Say Yes To Your Best and Delegate The Rest!
Okay — So you are afraid to delegate. You have been burned in the past.
Emails were sent out with mistakes or by mistake. You asked for something to be completed that you could have done in a hour and you delegated it to someone that spent 5 hours to finish. You are not getting the level of work product you would do yourself.
For a dentist, physician, or leader of an organization, it is important to stay within your strengths and highest, best purpose. Being bogged down by daily demands or constant decision-making draws you away from the joy of living in your strengths and performing the things that only you can do. Delegating the things you can, freeing you to once again really enjoy being on a team of stewards may seem like a dream or something just out of reach because:
I don’t have the right people,
This isn’t the right time,
This is too important,
I like to see everything that goes out of the office, and on it goes.
Perfectionism, control, and being in command are all qualities that get in the way of effective delegation and creating stewards on your team. Take a piece of paper, and at the top of the page, list the task you want to delegate and a clear description of the desired outcome, state why this project needs to be completed, and describe the payoff for you and the practice. Now, list all your fears about delegating a task or area. Next, create a solution for each fear. This will help get you out of your negative future picture and shift you into a creative orientation. List three milestones to completing this project.
Once you have begun to shift your mindset, it’s time to start shifting behaviors.
Pick the right person — and it isn’t always about who can do it. Who needs to develop these skills? Who has capacity? Who has shown interest? Who is ready for a challenge? Who would see this as a reward? Successful delegators also explain why they chose the person to take on the task.
Be clear about what the person is responsible for and how much autonomy they have. Successful delegators let their team members know exactly where they have autonomy and where they don’t (yet).
Describe the desired outcome in detail. This includes setting clear expectations about the results (“what it is”), how the task or project fits into the overall picture of the organization (“why we’re doing it”), and how you will measure success (“what it should look like when done well”).
Make sure that team members have the resources they need to do the job, whether it’s training, money, supplies, time, a private space, adjusted priorities, or help from others.
Establish checkpoints, milestones, and junctures for feedback so that they neither micromanage nor under-lead. Keep lines of communication open if they have questions, but don’t fall into the trap of needing to be updated at every step along the way. Most tasks and projects don’t go as planned or are completed without a hitch. As a leader, you don’t need to hear about every up and down along the way. Having established checkpoints takes those interruptions out of play.
Encourage new, creative ways for team members to accomplish goals. It’s important for delegators to set aside their attachment to how things have been done in the past, so that they can invite, recognize, and reward novel approaches that work.
Create a motivating environment. Know when to cheerlead, coach, step in, step back, adjust expectations, make yourself available (schedule times), and celebrate successes. Often, your suggestions or improvements will make a task or project 5% better, but you will take away 90% of the person's enthusiasm in doing so. Allow the person you have tasked to figure things out on their own, even if it means some slight setbacks. This is where growth happens, leading us to the last quality of good delegating.
Tolerate risks and mistakes and use them as learning opportunities rather than as proof that they shouldn’t have been delegated in the first place.
Delegating well helps you maximize your time and resources, ensuring that you are focusing on their highest priorities, developing your team members, and creating a culture where delegation isn’t just expected — it’s embedded in the culture.