Great managers and leaders delegate well. They delegate the “what.”

“What?” you ask? Yes. The “what.”They delegate the end result. They delegate what success will look like at the end of the task. They share the vision.

The HOW trap…

The trap that a lot of managers fall into is that they delegate the “how.” They tell them the WAY to do it.

Instead of challenging the person to come up with a plan to increase production from 50 widgets to 100, they tell them HOW to do it.

I don’t know about you, but if my boss tells me how, chances are that I’m a gonna do it the way the boss told me to. Wouldn’t you?

Delegating the HOW can have long term consequences, because the manager has just rewarded the worker for following orders rather than taking initiative.

Not to say it won’t get things done, but the way things’ll get done are the exact way the boss wanted ’em done.

OK. So you might not think this is all bad. It is not. But it really makes a lot of work for the boss, doesn’t it?

And relieves the worker of responsibility. And squashes creativity. Is that what you want?

Get it done THROUGH others…

Managing and leading is all about getting things done through others. Not by others.

Instead of giving your employees the dot-to-dot description of how things are to be done, give them the end result you seek, the timelines, the budget, and other parameters. Let them be creative. Take the pressure off yourself.

Watch them thrive, and oh, they might just do it better than the way you would have. Yea, they might!