Don’t Buy a Dog
“Don’t buy a dog and then do the barking” is one of those lovely English sayings that captures the idiosyncrasies of humanity. One of the most common areas where I see this displayed is in the area of management. Companies spend thousands of dollars recruiting skilled people and training up their team and then fail to utilise the skills. This can happen for a multiplicity of reasons but one of the most common is a manager's unwillingness and/or inability to delegate.
When I am in training sessions and ask team leaders why they fail to delegate as much as they can, these 8 reasons come up consistently. Before exploring these, let’s consider the impact on the team. The biggest impact is one that is the very foundation of all teams – trust. A reluctance to delegate sends a clear message – “I don’t trust you enough/I don’t think you’re capable enough”. The corrosion of trust can quickly destroy a team. People begin to fear making mistakes, they stop taking the initiative in situations, slow the process down by double checking everything/passing it to the ‘boss’ for approval which increases interruptions and steals valuable time. Added to this people begin to feel undervalued and start questioning their necessity for even being on the team. This attitude then tends to get picked up by the team leader who then feels justified in not trusting the team and does more and more themselves or increases the amount they micromanage.
When I was new to managing people I suffered from many of the classic ‘new management’ symptoms. I vividly remember being mindlessly busy and running around ‘chasing my tail’ being very busy but feeling like I was achieving nothing of significance. One of my team came in and addressed me directly, gaining my full attention and changing the way I managed from that day forward. She looked at me and said, “Mike, I am really frustrated. I am so bored at work because there is nothing to do and I watch you running around, getting more stressed every day, with so much to do. I can help if you will let me.”
People fail to delegate for a number of reasons. The reality is that all the reasons can be boiled down to stories that we tell ourselves: “It’s quicker to do it myself”; “By the time I explain it to someone I could have done it”; “No one knows this as well as I do”; “I know my team are busy & I don’t want to interrupt them” etc
A great 3 steps process for adjusting our mindset is to:
1) Trace where your story/logic is coming from
2) Face the facts both short term and long term
3) Replace your story/logic with a more helpful ‘truth’.
The challenge for many is that their “story/logic” is often true – they are faster, it is easier, it will be quicker. Step 2 of “facing” helps to put context around this – If they learnt it so can someone else. It might be quicker, easier and faster the first time and maybe even the second by the third, fourth and fifth the compounded time element makes training the best option. Step 3 helps you take the right action for the future health of your business.
Do you need to do a Trace, Face & Replace check?
