Why your delegation doesn’t work yet
Many leaders are well-acquainted with the many benefits of delegation but might suffer knowing about them only in passing. If you, like many, have not yet been able to crack the code about this supposedly efficient tool, chances are you are doing it wrong. Delegation is a wonderful concept that helps develop your employees and removes tasks from your never-ending to-do list, practically moving the work process forward and at full-speed.
As a leader, you may feel that all you need to do to get work off your plate and into the “DONE” pile is by giving someone else the assignment. However, as easily as you cooked up that idea, you’ll discover that the work either doesn’t get done on time or if it does meet the deadline, it comes with a wide assortment of mistakes. What happens then is unfortunate.
You end up spending even more time trying to fix the problems than if you’d taken the job up for yourself in the beginning. Then, you go on to blame the delegate because things aren’t done as expected. Meanwhile, the delegate feels overwhelmed, unprepared, or entirely helpless and simultaneously puts their blame on you for dumping them with responsibility.
Another brilliant example of delegation fails can be when you, the leader, purportedly assign someone the job but tend to control the entire project, which really isn’t delegation. Now, you simply have to do everything which adds more tasks to your checklist. Does this mean that the age-old practice of delegating works only in theory and not in practice? Absolutely not.
With Lean Orthodontics®, you can make “high quality” reproducible and improve your performance efficiently through optimized structures, standardization, and skillful delegation. Some of the following statements may be familiar to you:
“I have to do everything myself, otherwise nobody does it right!”
“I‘m the only one who really knows how to do it. It takes far too long to explain it to someone and to train the person.”
“You have such great employees, but mine couldn‘t!”
In response, especially to the last statement, you must learn to trust your employees and depute tasks so that you do not have to do everything by yourself. Remember, the bottleneck is always on the top. Learn to distribute the tasks precisely. Re-evaluation dates and feedback have to be set up and you have to learn to allow mistakes.
And, step by step, handing over more responsibility for better learning effects and increases self-efficacy and self-control of your employees. Soon, you will be running your practice on autopilot!