Teachable Tuesday

What can you coach and mentor today?

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You have too many tasks to do. You want to delegate some of them, but it would take a more time to teach the person what to do and then check their work to make sure it’s done right than it would just to do it yourself, so you just do it yourself.

Any delegation-averse people out there feeling seen right about now?

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find ONE task on your action-item list today that someone else could do and give that person ownership of that task.

It might take more time to train that person to do it this first time, since it involves communicating goals, methods, deadlines, etc., and then checking their work. Even the second time you delegate to them might take more time than just doing it yourself. But you are not training them for the first or second times they need to do this task. You are growing their skills so that, by the THIRD time you offer them the assignment, they know how to do it well. That third time should be about where you see your time start to free up. And that’s the point where it can be off your plate.

This is a win-win situation. You free up your schedule so you have more time for the things only you can do, and the team member has become a more competent professional. They have developed a skill or gained experience that allows them to do more and move toward the successes and achievements they want in their career.

Delegate tasks your people will ENJOY doing. Delegate tasks you DON’T enjoy doing. When these line up, everyone is happy. For example, if you don’t like getting down in the details, do you have someone who does?

Delegate tasks your people will need to grow their competencies and prepare for their next promotion. Delegate to everyone on your team. Find out what they like to do and where they have talent and maximize those areas. Balance this with “it would be good for them to know how to do X” tasks that they might not enjoy but that will give them needed experience.

As you get more off your plate, you will free up time for additional coaching and mentoring of your people. If you intentionally spend a little time each day growing the competencies of your team members, so that you can trust them to do high-quality work on larger and more significant tasks, you create a team that can scale up and handle more, and a deep bench of capable professionals.

(Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash)