The Mindset Shift That Changes Delegation Forever

What if you are the bottleneck in your team?

What if the cold, hard truth is that the problem is you? If your team can’t operate without you, the issue isn’t them—it’s you.

Ouch.

Many leaders unintentionally become bottlenecks by holding too much control. So, ask yourself: Would my team function at a high level if I stepped away for a week?

If the answer is no, we have work to do. But you are not alone. Lots of leaders struggle to let go. Some reasons for that include:

• Fear of losing control (“It won’t be done right”).
• Belief that it’s faster to do it yourself (“It’s just easier”).
• Lack of trust in your team’s judgment (“They’ll make mistakes”).

If this is resonating, you need to seriously consider the risks:

• If your team stays dependent on you, they will never grow.
• You will stay overworked & overwhelmed. Constantly firefighting.
• Your work can't scale, because everything needs your approval.

So, how do you fix this?

The answer is to create a leaderful (rather than leaderless) organisation. To do this you need to stop hoarding decisions.

Which makes it sound simple, right? And it is. But simple doesn't always equal easy.

One way to do this is to implement the delegation model. In which you start to shift responsibility over time (not all at once). For example, you start to change the way people talk. Instead of “Can I do this?”, you move them to “I intend to do this—any concerns?”

But, perhaps you first need to change your mindset around delegation, to really understand that it is a leadership skill.

High-performing leaders (like you) delegate to grow their people. They don't do it just offload tasks. Although, if you do it right, you will have fewer tasks. Win win.

To summarise, if your team needs you for everything, you don’t have a high-performing team—you have a dependency system. Which means you need to shift from being indispensable to being influential.

And so, here's my challenge to you. What's one thing you can let go of this week?

• Look at your to-do list.
• Pick one thing you should not be doing yourself.
• Delegate it at a higher level than you normally would.

Let me know how that goes, Stephen

There is still time to sign up for my masterclass on leadership and delegation this Friday. As part of that I will be teaching the Delegation Levels Model.

Just head to HeRO Academy, register, watch hours of previous sessions, join the community, come to the session and if you don't like it, you pay nothing. There are 3 just places left this week.

Did someone send this to you? How nice of them. I hope you found something valuable in it. If so, you can get your own subscription here.