sharing (work & power) is caring

(3 minute read)

Hi! Welcome to week three of Our Best Work Weekly, a newsletter from Healthy Pour where you'll get weekly tips on creating a healthy workplace, becoming a more compassionate leader, and cultivating a regenerative relationship with work. 

Something I see all too often is leaders who are overwhelmed with too much on their plate and not enough time or capacity to develop their teams properly. The result is an unbalanced workplace, where the leader or manager carries the load while their team feels unfulfilled, underdeveloped, and resentful. Leaders also resent carrying the load—creating narratives that “No one can do it better than I can,” or worse, “My team is so incompetent that I have to do the work for them.” 

This scenario is obviously not great. Big yikes. 

When we don’t delegate, no one wins. As leaders, we end up burning ourselves out, creating systems that everything has to go through us. This responsibility and knowledge hoarding disempowers the team (which will burn them out) and doesn’t prepare them for development, advancement, and leadership. Teams skilled in delegation and sharing responsibility cultivate more trust and psychological safety. They are also more creative, innovative, and collaborative.  

So, if it’s such a win, why is it so hard?! Much of this comes down to cultures that foster individualistic thinking, are eager to place blame, and are cutthroat. These organizations don’t tend to communicate their appreciation for their teams, lack creativity and agility in role development, and ultimately see high turnover rates since employees seek opportunities to learn and grow. These organizational cultures are also unstable, meaning individuals don't feel secure in their roles (think: layoffs), understandably resulting in knowledge and work hoarding to solidify their place within the organization. These are costly conditions. Toxic.

Delegation is ultimately a communication skill: the delegator must articulate their expectations for the project while the person taking on the responsibility must be able to share limitations, accurate time frames, and further refine expectations. The mistake we make is thinking delegation is a one-way action when it’s a co-creative process. When we can effectively share what we need from each other when delegating, we see growth, creativity, innovation, and trust.

To help you develop and refine your delegation skills, check out the Task Delegation Inventory worksheet that prompts essential questions. This worksheet helps to assess feasibility, capability, and capacity while identifying areas for support, clarity, and expectations. 

See you next Monday,