After all, these projects are your babies; their success — or failure — ultimately lies with you. People, be it your employers, colleagues, friends or family are counting on you to take this on and emerge triumphant. When the pressure is on like this, most of us have fallen victim at one time or another to the belief that doing everything ourselves is the best option. Yet by enlisting the help of others and putting your absolute faith in them, you’ll achieve much more than you ever could on your own.
Micromanagement
The Oxford English Dictionary, describes the process of micromanagement as And there are certainly arguments for this oft-maligned style of management. It could be that we trust ourselves not to screw up more than we trust our team or that we selfishly hope most of the praise and rewards will come our way once a project is successful. We might not even be consciously aware that we are micromanaging; we’re simply so stressed out about a big project that it consumes our every waking thought and manifests in a need to control every little detail. Though the process of micromanaging others is problematic, even worse is instead going solo and undertaking every single task by ourselves. Simply knuckling down and getting the work done can sometimes seem easier than getting a team involved and sharing both the hard work and rewards, but it rarely is.
The Delights of Delegation
The negatives of both micromanaging others and trying to take on everything ourselves far outweigh any benefits of doing so. Wielding complete control over any project can be stressful. We worry about every task, lose sleep over the most trivial of details and become agitated and angry to the point where we snap at those around us. Even worse, trying to complete everything on our own can have a detrimental impact on our health and relationships as we work round the clock, skip meals and forgo time spent with loved ones to meet deadlines. Eliminate a lot of that stress by delegating tasks to others and having complete faith that they’ll do a good job for you. It’s that faith which will ultimately ensure a successful project. When you let go of the reins and let others know you trust them, they’re likely to feel empowered. Empowered people feel like a valuable member of a team and any number of surveys will tell you that employees who feel valued produce better work.
Lose the ego. Somebody else can do it better than you.
At work, it’s important to remember that your employees have been hired for their skills and expertise. Use them! Let people focus on what they’re good at and they’ll deliver better results than you could if you were simultaneously trying to juggle an infinite number of other tasks at the same time. Even if you’re only working on a personal project, put your ego aside and look around you; you’ll probably find people you know who can complete certain tasks better than you. Get in touch and ask for help! What’s more, when you empower people to make decisions and deliver the goods on the smaller tasks, you free yourself up to concentrate on the proverbial bigger picture and isn’t that what we’d all really like to be doing?
