However, having your fingers in numerous pies can end up being disastrous. Spreading yourself across every element of a project means that you’re not concentrating your skills and knowledge in a way that maximizes growth.
If this sounds like you, the feeling of continually fighting an internal battle when having to depend on others is probably familiar.
Bizarrely enough, the way to gain a feeling of more security and control is to start letting go.
How do you know when it’s time to let go?
Let Others Help You
When you start accepting that you need to allow others to help you, you also need to get comfortable with a few other frames of mind – one of which being that every element of your project won’t be carried out in necessarily the same way that you’d do it.
You also have to be realistic about your skill set and have an honest conversation about when to delegate questions and spotlights on other team members that know more about parts of a project than you. Your flexible position means that you won’t see every detail of every facet of your business or project, but if you’ve delegated responsibly and regularly catch-up with your team, you’ll have a good overview of what’s going on.
A less controlling leadership strategy means that you can work on enabling and empowering your team to do the best job. Your new role means you’re helping others to help you, rather than doing everything ultimately.
Pass Tasks On
Part of your fresh, new mindset is the ability to pass on jobs and responsibilities to team members when the time is right. So usually, the right time is at the start of a project, instead of months down the line when you have too many priorities to juggle.
Think about short-term and long-term prospects simultaneously. Yes, perhaps you could handle this responsibility right now, but what about in a few months when you know you’ll have several more roles. Delegating isn’t just about the act of dishing out responsibilities, it’s about timing when to pass on parts to others and recognizing when you’re not the best person for the job.
If you can’t offer the best info in a meeting, then point someone in the direction of a team member that can. Your presence isn’t always essential – acknowledging that is a powerful move.
Decide What You Can Do
The other side of this coin is accepting the tasks that only you can do. There’s no point mindlessly delegating parts of projects to people that don’t have the skills and will end up out of their depth of negatively affecting the progress of a project.
Before delegating, ask yourself if others could perform this task to a suitable level in order to help yourself let go; can someone else take on this task with their current workload; could someone do the initial research and legwork and then return the responsibility to you; will this task stop you from making more meaningful progress somewhere else?
Decide and make impactful decisions about where you will be most high-value and beneficial to a project.
If you’re compromising your skills by adding to your priority list, then you need to make insightful decisions.
Create Accountable Systems
Now that ‘letting go’ is an integral part of your business strategy, you need to implement accountable follow-up systems, so that you can make sure the team members you’ve delegated tasks to are doing so successfully, individually.
Create routines and locations, so that you can follow-up with your team. Areas can be dashboards you’re using, folders, task management software, etc. and routines can be time-dependent meetings, Skype calls, etc. – radically ways to touch base with your team regularly and monitor progress so you can pivot if needs are.
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Be Consistent
Once you’ve healthily ‘let go’ and are overviewing projects instead, there can be a tendency to start gradually reclaiming control if it feels uncomfortable or something doesn’t go right. Try to refrain from doing this and trust in the process.
By all means, if there are substantial issues, you can fire-fight and offer expertise, but trusting your team and their solutions will grow their confidence in the long-term, and you can feel more assured that they can use their skills to work out a way forward.
Assess what you can do different in the future and where you can help more or offer more training opportunities for team members. Turn negatives into learning opportunities instead of grasping back control.
Final Thoughts
It can be challenging to let go, mainly when you’ve built a business up from the bottom – it’s your baby! However, you won’t be doing your business growth justice or creating chances for personal development for your team members if you insist on tightly controlling every aspect of your business and trying to do everything.
Being more flexible allows your team to demonstrate their skills and for you to have a more healthy outlook and an overarching perspective of your business.
