Delegation is crucial for growth, helping managers shift from doing the work themselves to empowering others effectively.
As AEC professionals develop in their career, there inevitably comes a crucial pivot point where the job transitions from “doing the work yourself” to “doing through others.” Moving up the ranks into a management role (whether project, personnel, or firm related) is a common path, but most of us enter this period with little training on how to handle the role effectively. We also don’t talk enough about why this can be such a struggle.
Consider this: You’ve been a high performer for years as a young professional, putting out excellent work on schedule and on budget. As a result, you’re rewarded with a promotion to a management role, and your success now has nothing to do with you producing awesome work. You’re expected to help others produce awesome work, so the thing that made you special no longer makes you special. Talk about an identity crisis! This conflict of self-worth underlies many of the struggles that new managers have with delegation but make no mistake: delegation is crucial to you and your firm’s future success. The most common reasons I hear against delegation include:
- I can do it faster myself. Your years of practice have turned you into a finely honed machine. If you can do a task in one hour that would take someone else three hours, why on earth would you hand that off?
- I know it will be correct if I do it. In addition to the extra time someone else would take, you’ll have to spend time checking their work (maybe more than once!).
- I don’t want to over-burden my team. Work-life balance has (rightfully) taken on greater importance in recent years, and any good manager wants to make sure they aren’t driving their team too hard.
All those reasons lead managers to just do the work themselves. In the short-term this can feel like the right answer. After all, it’ll be faster, more accurate, cost less, and keep others from getting burned out. From a long-term perspective though, this way of thinking can cause tremendous harm for you, your team, and your company. Mastering the art of delegation allows you to take what has made you special and replicate it throughout the firm, providing a boost in three key ways:
- Time. There aren’t enough hours in the day for you to do it all. Delegating work to others can help prevent your own burn out, and allows you to…
- Focus. Delegating work that can be done by others will allow you to focus on the work where you provide unique value and contribution. As Michael Hyatt says in his book Free to Focus, “Delegation means focusing primarily on the work only you can do by transferring everything else to others who are more passionate about the work or proficient in the tasks.” Focusing on your unique areas of strength and value will ultimately facilitate…
- Growth. If the people under your care are not growing in their skills and abilities, then you aren’t able to grow in yours, which could stifle the growth prospects of the whole firm. When talking about company growth, most firms focus heavily on the revenue portion of the equation, without sufficiently scrutinizing the development of talent required to perform on the increased revenue.
Effective delegation throughout the firm is like a skeleton key that unlocks the firm’s ability to grow, individuals to develop their skills, and young managers to better balance their work and personal lives. So where to begin? Here are some tips to get you started:
- If someone can do a task 80 percent as well as you can, hand it off immediately. Too often we hold out for perfection, but that’s an unrealistic framework. Trust the person to do the work, be patient as they work out the kinks of that last 20 percent, and be flexible on the execution; they might think of even better ways to do the task!
- Teach the process so you can delegate the outcome. For someone performing a task for the first time, have the patience to walk them through your processes and check in at appropriate milestones along the way. While at first this can seem like micromanaging, once they understand what they’re doing and why your oversight can dial down, and they can take full responsibility for the outcomes.
- Know where you provide unique value. Identify the aspects of your job and role that are unique to you, focus your time and energy on those, and find ways to delegate the rest. You might enjoy designing in Revit, but there are likely several people in your firm capable of serving that function.
Delegation is a classic example of something that is simple but not always easy. There is no time like the present to develop this skill for yourself, so that you can unlock the full potential of the firm and the talent in your charge. You’re great at what you do; finding ways to clone those traits in others is like the rising tide that lifts all boats. Good luck!
Morgan Stinson is chief operating officer at EEA Consulting Engineers. Contact him at morganstinson@eeace.com.
