The surrender in delegation

"If you want something done right, do it yourself." This was one of the best — and worst — lessons drilled into me as a kid. Best, because it made me realize the power to do good things was in my own hands. Worst, because it made delegating nearly impossible.

Needless to say, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the tensions I experience in delegation and how to do it better. Here’s what I came up with, condensed into a 2 minute read.

A lot of people will tell you delegation is about trust. But trust doesn’t address the handoff OR the outcome. At best, trust helps you relax a little while the work is happening. But if the outcome disappoints you, that trust erodes anyway, more and more with every subsequent task, until it’s gone and you’re back to doing things yourself.

Others will say delegation is about communication. If we're talking about the front end of delegation and explaining the task assigned, then, on paper sure, delegation is about communication… BUT only to a point. Anyone who's had a miscommunication with a partner or colleague (umm all of us?) knows the same words can mean completely different things to different people. We'll dig into this in a future newsletter, but for now, let's treat it as a permanent condition you're stuck working around.

All this to say that you can communicate as clearly as possible on the front end, you can trust fully during, and the outcome is still not REALLY in your control. This is because communication and trust don't change the assumptions with which you'd value someone else’s work.

The only way to delegate successfully, then, is to let go of the "if you want something done well, do it yourself." Hand the other person agency over what "well done" even means. Let them define it in their own terms, and let them rely on themselves to get there.

Combine that with the two other pieces: 1) communication about(not communication of, making it a two-way exchange where you ask what their version of "well done" looks like); and 2) trust in the process, and only then can you get an outcome that's actually worthy of comparison to what you'd have done yourself.

Tell me how you delegate, I read everything.

- Helena