Do You Spend Too Much Time Preparing to Delegate?

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If every single thing you are delegating takes a significant amount of time, then you are probably not doing it right. You may think about, i did the jenny blake assignment on how to decide what task to delegate. And she has this really great framework where it's six teas. So the six teas are tiny. If it's something or small, you don't think about it tedious. You know, something that you don't necessarily want to do, but it has to get done. Time consuming, you know, obviously time consuming. Teachable, teachable. You can pass it on.

Delegating is a leadership skill that benefits you and your team. But determining when and how to delegate which tasks to whom can be overwhelming. And the discomfort many of us feel around assigning responsibilities to others or making requests of our colleagues can lead us to falsely believe it’s easier to just continue doing everything ourselves.

To learn how to delegate in a way that delivers the results you’re hoping for, we’re bringing in an aerospace engineer who wants to overcome the awkward, difficult parts of delegating so that she can do more strategic work. She and Amy G talk to a leadership coach who shares practices that will ensure the work gets done and will leave you and the person you delegated to feeling good about the experience.

Guests:

Deborah Grayson Riegel is a communication and presentation skills coach. She is the coauthor of Overcoming Overthinking and Go To Help.

Jasmine LeFlore is an aerospace engineer at Raytheon Technologies and runs Greater Than Tech, a nonprofit that teaches girls about engineering and business.

Resources:

• “8 Ways Leaders Delegate Successfully,” by Deborah Grayson Riegel

• “Managers: Compassion and Accountability Aren’t Mutually Exclusive,” by Amy Gallo

• “How to Decide Which Tasks to Delegate,” by Jenny Blake

• “You’re Delegating. It’s Not Working. Here’s Why.” by Sabina Nawaz

• “How to Tell If You’re Delegating Too Much — and What to Do About It,” by Anne Sugar

• “How to Stop Delegating and Start Teaching,” by Art Markman

Email us: womenatwork@hbr.org