Delegated Powers and Why Leaders Need Them

Delegated powers are incredibly useful. Deciding when to delegate a task that you’ve been taking on is an important matter. Also, it’s, critical when growing your organization. You know that it’s not your task to be doing. Yet you are always doing other people’s jobs as well as your own. Especially when you have to pick up the slack of others. This problem stems from your fear of delegating. And the fear you have of micromanaging too. All these factors are more common than you think. And they come from the lack of having built an accountable organization. A healthy organization is one where you can delegate tasks. And trust that these tasks will get done.

Common Delegation Mistake

After a leader delegates a task to someone on their staff or someone on their team. Some of the common mistakes that happen are micromanaging. Which is, instead of having an expectation and a deadline of when things are due. You’re checking in too often. Also, your oversight is actually causing that person to disengage. This because they feel like they’re not having choices to make along the way. A lot of leaders don’t know how to hold somebody accountable. What does accountability even mean? What happens when the task is not completed yet you’re holding them accountable? Moreover, that tends to be a stressful situation for a lot of the CEOs that I see.

Most of the problems I see concern the ineffective teaching of employees. This is coupled with the lack of:

  • Training an organization to be competent in their work
  • Teaching employees how to ask others for help to complete tasks
  • Learning how to have fierce conversations

Delegate Weaknesses To Maximize Efficiency

Those are a few of the things that also make delegation in an organization difficult. Sometimes I meet with coaching clients. One of the things we also talk about often is: how do you stop doing those things that you’re not good at doing? How do you focus on the things where you are also bringing strengths to the organization? Another way to look at it is: what’s the highest and best use of your time as a leader in your organization?

Delegated Powers

What also happens is, we’re drawn to those things that we like to do. And some of the parts of being a CEO are things that aren’t what drew you into this role in the first place. So it’s very easy to get pulled back into doing things that you’re either not good at. Not to mention that you shouldn’t be doing on a regular basis. So, what that means to me is, always being very aware of what you’re good at. Playing to your strengths also. And then building a team of other people that are good at the things that you’re not good at.