have an unhealthy relationship with control. Whatever it is, to become better managers, we have to learn to divvy up the work, so our team feels empowered to step up to the plate and get a home run (in the spirit of Game 6 of the World Series tonight).
