Many leaders have too much on their plates and must free themselves up. Last week marked the 500th time I've heard a leader utter the words "I can just do it myself in the same amount of time it takes me to teach someone else." I hear this often, and when I do, I think to myself, "Oh boy, we just lost another one."
When I say "another one," I am suggesting that this person is a good leader that won't go to great.
I'm not going to get into a bunch of delegation techniques here. More importantly, I'm going to go right to the root of what gets great leaders to become expert delegators -motivation. This message is intended to light that fire. Teaching delegation techniques falls on deaf ears unless you are motivated. It's 90 percent motivation and 10 percent technique.
Once motivated, you can Google the word "delegation" and get a hundred techniques on how to do it.
The unfortunate truth is that most won't become master delegators and are going to remain just good, overwhelmed, tired, frustrated, and stuck. It's truly the difference between a great leader and an adequate leader. It will be the discipline that leads you to making more money, growing your current situation, being more balanced, and getting what you want out of your business.
If your company is growing and you are in a leadership team position and haven't mastered delegation, the organization is going to grow right past you and you will get left behind.
Uttering the above words about doing it yourself is short-term thinking. You need to take a long-term outlook. While it will take longer to invest the time to teach someone, it will save you at least one hundred times that amount of time over the long haul and you'll never have to do that work again. This ultimately frees you up to do the high-gain activities and elevates you to be the great leader that you can become. As a rule of thumb, if you are on a leadership team, you shouldn't be doing $20 an hour work.
Click here to download "Delegate and Elevate," a powerfully simple tool to help you understand where you should be spending all of your time (the top two quadrants) and what you should delegate (the bottom two quadrants).
Stay Focused,
- Gino
