Facing Your Fears Concerning Delegation - Effective Delegation Part I

By Action Coach Dave Beam

A common challenge that I hear from business owners and managers is their lack of success in effective delegation.  I hope that you agree that learning how to effectively delegate is a key to your freedom.  Without effective delegation, face it, you have to do it YOURSELF!

To be clearly understood, let me first define delegation:  Delegation is passing a task to another person, and that person successfully completes the task.  Delegation IS NOT abdication, which is abandoning your responsibility, dumping it on someone else, and then blaming that person when there is failure.  Many people equate delegation with abdication and as a result are reluctant to delegate.  This reluctance is expressed as follows: “If you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself” and “Nobody does it better than me” and “No one cares like I do” and “It’s just easier to do it myself than to try to teach someone else to do it”, and “You can’t find good people”.  You likely know this story all too well.

The myriad of excuses I have heard regarding the failure to delegate can be summed up in one word – FEAR.  Fear that the job won’t get done.  Fear that the job won’t get done right.  Fear that I won’t be able to find someone qualified and willing to do the job right.  Fear that my customers won’t like anyone but me.  Fear that it will be harder to teach someone to do it rather than just doing it myself.  Fear that they will drop the ball.  Sometimes a fear that someone may do it better than me!

All fear is a negative belief about the future.  It is always false, because no one perfectly knows the future.  To address fear, you need to bring it out of the closet into the bright light and unravel it.  Fear is often rooted in false beliefs, half-truths, prejudice, ignorance, and stubbornness.  The reality is that you CAN attract and hire great people that can and will effectively carry out tasks and responsibilities, provided there is a good system and communication in place.  The right person with the right system, communication and accountabilities will get the job done.  Delegation is not the problem.  It is the answer.  Ineffective and sloppy delegation does not work.  The truth is that the lack of effective delegation is holding you hostage.

The first step to breaking free is to drop your fears and false beliefs concerning delegation.  Forget your past failures.  Commit to learning how to effectively delegate.  I will show you how.  The second step in effective delegation is getting rid of expectations and creating agreements.  That’s what we will examine next week.