5 reasons you can’t “let it go…”

I recently started the process of handing over my team to the next generation of leaders.

I have two very capable but inexperienced people who made it clear from the beginning that they would love to be promoted and one day run the team. I’ve been managing them for over a year but have only recently started to step back and hand over key responsibilities.

This is not the first time I’ve done this. I can think of at least 3 times in my career when I’ve built a team, established a process and then handed it on to someone else to manage.

In a very different context, last year I had to pass on my youth development responsibilities to a younger generation of leaders, after more than decade. In that case, I made it a clean break, which was the only way I could do it.

Delegation, when you remain within the team/business is especially difficult.

The 5 biggest challenges we face never seem to change regardless of team, time or context:

1. Hire/Promote: Trusting someone else to do what you have done till now. For all this time you have done a particular job, particularly well. So much so that you define yourself by it. Now, you’ve been promoted or have a new opportunity and you need to hand it over. You need to trust someone else, who may lack experience, approach and/or your skills. This is the biggest obstacle to delegation, and it never seems to get easier.
2. A Different Way: Watching them do it differently to how you would do it. Everyone is different and does things differently. You cannot expect someone to do what you did the same way you did it. You don’t want them to work in your shadow. Quite the opposite, you want to encourage them to do it in their own way. You want them to write their own manifesto, in order to feel full ownership and responsibility for their new responsibilities. This is hard to watch. This is especially tough on our ego.
3. Attached & Detached: Being supportive and involved without micro-managing or controlling. Successful delegation is not throwing someone in the deep end and seeing if they can float. The key is to be ‘attached but detached’ as the ancient spiritual masters would say. We need to stay involved, support and give guidance without grabbing the steering wheel.
4. Coach: Coaching them through failures and successes without taking over. When someone takes on a new responsibility they’re going to have lots of questions. They will also make plenty of mistakes and they will need a coach that can help them overcome those challenges. the key is to coach without gloating, or taking over, or telling them how much better your way was. Even when they do well, they will need to coach them around dealing with success.
5. Relinquish: Ultimately, you have to let go. You have to trust your baby to someone else. This is the final and most difficult hurdle to get through.

I think these are understandably difficult skills that require advanced levels of self awareness and almost a spiritual worldview.

You need to be able to see the underlying capability in others. You need to accept (deeply) that they are entitled to be different. You need to be able to diagnose the attachment of your ego and cosciously over-ride it. You need to see ‘letting go’ as your soul’s greatest development.

The first step to success in delegation is acknowledging how hard it is and wanting the challenge, change and development it offers.

I’d like to think of myself as someone who is constantly trying to put myself out of a job. In truth, I’ve grown quite addicted to the spiritual challenge that ‘delegation’ offers.

I recently heard at a leadership seminar that the key to leading a fast growth business is for the founder/leader to continuously hire, train and develop people, better than themselves. In fact businesses stumble, hit a black hole, when the CEO ends up doing too many things and hasn’t delegated enough along the way.

Easier said than done.

How are you getting on?

Any tips.