Last month, we discussed how to take back control of your time in regard to meetings you attend within your organization. Oftentimes, your attendance may not be needed, or the meeting might not even need to be conducted at all. It’s crucial that you raise your concerns in these situations and encourage others to do the same. Today, we will discuss another way in which you can analyze your time and furthermore how you can empower someone else to own an outcome.
Responsibilities, Tasks, and Functions
I group these three things together because oftentimes the How behind the What is the same. I encourage you to track how you spend your time each day for 4-6 weeks. Be as specific as possible, tracking everything you do. After you have compiled all of this data, the fun begins.
Use a piece of paper and create two columns. On the left side, write down the work that you consider to be your most important. On the right side, write down everything you have done in the past 4-6 weeks that does not fit into one of the categories of your most important work. You will now have two lists, the left-hand column can be thought of as your desired future state, while a mix of the two columns is your current state.
Now, think about a plan for each of the items in the right-hand column. Use the framing of, “This is not a part of my most important work, how can I empower someone else to own this?” Once this is figured out, work through the 4 steps to properly let someone else own this. Provide the necessary information and context, empower them, and then get out of the way. Be the coach, not the quarterback!
It is important to note that this transformation may take a long time. For me, it took almost 3 years. Not because I wanted it to take that long, but because some of the work I was doing that was not my most important work, I could not yet empower someone else to do. We either did not have an employee with the right expertise or we did not have the financial resources to hire the right person to own the specific function. Similar to what I mentioned previously about meetings, it is important that you remain guarded with your time as it relates to the responsibilities, tasks, and functions you chose or are asked to own on a regular basis. Again, this is not a once-and-done exercise. If you do not remain guarded when saying yes to something new, you will find yourself in the same situation that you worked so hard to get out of, and doing work once again that is not your most important.
Outcomes
One of the most important things you will ever empower someone else to own is an outcome. When you have empowered someone to own and furthermore be responsible for an outcome, assuming you have followed the other steps, you have taken the final step in transitioning from a captain to a coach for that specific task, function, responsibility, and direct report.
The transition from captain to coach will not happen overnight, it will take time. You will notice there are still parts of what you do in which you will need to remain a captain. Especially in times of crisis, when you need to quickly transition back to a captain to prevent the ship from sinking. This is more than okay, it’s what great leaders do. While empowering someone to own the outcome is the most important step, it’s also the hardest part.
In moving through this step, this is where mentally, physically, and emotionally, you will relinquish control. So, how do you approach this if you’re someone like me that naturally tries to control everything? First, you will need to have a direct conversation, one of the many along the way of empowering someone else to do something, with the person that will now be taking this over. It is important to review not just relevant context and information, but having them experience at least mentally what it feels like to be responsible for the outcome, what will happen if the result is not the desired outcome, and how they can best reconcile their own emotions about this change and what it means for them. Additionally, it will be important to your shared progress if you can objectively define acceptable failure. People fail and a lot of learning can be accomplished through reflection on that experience, but in order to have something worthwhile to reflect on, they need to be able to fail. Some types and degrees of failure are never acceptable, and being clear on what failure will be okay and what will not, creates a clear understanding for both parties on when you will step in and when you will not. Above all, ask questions, listen and help them work through how they can be successful with this new responsibility.
The last part is both easy and hard. You need to mentally and emotionally let go, and let them own it. If it helps, you can ask the other person to call out bad behavior in yourself, as sometimes we don’t have the necessary self-awareness to see how our actions are hurting our larger goals. I like to do this with extreme candor in such a way that allows my team to not feel awkward about being direct. I tell them, “During this transition, if you ever see or hear me engaging in behavior that is counterproductive to you owning this, I need you to tell me to Fuck Off and get out of your way.” While this is extreme, and not for everyone, it allows me and my team to be direct and sets us up with the best possible chance of achieving our goals and desired outcomes.