Eleven barriers to delegation

 Delegation is the single most important skill for a business owner to master (discuss).

That makes it depressing that so many business owners are pants at it.  Here are some excuses and reasons I’ve been given with my responses – feel free to add your own:

1. My employees will make mistakes.  Of course they will.  That’s how you learned.  Support them so that they don’t make big mistakes
2. I do not have the right staff, they are not up to it.  From experience I suggest that this may be the case, but probably isn’t.  Employees’ performance usually reflects their manager’s capability.  Leaders understand that people live up to (or down to) their leader’s expectations.
3. It is quicker to do it myself.  Well, it might take you an hour to show someone else what takes you five minutes – but if you don’t invest that hour you will still be doing it yourself in one year or ten years
4. It’s cheaper to do it myself.  This is clearly nonsense unless your time is worth less than that of your employees
5. I don’t want to waste time “doing management” instead of “doing important stuff”.  Leaders embrace the fact that leading people is their job.  If you would rather spend your time doing technical work then that’s fine but you should accept that you will never be a leader and your business will never grow
6. I don’t have the time to define how things should be done so that others can do it.  Leaders understand that they are building a system to make money.  Building processes that are repeatable and can be carried out by others is an essential part of that.  Leaders recognise the long-term value in developing others to succeed (and get pleasure from doing this).Finally, delegating stuff very quickly frees up your time
7. My staff will reject attempts to give them more responsibility.  Maybe some will – but leaders have high expectations of other people and these expectations are not usually disappointed.  It depends how you go about it
   
8. I’ll spend all this time developing staff and then they’ll leave.  Employees leave because they feel unfulfilled, or put upon, or stressed, or they hate their boss.  Developing and challenging them, becoming a better leader and recognising their increased value to the organisation will make most people more loyal and attract others to work for you.  Leaders accept it when staff do move on to bigger things and see it as proof of how well they have been developed
9. I’m scared of overloading staff.  Leaders see delegation as a gift. They believe that responsibility, delegated well, will be rewarding for the recipient and they will become more productive.  Leaders know they have employees who are not scared to say “No” or to raise workload issues and their solution
10. I need to be seen as “leading from the front”.  This limiting mindset is really a fear that what you do as leader is not valuable.  Even if you are the best widget maker in the world you will only ever be a single widget-maker.  A leader can produce an unlimited number of widget makers who are better than her and bring in the work to keep them busy.  How is that not more valuable?
11. The final barrier is usually unspoken but along the lines of “What am I if l am no longer the best widget maker, or the expert with the answers, or the centre-forward, or the quarterback?”  Leaders have a fulfilling self-image that they are good at hiring and developing people to be better than them at doing stuff and that this is a much bigger and more valuable skill than making widgets

(With apologies to all widget makers).

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I don't like managing people

I was talking to a prospective client recently about the challenges of growth.  He said he had spent twenty years working 60-70 hours per week growing his business and that he was feeling the strain - and his wife had also started to express concern.

I asked him about delegation and whether he was developing employees to take on more responsibility and reduce his load.  The short answer was no.  The slightly longer answer included the following elements (I paraphrase):

"My company is in town x and there just aren't enough of the right people around."

"If you train employees up they will just want more money or leave."

"I can't afford to pay people more."

"I just don't like managing people."

The final point was made almost at the end of our conversation.  I don't know whether it was a momentary insight or something he knew well but was only prepared to share after we had talked for a while but it probably explains the three previous points.

Of course, most employees, much of the time, are baffling, unpredictable, selfish, short-sighted, lazy - in short, humans.  Managing them is a never-ending challenge that requires a consistent, steady will to prevail,  a resilience that can surmount the inevitable disappointments, and some basic management structures and techniques.  But to become leadership, to transcend management, requires something more.  It requires mutual trust and a belief in the ability of ordinary people to do extraordinary things if they want to.

Business owners, and managers generally, get the employees they think they will get.

The tragedy is that many, perhaps most, business owners end up with employees by accident, as a by-product of growth.  They have little time, desire and perhaps knowledge to develop these people and so low expectations are inevitably met and a nasty downward feedback loop created.

After 20 years of 60-70 hour weeks fnally takes its toll and the business owner decides something must change it can be an unwelcome message to hear that the only sustainable way to grow a business is to grow the people.

If you'd like to learn more about sustainable growth, systemisation and making your business scalable then you should register for one of these events.