"Both you and these people who
are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much
for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself."
There are lots of reasons to delegate and many times we will use the
argument of growing and developing others as an incentive to get someone
to take things off of their plate and to give to others. It is a great
reason and maybe the most important one, but there is even a more
baseline reason. This is that if we try to do it all ourselves we are
setting ourselves up for burnout, overload and ultimately failure. No
one can take it all on their own shoulders and succeed. The underlying
reason we don't delegate is our own insecurities around the work not
getting done and reflecting poorly on us or the fear that if we have
others do the work then we won't be valued as much. In this day and age
that translates into a fear for job security. This is a real fear but
if we are prioritizing correctly then we can offload the little stuff,
or the less strategic and then get back on track in getting the bigger
work and projects completed. Believe me, if we show that we can multiply
ourselves we will have more work than we know what to do with.
If none
of this is enough to make us think that we need to get better at even
simple delegation, read what Moses' Father-in-law said to him when he
saw Moses being overworked and failing; "Both you and these people who
are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much
for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself." That is straight
talk with no punches pulled. Fortunately, Moses recognized the wisdom in
this and went about making very strategic changes and ended up setting
up a work system that endured well beyond him. If today you feel and see
the signs of burn-out coming, try first doing some simple delegation.
It will work more than you might imagine and with a little more
imagination and delegation, you may well find yourself back on even
footing and working on the right things again.
Reference: Exodus 18:18 (New King James Version)
No comments:
Post a Comment