Suffering the Slings & Arrows

Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,

I will be the first to admit it. I have trouble letting things go. To be blunt, if I can do it, and do it right the first time, it is worth doing it. Letting this be delegated to someone else, who is probably as good at it or better than I, makes little difference. It’s about control…

Yet, here I am, overtasked, sometimes burned out, and needing another ten hours in a day. In this lies much fail.

I will point you to this HBR article.

If you find yourself taking on an increasing number of projects and/or people, the only way to regain a sense of control is to, paradoxically, let go of control: let other people help you. This requires facing fears like, “Maybe everything won’t be done the way that I would have done it.” Or “Maybe I’ll need to defer to someone else to answer a question instead of immediately knowing the answer myself.” It also requires redefining control from “knowing every detail off the top of my head” to “having the right level of big picture perspective to make informed decisions and the right systems in place so that I know when it’s time to check in with someone or when I need to take a next action.” And it requires redefining competence as “helping others to do great work,” instead of “doing great work all by myself.”

Let go. It will never be perfect all of the time, but when it is, the fact that someone else did it because you either delegated, empowered, or facilitated that success means more than you can imagine. It is akin to spending your time volunteering and doing for those who cannot do for themselves, though not exactly the same. When you help empower someone to win, the success enables the entire team and not just the individual.

You are saying, “hey, that’s great. we got a few wins, and then it all fell apart…”.

Yep, that happens as well. Having the foresight and restraint to NOT wrestle control back takes effort, but in the end, the success is more meaningful if the team or team member fixes their own proverbial mess. It builds trust and that is priceless.