Neena Newberry is the president of Newberry Solutions and creator of the New Lens leadership platform.
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Burnout is an increasing problem for all professionals, but it's even worse among managers. According to Gallup, burnout rates were flat last year for individual contributors (still an alarming 27%), though for people managers, rates rose from 28% to 35%.
Those numbers reflect what I see day to day as an executive coach. When I’m working with a client who is experiencing burnout, I help them identify the underlying factors contributing to how they feel. The demands of their workplace contribute to burnout, of course. But so do their individual choices. And one choice they often overlook is how much they are willing to take off their plates and delegate to others.
Like them, perhaps you feel a reluctance to delegate, even when your stress level is maxing out. To get past that reluctance, it helps to acknowledge just how much effective delegation can benefit both you and your team.
What do you lose when you don’t delegate?
When you are deciding whether to assign a task to a team member or to tackle it yourself, what goes through your mind? Do thoughts like the ones below sound familiar?
- It’s easier for me to just pick up the phone and schedule this meeting instead of asking someone else.
- It would take me longer to explain what I need than it would take for me to do the work myself.
- This needs to be done right and done quickly, and I’m not sure I can count on others to do that.
If you’re focusing just on the short term (which is so easy to do when you’re busy), all of these fears may actually be true. But what changes if you look at the situation from a longer-term perspective? Ask yourself:
- Over the long haul, what do all of these minutes and hours that you spend doing work that your team members could do add up to?
- How much time does it take away from the work that makes the highest and best use of your unique expertise and skills?
- How does taking on everything yourself keep you from getting results faster?
- How sustainable is your current workload?
How can you delegate with development in mind?
When you don’t delegate, you aren’t just affecting your own results and well-being. You are also affecting your team and your organization. As a leader, your job is about more than getting things done. It’s also about helping the people on your team develop to their full potential. To do that, they need opportunities to get exposure, grow and try new things—opportunities you can give them by delegating more.
Delegating is most effective when you understand your team members’ goals and interests. For example, let’s say your department has been asked to present at a meeting, but you really don’t have the time to prepare. However, you have a team member who is passionate about the presentation topic and is aiming for a promotion. Delegating the presentation to her gives her the chance to show her expertise and to get in front of other leaders who could help her get promoted.
How can you ensure quality when you delegate?
If you are still feeling nervous about what the results will be when you delegate to others, try these tips to ease your anxiety and help your team member achieve a confidence-building win with the work you are delegating:
- Define outcomes. Outline specific deliverables and clarify what success looks like. From your experience, you may instinctively know what needs to be done. But it might be less clear to your team members. Clear up any ambiguity.
- Establish checkpoints. Agree on when and how you should touch base to ensure that you’re in sync. This could save you from having to redo work later.
- Clarify authority. When can the person you are delegating to take action and then inform you? When should they seek your approval first?
You might be surprised at how much more value these small tweaks to what and how you delegate can create—for you, for your team and for your organization as a whole.
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