Whenever I get a chance to talk about Delegating, I see participants squirm with guilt when I talk about signs that one is poorly delegating. Delegating is a fundamental skill for effective leadership and management. When done well, it empowers your team members, fosters their growth, and allows you to focus on higher-level tasks. However, many leaders struggle with delegation, often unaware of the signs that indicate they are bad at it. In this article, we will discuss five common signs that suggest you might be struggling with delegation and offer practical solutions to improve this critical skill.
Your Team Members Call You for Decisions When You Are Absent
One of the first signs that you may be struggling with delegation is that your team members constantly reach out to you for decisions, even when you’re not at the office or unavailable. This behavior suggests that they lack the confidence or guidance to make decisions on their own. They must have also learned that by asking you to make the decisions for them, they can escape accountability for those decisions.
Solution: Encourage Decision-Making Autonomy
To address this issue, empower your team members by providing clear guidelines and expectations. Encourage them to make decisions within their areas of responsibility and assure them that you trust their judgment. As they gain confidence, they will rely less on you for every minor decision. Also, try to avoid making decisions for them when they try to ask you for them.
You End Up Doing What You Asked Your Staff to Do
Another clear sign of poor delegation is when you find yourself redoing tasks that you initially delegated to your team. This not only wastes your time but also undermines your team’s trust and motivation. It happens because you don’t follow through on your requests, which causes your staff to learn that if they don’t do what you ask them to do, you will do it yourself, and they find that to be okay.
Solution: Trust and Accountability
Delegate tasks with clear instructions and expectations, but also trust your team members to complete them. Make your expectations visible by coming up with dashboards of deliverables and their due dates. When tasks don’t get done as expected call out people assigned to them Instead of doing the work yourself. If you form a habit of doing the things you are supposed to delegate to your team members, it does make those things get done faster, but it will hinder you from the work of strategizing and guiding your team towards your goals.
Your Team Use You as an Excuse for Things Not Getting Done
A task is like basketball. It can be dribbled and passed around. When you pass a task to a team member, it can be passed back to you, and often, they do that, sometimes without telling or reminding you that the ball is “in your court.” You often hear words like “It’s still on my Boss’ desk”, or “she hasn’t told us what to do with it yet”, or “let me ask my Boss”, or “he knows more about this stuff”. When your team members consistently use you as an excuse for their failures or missed deadlines, it indicates that they feel a lack of ownership and accountability for their work.
Solution: Foster Accountability
Encourage a culture of accountability within your team. Set clear goals and deadlines and hold team members responsible for meeting them. When individuals know they are accountable for their actions, they are more likely to take ownership of their tasks and deliver on their commitments. Prevent team members from escalating unnecessarily. They do this when they request approval for tasks that do not need your approval. Call people out when they are not making timely decisions or wait for you to make a decision for them unnecessarily.
You Do More Technical Work Than Managerial or Leadership Work
We often romanticize being “hands-on” leaders, which really means that we take care of the hard stuff because we do not train our team members to do them. Leaders should focus on strategic planning, decision-making, and guiding their teams. If you find yourself spending the majority of your time on technical tasks that could be handled by others, it’s a sign that you’re not effectively delegating.
Solution: Delegate Technical Tasks
Identify tasks that can be delegated to team members who have the necessary skills and provide them with the opportunity to take on these responsibilities. This allows you to free up your time for more critical leadership and managerial duties.
You Secretly or Not So Secretly Blame Your Staff for All Your Stress at Work
Your team has gone home, and you’re still at work. You’re doing 80% of the hard work, while your team members have stopped waiting for you to delegate work to them. You end up drawing bad conclusions about your team. You think they are lazy, close-minded, uninterested in the work, and have a bad attitude. If you constantly feel overwhelmed and blame your team members for your stress, it’s a clear indicator that you’re not effectively delegating and taking on too much yourself.
Solution: Communicate and Seek Support
Open and honest communication is key. Discuss your workload and stress with your team and seek their input on how to alleviate some of the pressure. Additionally, consider seeking support from higher management or investing in leadership training to improve your delegation skills.
Delegation is a vital skill for successful leadership. Recognizing the signs that you are bad at delegating is the first step toward improvement. By empowering your team, fostering accountability, and focusing on your leadership role, you can become a more effective and less stressed leader, leading to a more productive and motivated team. Remember, delegation is not a sign of weakness but a sign of effective leadership.
