How to Delegate

I picked one of my weak points and decided to see what other people can tell me about it.

Lohr’s audio program was pretty good. He mentions one of the key points of delegation, which includes: delegation as a key of making really big projects possible. The thing I typically have a problem is is delegation of stuff which I know I can do well by myself.

The bad thing is that once I’m set on the model of how given activity must be performed or I know how the method of achieving the goal should look like, it’s quite hard to convince me otherwise.

I think there’s the biggest conflict in delegation, where there’s little pressure on a method, and where the push is toward expected result.

Seeing people achieving the goal with incorrect method is kind of painful for me, so … oh well. I think I’ll just keep trying to apply “7 habits…” and “How to win friends..” approaches and trying hard to adjust other people methods to mine. But, of course, only when I know my method is better.

Paying attention on a method makes sense to me, since I think some results can not be achieved when doing thing wrong, just like it’s hard to get perfect double stroke roll without holding drum sticks correctly.

Interesting concept in delegation is holding people accountable, which in turn includes making sure the goal is properly understood. By properly I mean: both sides see the problem and goal in the same way.

After delegation of the task, the concept of rephrasing it once again for clarify was being touched. This is something I already apply on a daily basis and which I see multiple advanced engineers use.

The idea of asking people to do it is new to me. Honestly what the program mentions is very hard to achieve. I spotted people get very sensitive when there’s the smallest doubt about their understanding of what you told them. In other words: like a dog people smell the doubt in them and start to apply defensive mechanisms.

If you’re a Polish immigrant abroad, you have a strong competitive advantage–after phrasing the goal, you can easily blame eventual lack of the clarity in your crappy English, so basically get the goal rephrased for free. Whooo!!

Anyway–I’d qualify this audio program as a positive addition in case you happen to work on bigger projects in your career.