Leaders Listen Up: Delegating Might Be Good for Your Health

What if I suggested that you could reduce your stress, get better sleep, lower your blood pressure, boost your immune system, and give yourself more agency over the decisions you make. Would you be interested? Who would say no to that? Of course, the next question is, "what’s the catch?” No catch, just a leap of faith and a belief in others. That is all it takes. That’s right, delegation can be the answer to better living.

Delegation is not just about getting more done through others. There are a host of benefits for everyone involved. Surprisingly, for leaders those advantages might extend beyond productivity; they can improve your health.

Delegation can conjure many emotions in people. For some leaders, guilt is one of them. I tackled this subject in a previous article, A Leader’s Guide to Effective Delegation. They feel bad adding work to someone else's plate. It's not just that it is hard to let go of some work, we hold on assuming our team already has too much to do. Extended feelings of guilt in giving work to your team can result in health issues such as depression, increased anxiety, reduced self-esteem, as well as other physical symptoms.

The feeling of guilt can create its own health and effectiveness issues in leaders. In this Harvard Business Review article, Stop Feeling Guilty About Delegating, the author discusses the impacts and options of working through those emotions of delegation.

That is in addition to the stress and overwhelm you may already feel from the workload you are already burdened with. We are hearing more and more stories of burnout, stress induced illnesses, and overall fatigue as lingering effects from the pandemic, business disruptions, and world events weigh heavily on people. I would wager that most people in the retail environment, regardless of position, would state they are working harder and longer than they ever have. Many would also state they feel like they are drowning and cannot get back to the surface. If you feel that way, you are not alone. And there is not a silver bullet to fix it all. However, I do believe there are steps that you can take to alleviate some of those pressures. That is where effective delegation can come into play.

In my article, 5 Benefits of Effectively Developing Your Team, I speak to how your team environment gains momentum from a healthy delegation practice. What I did not necessarily cover were the benefits that come specifically to you, the leader.

One starting place for understanding where your team is and the full picture of how everyone is feeling is to ask that question, then begin to capture all the items they are working on. This may be capturing a simple list of tasks. Or it may evolve to having them track time and activities for a week or two to get a catalog of the workload they have. This approach can be used for any position. Store Managers, talk to your second-level managers. District Managers, review with your Store Managers and any support partners you may have. This can continue up the chain. This thought process and approach can be applied to any position. Don’t assume this is a higher-level position approach, or something that only applies in an office environment. Everyone can do this.

Once you have a good inventory of what everyone is working on, you can complete a start, stop, and continue exercise. I also like using the slightly more detailed approach of the BEST method, Begin, End, Sustain, Transform. This gives you some additional options for a longer-term approach to the work at hand. Either way, you can build a plan for what needs to be actively worked on, and likely free up space for new items that will have a greater benefit.

In doing these steps, to allow for more effective delegation, you are creating health benefits for yourself. Even completing these steps will begin to ease the stress and strain you may be feeling. You now have real actions you can take, versus feeling helpless with the workload you currently have. Oddly, the biggest benefit you may gain right away is more clarity about how you can get these things done. You may even begin to feel excited about them. That is the body reacting to the reduction of stress. There is nothing better than a dose of dopamine to jump start activity in other areas.

This can begin a chain reaction of events that leads to further reduction of stress, now allowing your body to heal other areas. Suddenly, your anxiousness is dissolving, you’re sleeping better, which fuels your brain for even more creative ideas. Your blood pressure lowers, allowing you to think more clearly for the decisions that need to be made. Food is digested better, nourishing your body more effectively, so you physically feel better each day.

Continuing the cycle, these benefits can also extend to your team. You are leading them more effectively, they feel more engaged, they are learning and growing, while also realizing many of the same health benefits you are experiencing. Suddenly, what seemed like a hopeless situation a few weeks ago, now has multiple avenues for solutions, and fresh ideas to implement to solve recurring issues the team assumed would last forever.

I realize I am painting a very utopian picture, yet it is possible. It will take dedicated effort, and discipline to build the habits and routine necessary to sustain these benefits. It starts with taking that first step with your team to trust them, ask for help, while working through the exercise of understanding what they are working on as well. All this can lead to a very productive and beneficial outcome that will serve you well in your life domains. This is well beyond work-life balance—this is about healthy living and leading.

What would mean to you to gain the health benefits of effective delegation?

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Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash

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