Are You Holding Up A Quality Act?

In our training programs we regularly see people squirm when we talk about delegation. As John Maxwell says, "Most of us are either clingers or dumpers when it comes to delegation. We either hold onto everything or just dump the entire task in someone's lap." There are a number of reasons we don't delegate well, but I'll save that for a blog for another day. What we can agree on is that our unwillingness to delegate things to other people often limits our ability to get to what is most important at work.

Brett Martin and Thanos Papadimitriou have a helpful blog entitled, Are You The Bottleneck In Your Organization? Among their most important tips are:

Push decision making down. If you're making all the decisions, you're only holding your company back. Push decision making down to the lowest level possible.

Accept that mistakes will happen. Sharing responsibility with others means things don't always go according to plan. Prepare your employees to avoid mistakes by being clear about your expectations and giving them the tools they need to do their jobs well.

Build your bench. Making yourself comfortable with giving up control requires having people you believe in. Invest both your time and resources to develop your star employees.