I often have to learn lessons the hard way. Maybe me telling you about my mistakes with employee delegation can prevent you from doing the same. I have learned that delegation is important, but it must be done properly.
About 10 years ago, one of our all-time best team members came to me upset and she resigned. I had made a really dumb mistake. At the time, I had never stopped to think that not everyone liked the same sort of assignments that I really liked at work. I had some client work I wanted to delegate to save me some time. I thought this team-member would enjoy deal-making as much as I did and this would be a great opportunity for her to bring in more income. Instead, she found it to be too full of conflict and uncertainty. It made her hate her job and she ended up leaving.
This mistake revealed to me the real key to delegation is to thoroughly understand your people. You have to know what they are good at and what they enjoy doing. The majority of their work needs to align well with their natural talents in order for them to feel successful and to in fact be successful in the long run.
For every task or role that you would rather not do, there is someone out there who would love to do that work and will do it well…perhaps much better than you can do it.
For a deeper dive into the topics, check out the book, Unique Ability written by Catherine Nomura, Julia Waller, and Shannon Waller. You can check it out here.
