day 178: Delegating Up

We do it all the time, even when we don't know we are doing it. We delegate up with our bosses. "Oh no, I don't do that. I would never do that", you say. Oh, but yes you do. Here is how it happens. You and your boss are having a conversation, maybe it is your weekly one-on-one meeting to go over the tasks and updates for the week. Somewhere in the conversation you mention a problem or an obstacle that you might have run into to get something done. It could be a policy or procedure that has slowed you down or has stymied you from moving forward. It may be an approval that you need to get from another department. It might be that you have run out of funding for this part of the project and you need to figure out how to shift some money over from somewhere else. Or, it might be a problem you are having with someone else on the team, that you haven't had the conversation with yet, or maybe you have had a conversation but nothing got resolved. It could be any of these topics or many more that you are discussing with your boss and she/he says, "You don't worry about that, I'll take care of it." Or, he/she just picks up their pen and makes a note to themselves to follow-up on the item. Either one of those happens and you just delegated up. You let the boss take the ball and run for you. I make this sound like it is a bad thing. It isn't at all and if it was, it wouldn't happen nearly as much as it does. In fact, it is just a part of how work works. However, we do this without much thought but we find ourselves not wanting to delegate up our problems to God even though it is clearly said that we should. We read; "Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you." But, still we hold onto our own problems tightly and won't give them up to God to help us out and through our rough times and challenges. Our bosses may reluctantly take the problem but we don't have a problem in handing it off to her/him. And yet God, who doesn't flinch, but instead welcomes the problems and wants to take them from us, we resist and think of last in the chain of support. Today, we all may want to rethink who we are delegating and reorder our delegation chain and start first with delegating up to the highest order first and then working down from there. By the time it gets back down to you, it may already be taken care of for you.

Reference: 1 Peter 5:7 (New Living Testament)