Delegate, don’t Abdicate

Hey 👋 - Brandon here.

Happy Saturday to 1410 growth-minded accountants.

Here’s one growth tip for you and your firm.

Today’s issue takes less than 5 minutes to read.

As a manager, one of the most crucial skills you can develop is the art of delegation.

Delegation enables you to focus on higher-leverage tasks that drive more value to the organization.

But many times I see people make the mistake of abdicating instead of delegating. Abdicating is when you hand hand off a project/work/problem and walk away. You expect someone else to handle it without your continued support. It communicates lack of care and will lead to decreased employee morale.

I know because I’ve unintentionally abdicated many times in the past…

Always maintain oversight and accountability

When you delegate, you are passing the responsibility of completion to someone on your team.

But you are still ultimately responsible for the success of the project.

So you need to find ways to maintain oversight and accountability. A simple solution is to request that the person you are delegating to schedule a 15 minute meeting on your calendar whenever the work is due.

During that meeting, you’ll review whether or not the work was complete.

If the work was not completed, you’ll use it as a coaching opportunity to provide feedback and help the person learn how to communicate and prioritize more effectively. You’ll then ask them to schedule another 15-minute meeting when the work is due (again) in the future.

This process empowers the employee.

And by you still being involved in the process, you communicate that the work is important to you. Most likely, the person you are delegating to will ultimately deliver a good end product.

How abdication will kill your productivity

In the past when I thought I was delegating, but was actually abdicating, here’s what it looked like:

• Work doesn’t meet deadlines

• Frustration with lack of progress

• Lack of real feedback and accountability sessions

• Have “surprise” conversations about performance at year-end

When you abdicate, you lose control and oversight.

Quality is compromised, deadlines are missed, and morale suffers (because abdicating is communicating the work is not important to you).

This will cause frustration and may result in you erroneously evaluating the capabilities of your people.

Avoid this by giving clear instructions, timelines, and accountability steps (like a 15-minutes check in). Follow through on the accountability and you’ll see more success as you delegate your work and tasks.

That's all for this Saturday. See you next week.

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See you again next week.

Cheers,

Brandon

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