While listening to David interview Steve Kowalski, I was struck by Steve’s comments about how managers have difficulty delegating. As a trainer and coach for The David Allen Co., I have worked with some very high-level high-powered managers and I’ve also noticed this predilection. I’ve seen two things which tend contribute to the cause of this. One is that these folks have to move so quickly to navigate through their days that they rarely slow down to “think”. Information and people are coming at them so fast which results in them spending most of their days in reactivity to what is coming their way. Time and time again as I’ve watched a manager slow down to think about this thing in front of them, I’ve seen them realize, ‘You know what? I don’t need to do this! I can send this over to Sam so he can take the first stab at this proposal.” When that happens a few times, they start seeing the value of slowing down to clarify ‘is this mine or is this theirs’? Things start moving and the manager is now freed up to focus on more high level thinking.
The other reason managers have for hesitating to delegate is they have no system for tracking what they’ve given to others. When that happens, there tend to be one of two outcomes. Either it gets lost and forgotten until it becomes a crisis or the manager ends up micromanaging the person they’ve given to to ensure it’s getting done. The latter usually looks like a manager walking around the hall with their head bent over their blackberry frantically following up with someone just to “see how it’s going”. Once a manager establishes their ‘Waiting For’ list and give their direct reports what they expect and when they want it, they will back off considerably and allow their folks to support them in getting things done!