7 Ways to be a better delegator

7 Ways to be a better delegator We all know that we need to be good at delegating in order to have any traction in our careers. We need to be able to learn how to do something and then teach someone else how to do it, so that we can move on and learn how to do something new. This is as true for creative people as it is for management types. Yet even though we know this, most of us have trouble actually doing it. Many people think theyre the exception to the rule that delegating is important, but in their very unique, particular case, its impossible. Newsflash: Its never impossible to delegate its all in the mind of the delegator. Here are seven ways to get started on the road to all-star delegation: 1. Get over your perfectionist streak. The key to delegating is recognizing that your ability to do things perfectly isnt as highly valued as you think it is. In fact, perfectionism isnt valuable in 80 percent of the work we do. If you think youre the exception to this rule which all perfectionists do consider that perfectionism is so unhealthy that its a risk factor for depression. This should make delegating come easier. 2. Decide whats most important. In order to figure out what to delegate, you need to figure out whats most important to your career. This means you need to know what your specialty is, what youre known for in the office, and what your unique value is to the company. Anything that falls outside this isnt that important to you. Once you understand this, delegating most things will be easier. Theyre nonessential to your career, so its OK if you dont leave your particular mark on them. 3. Focus on helping people grow. Your job is to help make people stars. Management is essentially an act of constant giving and constant patience. It entails giving people a little attention all the time instead of giving them lots of attention only when they mess up. In fact, if youre managing people effectively they dont mess up, because you play to their strengths and teach them how to move around their weaknesses. Hands-off management isnt respectful its negligent. People want mentoring and guidance from their manager. If you give that in a way that helps them grow while also treating them with respect, theyll love having you around. And when your direct reports love having you around, they do their best work for you out of loyalty. Even younger workers those notorious job-hoppers are loyal to respectful, hands-on managers. 4. Give away your most interesting work. If you think youre going to be able to dump your most mundane assignments onto the people who report to you, think again. After all, your job as a manager is to help people grow, so youre not actually doing your job if youre asking them to copy and collate all day long. So consider keeping the grunt work for yourself sometimes. Your direct reports will appreciate it, and itll probably give you more empathy in general since youll have an idea of how soul-crushing mindless work can be. The real upside to this, though, is that the people you delegate to stay more engaged in the work theyre doing. So if you pitch in on the small, stupid tasks, you get good results on the large, important ones. 5. Blame yourself if no one can do a task as well as you. A lot of people dont delegate because theyre the only person who can do a particular task. If thats you, youre probably deluding yourself. First off, the task probably isnt as difficult as you think it is; its just that no one would do it exactly the way you do, which is fine. But in addition to that, if no one can do the tasks you do, its because youre hoarding knowledge and making things needlessly complicated. The solution isnt complicated, though: Share the knowledge and let someone else give the task a try. You dont need to be the only person doing it in order to feel important. 6. Take a vacation. If youre really having trouble delegating, go on vacation for a couple of weeks. When you get back, find who did which parts of your job while you were gone. Then distribute those parts permanently. If someone didnt do a good job of it while you were away, its not evidence that you shouldnt delegate. Its evidence that you need to help the person grow into the job. 7. Practice at home. The last time I moved, it was a big deal I had to  abandon all my stuff  and was out of my mind with stress. Im typically good at delegating, but that time I went outside even my own comfort zone: I couldnt deal with picking the color to paint the walls of my new house, so I told the painters to pick colors that would calm me down. They did. I wouldnt have picked the shades of yellow they picked, but it was fine I got used to the yellow. And if I hadnt been able to delegate as much as I did, I would never have gotten through the move. We can all get through the good times. The test of our skills is getting through the bad ones. So when you think about delegating, recognize that, done right, it can mean the difference between enduring the rough patches and making yourself crazy for no good reason.