Delegation

“No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”  ~ Andrew Carnegie

If you are a manager or in a leadership position, let me know if this sounds familiar to you?

You’re boss gives you a task and asks it to be completed by the end of the week.  You’ve done this task several times before, so you have an idea of what needs to be done and what the end product needs to look like.  You were recently promoted to manager, so you decide to take it on personally to prove that you deserved your promotion.  Meanwhile, you other, possibly more important tasks suffer, your ‘team’ gets carried away and does things you wouldn’t approve of.  However, you get the project done and get high regards……..until, your boss realizes that your other tasks have be unsatisfactorily completed (if at all!)

A lot of times, this happens to newer managers because before we were a manager, we were the “do-er”.  We were assigned the tasks, so we personally took on the task to ensure its completion.

So the first rule I learned in management is that manager does not equal ‘do-er of all things’.  In fact, its quite the opposite.  Manager means that you are responsible for many things, but it does not mean that you are responsible for completing them personally.

In training newer managers, I have found that this can often lead to confusion.  So I’ve decided for the first topic of “Manager’s Log” we are going to talk about: Delegation.

Delegation is a tricky concept.  It often requires knowing the parameters of what you need to get done, and also knowing who to trust to complete it.  I can recall times when I knew I had to delegate a project, but hesitated because I didn’t know if I had the ‘right’ employee to get the project done.  But how limiting was that? For me, getting the ‘right’ employee meant that there would be no creative deviation from how I would complete the project.  So question 1, right off the bat, “Who am I refusing to choose, that if I did choose, would help me to create a project better than I could possibly imagine?”  By opening our selves up to questions and choices, it allows us to focus on the possibilities, rather than the limitations of what we “think” may be the better choice.

Instead of being a manager, you then become the Intuitive Manager.  The Intuitive Manager honors facts, their business training, and the goals of the store, but by opening themselves to the wider possibilities, they allow themselves the ability to create and do more as a manager than they thought possible.

Now, obviously, that doesn’t mean the employee may get it 100% right, or that they won’t add their own creative flair.  Remember when you started out as a manager? Hopefully you had someone who saw your potential and help fostered it.  So TRUST is going to be a huge point here.  You have to trust not only your intuitive sense, and we will talk in later blogs about how to develop that, but also that the person you chose will come through.

In another blog, we’ll talk about the second part of Delegation which is follow-up.  For now, think about what your responsibilities are as a manager.  Are you responsible for all of them? Do you THINK you are responsible for all of them when you really aren’t?  And, my favorite question, WHAT ELSE IS POSSIBLE?

Helping you to cut limitation, expand your business, and love your life:

THE Intuitive Business Coach

Resources: 1. http://famous-quotes.com/topic.php?tid=310