Stand on the Shoulder of Giants

I was working with the client recently and he shared a great piece of advice that his mentor had given him, “If you have any team member who can do something half as well as you can, you should delegate it to them.”  I really like this mindset.

Any skill in your organisation has been learnt. Skills are learnable.  Sometimes (often?) people’s identity can be wrapped up in their job. This can bring a mirage of challenges (including them seeing any criticism or feedback on the role as a personal attack) but one of the most damaging for a business is when people do not want to share knowledge. This can be because they believe they are the best/quickest/most qualified/etc and therefore they will do it right/fast/accurately/etc.  This can create single person dependencies, it can tie up skilled people in low value adding tasks and lead to other team members getting bored because they are never challenged further than the “rat wheel” hum-drum of their daily tasks.

Delegating tasks as soon as someone is competent allows them to grow and frees you up to contribute to the organisation in the areas where you can add the most value. Are you trusting your staff? Your willingness to take a risk on them and support them says a lot about your culture. I often say that an organisation can only grow to the level of it’s people. Sometimes the fastest way ‘grow someone’ is get them doing new things. With training and support and safety in the knowledge that “mistakes” are “learning opportunities” people can learn fast! Often times the best way to learn new skills is to start and do the best you can and then review what you have done and what you learnt and then repeat.

If you want to help your people become more and do more then lift them up. I love the classic saying used in a 1675 letter by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." As you and your team teach people how to do new things there is much you can do to speed up the process. Give people notes to follow. If you have no notes then require new people who are learning to take notes and or short video clips so that they can then follow the notes/video clips/flowcharts/ standard operating procedures and do it for themselves. Slow down to speed up. Show them. Let them take/follow the notes.  Let them do it following the notes, while you watch to make sure they fully understand and that the training material is up to date. Then leave them to do it. Be available for the inevitable occasions where something falls outside the norm. Empowered team members who have the expectation to step up and grow usually rise to meet the challenge.

What could you do today? Who could you delegate to? What would be the best use of your time right now? It is by trusting our team and taking action that we free ourselves up to see what possibilities lie ahead!