by Michael Holland
To fully function in your role as a leader, you should focus on the conceptual and human aspects of the position more than the technical. The challenge is that many of us are most comfortable and most experienced in the technical aspects of the job. It’s our comfort zone and it’s hard to let it go. To be successful – and grow our team – we need to train others to do these technical tasks, delegate the responsibility and accountability and focus our energies on leading. Leading encompasses activities like thinking about strategy, working on process improvements and focusing on employee and personal development.
Assess the Delegation Opportunities. Look back over the last two weeks, making a quick list of your activities, tasks and meetings where your time was invested. Circle those items on the list which are delegation opportunities. As you review the items consider. . .
- is this technical work?
- is the item task oriented?
- does the item place you as an individual contributor?
- does the item allow you to avoid your employees?
Make an action plan to delegate these items to your team with appropriate communication and planning. Reminder: Leaders don’t “dump” work on their team.
Create Thinking Time. Carve out time every week just to think about the future -where you want to go and how you want to get there? Put plans in place, act upon them, follow up and leave some of the technical work behind.
